I'm in the process of planning a trip to Arles, Nimes & Uzes, and would like to know how to correctly pronounce the names of these towns.

Robyn

Ah-rr-l: "rr" indicates a roll in the back of your throat if you can manage it, but an American R is clear enough.

Neem

Ew-zess: "Ew" doesn't quite get there: try saying "EEE" then pushing your lips forward into almost puckering up.

Arle, Neem, and Ew-zess are just fine. You are not expected to say them with a perfect accent anyway. In fact, we people in northern France don't pronounce them as the people living down there do anyway, or they would think that we were making fun of their accent.

I've never heard anyone in the south of France pronounce any of those differently from folks in northern France. except maybe to draw out the syllables a bit.

Patrick London's pronunciations are just fine.

Thank you for your responses. I'm glad to hear that I've been pronouncing them correctly.

We are travelling with a friend who has a friend that lives east of Grenoble, and she told him that Arles was pronounced Ah-rr-la and Nimes was Neem-a, both with an "ah" sound at the end. Since I had never heard those pronunciations before (I'm going with how Rick Steves says them), I wasn't sure which were correct.

Robyn

Yes, the south of France adds a lot of syllables where syllables were never meant to be.

This can create a lot of confusion until you tune your ears properly.

It's like the deep south in the US..tend to drag things out a bit..it is the south, you know!!

Joan

Rick Steves would be the last authority on how to pronounce anything, IMO. The man butchers foreign languages like no other.

The Burgundians roll the rrs

These responses are funny--yes France has different variations based on location just like everywhere else. In the deep south of France--the Midi--there are lots of variations, but the pronounced last syllable--Neem-ah--is really just a fuller pronuciation of the second syllable which is often cut in quicker speech. They also add a g sound to the end of many words which have the ain (aahn_ sound at the end). Fun to hear the different accents and dialects. Marseille has a particularly distinct version of the above.

Patrick London: It was so funny to see you explaining the pronunciation of the "u" - that's exactly what my French teacher used to tell us, in my first of 12 years of French and I won't tell you how MANY decades ago! Thanks for the memory.

Actually, I started out trying to work out how to explain about unvoiced vowels on the end of Arles and Nimes, but decided it would be too complicated for clarity.

I never try to explain how to pronounce the "u" -- it is ridiculous to try to explain it in writing anyway, since you absolutely must hear it to understand. English speakers can be understood 90% of the time using their normal "u" in the French words. Once you are in France, either you understand very quickly that you should modify the pronunciation, or else you don't even notice the difference and continue plodding along the incorrect way. And the French are used to that, too. After all, don't English speakers learn to understand French people attempting to speak English?