Is it acceptable to bring food and drink on French trains? Also, how do you pronounce arrondissement? Thank you.

Oui.

<i>ah-ronh-DEESA-monh</i>

(The <i>onh</i> sound is nasalized; close to the &quot;o&quot; in &quot;phone&quot; - although English doesn't actually include the exact equivalent sound.)

ah-rhon-dee-ss-man

I asked my French son for this guide to pronounce and he says it's very hard to tell anyone without speaking - there is a problem with the &quot;on&quot; as there is no real equivalent in English

and in formal language you probably would pronounce the e after ssement but in vernacular the e would be silent.

Yes you can bring and consume any foods and drinks, inlcuding booze on French trains without any appropobation and many French do as well. They do sell food on trains but at a steep price.

French son says for Robes Peter to replace his a in DEESA with euh and it would be as good as possible

ah-ronh-DEESEUH-monh

again he says to speak perfectly you would put the euh in but in spoken French you would leave it out:

ah-ronh-DEES-monh

Ah Pal...
http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/
(try Alain and Juliette down the page)
And I always take a snack and drinks in the train.

&quot;although English doesn't actually include the exact equivalent sound.

American English doesn't have the short 'o' English English does, as in &quot;Hot Pot&quot;. Anglo Saxons tend to nasalise most vowels, so don't worry about that.

a-ro-di-SMO

Stress always on the last syllable.

Only in poetry would you pronounce <i>arrondissement</i> with 5 syllables. And the nasal vowel of <i>on</i> is not the same as the nasal vowel of <i>ment</i> and should not be represented as such.

There is a long and rich tradition of (particularly) older folks bringing copious and malodorous picnic lunches on trains. A crunchy baguette, some appropriately ripe cheeses, saucisson, and without fail, at least two hard-boiled eggs per person are the basics.

Always makes for a fun voyage...

-Kevin

Phew! If you want to go down the route of explaining the differences in pronounciation between.

Marin
Marron
Marrant

On line, then good luck.

A nasal back &quot;a&quot; as in car.

No worse than merry, Mary, marry difference in English, as in Did hairy Harry marry merry Mary?

By all means take food and drink on the trains. We substitute a bottle of wine for the hard-boiled eggs in Kevin's list. We always travel with a corkscrew and one of those pump things that use the rubber corks just in case we don't finish the bottle right off.

Once you know! The merry Mary married thing is easy if English, pretty harsh for North Americans.

Harold the Herald, comes out as Herreld the Herreld.

We took a lovely picnic with us on our train journey, pate, cheese, crusty bread, drink and cherry pie. We the envy of all those eating the train bought sandwiches. We could have sold our lunch 10 times over!!

Hi S,

Go to www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php
for pronunciation.

Michael and waring, the Mary, merry, marry thing is particularly difficult for us midwesterners. I have friends from various parts of the eastern US and I can hear a difference in their pronunciation of those words. But, for the life of me, I can't make them sound different!

Ira,

Thanks for the reference. It would be better for those who want to know the pronunciation of a word than any type of visual representation--most people are not familiar with the phonetic alphabet, which would be the only way to get an accurate representation of a sound.

but of course you always have the conundrum - OK here's how it's officially pronounced according to the Academy of France or some such arbitrator but a good dictionary should say how it's pronounced in daily discourse... that's what the OP wanted..how would you say it in French, meaning how would most French speakers say it.

The site give by Ira has French speakers pronounce the word as the French would today. The Acad&eacute;mie fran&ccedil;aise would probably not say how to pronounce the word because it should recognize the different levels of pronunciation that exist in France. I just was looking at the songs of Brassens in their printed version, and it is interesting to see how it represents his poetry that is based on ordinary speech. For example:

<i>Qu'&agrave; l'homme de la ru' j'avais des compt's &agrave; rendre</i>

In this phrase, Brassens chooses to pronounce <i>homme</i> as two syllables, and therefore the word is written in its entirety. But he chooses to pronounce <i>rue</i> as a single syllable and therefore an apostrophe replace the <i>e</i> because in verse, <i>rue</i> would normally be two syllables. Similarly the <i>e</i> of <i>comptes</i> is dropped but the <i>s</i> is included because it is used for the <i>liaison</i>.

None of this contradicts any rule of the Acad&eacute;mie fran&ccedil;aise.

Picnicking on a train is a French (and European) tradition. Back when most trains had compartments, it was also de rigueur to share various items with the total strangers in your compartment, who would offer you items as well.

&quot;Qu'&agrave; l'homme de la ru' j'avais des compt's &agrave; rendre&quot;

Coming from S&egrave;te, he'd have to chop off a bunch of syllables,