My favorite village in France is Uzes in Provence, but my French isn't good enough for me to be sure of the pronunciation of the name. Is it like "oozes" or does the accent over the e make it more like "ooze-uh"?<BR><BR>And while I'm asking, is Aix en Provence pronounced "aches"? IF it were Aix DE Provence instead, would one just say "A"?<BR>

Greetings--the pronunciation is ooo-zez--2 syllables--sounds like fez.<BR><BR>Aix is pronounced X (z)aw(n) (pronounced nasally, with the hint of an n, not like our n). Your suggested pronunciation is not in the ball park for either one. <BR>There is a carryover from the X to the next word (called liaison en francais) which gives you the z at the beginning of the word. Try it out a bit and see if you can find a local French person to correct you.<BR><BR>Bonne Chance,<BR>Robyn France

Aix is pronounced ex -- wouldn't matter if it were followed by "de" or not, that's the way it is pronounced in other cities, also, like Aix les Bains. Proper names don't always follow standard rules and "x" is not always silent at the end, anyway, like in "six" or "dix" it's pronounced as an "s"--it tends to be pronounced as an "s" in the middle of names, it seems to me, as in Bruxelles and Auxerre. "Aix" is from some Latin word, as I recall. I'm not sure what you are thinking of by "aches", "x" is never pronounced as "ch" in French. Actually, nothing is that I can think of right now; I don't think that sound occurs in French if you mean like the "ch" in the English word "church".

I think TT means "aches" like in headaches !!!!

"the pronunciation is ooo-zez--2 syllables--sounds like fez"<BR>Robyn: ooo as in "o&ugrave;" ?<BR>I think it is U-zez ("u" as in "du")<BR>