vee-NUH-yuh

and, as a corollary - - foe-TUH-yuh...

How about toile and voile? It took me awhile to manage toile; then I pronounced voile the same way, and voila, I'm corrected.

Rex & ckenb,

I did not know that you were <i>m&eacute;ridionaux</i>.

Yew thaink ah kood live this close to Kentuckee and not expose the uffinity I feel for all my suthren brethren?

I hail from North Carolina, actually. But I speak French with a Touraine accent.

Not if you use three syllables for Vineuil, or at least that is what you imply.

Those are the limitations of trying to explain French pronunciation using spelling that makes sense to a speaker of American English.

I know Vineuil is two syllables... that's why the middle syllable is in ALLCAPS in my &quot;transcription&quot; -- to indicate that's where the stress falls. French words always have the stress on the final syllable.

Too bad we can't hear each other speak. I trust you are fluent in French as you said in another thread. You'll just have to trust me. What are your credentials?

Or maybe you're one of those people who thinks all Southerners are bad at languages and probably just stupid.

How would you transcribe Vineuil so that an American who doesn't speak French could pronounce it?

Hey, wait a sec ckenb. How can there be a &quot;middle&quot; syllable in a two-syllable word? Looking at my Cassell's, I would think there are three syllables, if indeed it rhymes with fauteuil, though the last syllable wouldn't amount to much.

Well, that last &quot;syllable&quot; isn't officially a syllable in French phonetics. The final sound is a semi-vowel. We don't have anything in English that corresponds to that.

But since the American pattern is to clip the end of words compared to the way they are pronounced in French (which has strong final consonants and semi-vowels) it's probably better to think of the end sounds of many French words as unstressed syllables.

I'm not sure how much sense any of this makes.

Michael, maybe I came on too strong. No offense meant.

Well you guys talked me out of ever wanting to go to that place. Not even supposed French speakers can agree on how you pronounce it. Lets try another:

How do you pronounce &quot;Ouagadougou&quot;?

That one's easy:

Wa-ga-doo-goo

and the winner is ckenb! bravo you've got all right and I'm sure because I am French

by the way, would you know how to say &quot;tontontont&eacute;tatilot&eacute;tatou&qu ot; it's a funny sentence you have to say quickly, and it's means something. (not written that way of course..)

get set, ready, go!
corinne

That was a hard one.

Tonton, ton th&eacute; t'a-t-il &ocirc;t&eacute; ta toux?

bravo mais je pense que tu es fran&ccedil;ais ou francophone car ton clavier a des accents! donc hors concours non mais! :non:
tu es d'o&ugrave;?

I learned it as &quot;ton th&eacute; t'a-t-il <i>tout</i> &ocirc;t&eacute; ta toux&quot;.

Zeus,

Pronunciation is not the issue. The problem is that short of using the International Phonetics Alphabet, it is very difficult to represent the sounds of a foreign language.

Corinne, je suis am&eacute;ricain!

Alas, my keyboard doesn't have accents; my usual method of doing them when posting here is copy and paste.

jahoulih well done then and sorry for the misunderstanding ;-) I saw that Michael had put accents as well so...
bravo boys!
do you know this one? very good for a good prononciation even difficult for frenchies! panier-piano (said several times)
and try this one without mixing &quot;sh&quot; and &quot;ss&quot; &quot;les chaussettes de l'archi-duchesse sont-elles s&egrave;ches, archi-s&egrave;ches?&quot;
good luck!
corinne

Here's one in German:

Hottentottenpotentatentantenattentat