Please help. Thanks you.

Chink' wah Tear' eh

Sank Tare

Tony:<BR><BR>What's your point? do you want poor JJ to masquerade as a Frenchman? ;-D<BR><BR>Dean is quite right.

Tony probably thought Cinque Terre is in France.

My grandfather pronounces it "sank tear," and I always wondered why! It never occurred to me that he was pronouncing it in French! <BR><BR>Cinque: a mix of "chank-wuh" and "chink-way," not quite either, but in between.<BR><BR>Terre: again, a mix of "tear-ay" and "tear-uh."<BR><BR>I don't speak Italian, but this is what it sounded like to me!

I think that CHEEN-KWAY TEAR-AH is close

I think that CHEENK-way TEAR-ay (where tear is pronounced as in "tear a piece of paper") is as close as an English speaking person is going to get. No disrespect intended, Bob (I am a great admirer of yours), but TEAR-AH would correspond to terra, which is the singular form. "terra" would be one land, and "terre" is more than one land, and, of course, "cinque terre" means "five lands".

There have been exhausting and exhaustive threads on this before.<BR><BR>The last syllable in both words is identical - - somewhere "long a" (way) and "short e" (eh).<BR><BR>And I don't think I would use the word "tear" (the verb) as quite the right syllable - - more like "terrier" (which does NOT rhyme with "barrier" in my ears)<BR><BR>Thus...<BR><BR>CHEEN-kweh TERR-eh<BR><BR>or CHEEN-kway TERR-ay<BR><BR>or somewhere in between.<BR><BR>No "ah" sound in either word.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>

topping, for JJ<BR>

Sorry to differ, Rex, but "e" in Italian is as close to an English long-a as it gets, always and forever. Thus: It is absolutely, positively Cheen-kway tear-ay, unless you are assuming the "eh" is the Canadian version... Still not completely accurate of course, because of the double-r in Terre that is usually unheard by English ears, but radically different to Italians. Shall we talk about what most Americans are really asking when they try to say "Quanti anni hai?" ("How old are you?").

JJ<BR><BR>I pronounce it...Won der ful<BR><BR>JOHN

Yes, that would be the Cinque Terre in Italy.

Take a look at this thread:<BR><BR>http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessages.jsp?fid=2&tid=1304039<BR><BR>and see how many other "experts" jumped in on the "ay" vs. "eh" debate once before!<BR>