Well, I know how it reads to me...

Just out of curiosity, to whom was was your first post (from today) addressed?

To St Cirq? for using "Gh" (as in Ghana? or ghetto?) I can't imagine why she though that "gh" would convey a soft "g" sound!

May I bring this back to the original question and suggest ZHEE-ehn (just the TINIEST breath of an N sound at the end)?

well, I'm not going to belabor the issue, but I don't see it either.

<<May I bring this back to the original question and suggest ZHEE-ehn>>

Sorry, Eloise, but I suspect that you mispronounce "bien" or another rhyming word "vient" (as in "il vient" or "tu viens&quot. Gien, bien and vient all rhyme with vin.

Neither sounds like "Vienne" (the city) nor "viennent" (as in "ils viennent&quot - - these two sound exactly alike (Vienne and viennent) - - and I might represent them as VEE-ehn.

Rex, I hate to disagree with you, but I do 80% of my work in French, and I can assure you that 'vient' does NOT rhyme with 'vin'.

I'm not going to get into how to pronounce Gien except to say that bien, Gien, and vient most certainly do NOT rhyme with "vin"

I remember Gien well! My husband and I were totally ignored by 5 staff in a restaurant for at least 20 minutes. Not so good when you are the only ones there! Then we had to ask for absolutely everything. And we are not a demanding couple. The meal was disgusting to top it off. The hotel was very average and stunk of smoke.But before arriving in Gien we went to St Benoit sur Loire and listened to mass in the beautiful abbey.The Gregorian chants were ethereal. Well worth visting.

I hate to take issue with the doubly emphatic posts of Eloise and BTilke, but under the normal definition of rhyme, "bien" (etc.) does rhyme with "vin." Words rhyme when they are identical in their stressed vowel sounds and any subsequent sounds, but differ in their preceding consonantal sounds. The vowel sounds in "bien" and "vin" are identical; the preceding consonantal sounds (/bj-/ and /v-/, to write them phonetically) differ. Therefore, the words rhyme.

It is quite true, however, that they do not rhyme according to the rather obscure rules of French prosody, and if a French schoolboy tried to rhyme them in a verse composition he would get points off.

Thank you, jahoulih... (and earlier... ckenb)...

Boy, these pronunciation threads get me confused. You who are really experts, are you sure that Gien rhymes with "bien?" Or does the "en" sound like the "en" in Rouen?

And going back to a previous one, some of you were certain that the pronunciation of town of Cassis left off the "s" at the end. But I know that the liqueur cassis has the final "s" pronounced. What gives?

Also, at CDG last summer, a checkin woman asked us where we had spent the previous night. I said Senlis, not pronouncing the final "s." She said that she had lived several years in Senlis and told me the final "s" is pronounced.

It's true that for all practical purposes, Gien and bien and vient rhyme with vin and pain. They all have the same nasal vowel at the end.

Bien and vient have that semi-vowel, the -y- sound, between the consonant and the nasal vowel. In Gien, despite its spelling, the -y- semi-vowel is not part of the pronunciation. It has someting to do with the nature of the -zh- the word begins with.

Gien really does rhyme with vin and pain. The sound of Gien is exactly the same as the sound at the end of this other city name, Agen. There is no difference between "Agen" and "à Gien".

The pronunciation of Rouen is completely different. The nasal vowel in Rouen is like the one in avant or dans.

It's interesting to learn how to pronounce all these city names and see how they are different from each other:

Rouen
Rennes
Reims
Rohan
Royan
Roanne

No, I disagree. I was in Gien this summer and the name of the town does NOT rhyme with vin. I lived in a French speaking country for five years until December 2004, worked at a French speaking company, and shopped at the Gien store--the words simply do NOT rhyme. The may sound similar, but they are NOT exactly the same, for practical purposes or otherwise. There is most definitely a difference, subtle perhaps, but the difference is there and it is simply wrong to say they sound exactly the same. I don't usually get involved in these language debates because it's difficult to do these things in writing, but to let it slide that that Gien and vin sound EXACTLY the same would be inaccurate. Un point, c'est tout.

So do you think chien rhymes more closely with bien or with vin?

I think it's better for anglophones not to be tempted to try to pronounce the i in Gien or chien because they'll end up saying something like ZHEE-eh(n) as two syllables.

People might find this pronouncing dictionary useful and interesting. The number of words is limited but still:

http://french.about.com/library/pron...-audiodico.htm

So, I think this is migrating further and further into the arena of subtleties - - like the differences between Mary, marry and merry (I would say that those differences are real, but others, especially from different parts of the English speaking world have quite different ways of pronouncing these three words, including all the same). In French, the diphthongs oe (quite rare - - and different, I suppose in oeil, oenologie and oesophage), oeu and eu similarly come to mind. Are they different? - - yes, they are, especially oeu and eu - - but not in a way that can be transliterated with ordinary English "sounds-like" examples.

So, to those who know Gien - - the company and/or the town - - can we simply establish yes or no - - does Gien rhyme with bien, chien, lien, mien, tient and vient? (I won't try to get into what seems to me to be the special case of "rien" - - in the common expression "de rien", for example, I find it impossible to avoid an element of three syllables - - with a cadence quite like Ba-Da-Bing)

I can see where proper French composition would say no-no to using "bien" and "bain" as rhymes in poetry (or "vient and "vin&quot - - but still, the definition of what is a rhyme, given by jahoulih, seems to express what I think is a rhyme.

Oh... one last thing (and yes, I know there will be plenty who say I am spending way too much time on this) - - but this website seems relevant, and you may find it interesting that it isn't just from an "American English" perspective that "vin" and "bien" rhyme.

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/frenc.../nasals1.shtml

All right, Rex, I capitulate, but only on the rhyme aspect. (I do not have audio, so cannot listen to the BBC link).

According to the strict rules of rhyme as enunciated by Jahoulih, vient and vin do rhyme.

Like BTilke, however, I shall and do maintain that between vient and vin as pronounced by a native French speaker there is a world of difference; they do NOT sound the same, they will NEVER sound the same.

And yes, Regis, that is my final answer.

I know I'm going too far with this too. The main vowel in Gien, rien, bien, pain, vin, vient, chien, Agen, etc. is the same vowel. On one level, they all rhyme with each other. The difference between them is the presence of the -y- sound (a semi-vowel) between the initial consonant and the vowel. In bien, vient, and rien it is clear. Because of the nature of the initial consonant in Gien and chien, the -y- sound is pretty much absent.

Notice that there are two words -- vin and vient -- that are distinguished only by the presence of the -y- sound after the initial consonant. There is no word like chien or like Gien that has the nasal vowel following the consonant directly. That's because you wouldn't be able to distinguish the two words from one another if they existed. It's easy to hear the difference between vin and vient. Also between the two words rien and rein (kidney) -- they are very different from each other. This is the concept of minimal pairs in linguistics.

I taught French phonetics at the Univ. of Illinois and in Paris for several years. I aso taught French language at San Francisco City College. I worked as an English-French translator in Washington DC. I tell you this to explain my enthusiasm for the subject as much as to establish my credentials as a pronunciation expert. I speak French fluently.

Boy, we're into the PHD stuff now

Here is my (Quebec) based french opinion...

Bien and vin are close, but not proonunce the same. In bien, there is a faint "ee" sound at the beginning, which is not heard in vin. Similarly chien, vient, mien, sien,etc.. have it.

I would say the vin has the same pronunciation as bain (bath) and pain.

I have found that in France they do pronounce words differently from what my french background would expect....for example, Reims is pronounced with the 's' at the end (applies to Senlis too?), the month name aout is often heard with the 't' at the end pronounced, etc...

interesting stuff...if only we could post audio clips...

I meant to ask this earlier to ckenb - - but it's interesting that Agen does not follow "conventional pronunciation rules" and I wonder if you know why? Is there a historical reason? Was it formerly spelled differently? Agiens? (similar to Amiens?)

"Exporting" of place names might be the commonest reason for their not following conventional pronuncuation rules, I suspect. There are various place names in the US that have a "foreign" spelling - - and they are not pronounced "correctly" whether by "American English rules" (as if we have any phonetic rules in American English!) nor by the rules of the language from which they originated.

Baton Rouge (battin roozh), Des Moines (duh moyn), Cheyenne (shy-ann) and Albuquerque (alba-kur-kee) are a few such examples. There must be countless others - - perhaps more from native American languages even than European languages; Connecticut? Illinois? Arkansas?