And let me hasten to add that I'm not referring to anyone specific when I use the term "ill-informed", especially not you, Rex.

Michel Paris, I saw Kevin Kline on David Letterman right after French Kiss came out. He said the filming in France was difficult because the American cast was having a hard time keeping straight faces while listening to the French crew speak English in true Inspector Clouseau style.
One of the French crew kept shouting at everyone that "now it's time to focus!" only focus invariably came out as "fu-- us" Their favorite was when he combined "now it's time to focus so we can start shooting", which came out as:
"now it's time to fu-- us so we can start sh-tting!" He would deliver that exhortation 10 times a day and KK and Meg Ryan said they kept dissolving in laughter right before the cameras started rolling.
Pronouncing words just right in another language is a challenge for everybody, not just Americans.

Snob, I had stayed away because I had nothing to add..so leave me alone with your rude comments. Thanks.

BTilke,
I like your story. FK is one of my all time favorite movies. Being raised in a french culture, I was very impressed with KK's french and mannerisms, I thought he was very "real"...and I was even more surprised when I found out he sand the song during the credits at teh end of the movie....

Back on topic, Rex is right that sometimes in order to learn pronunciations, you use the "tools" that the english language gives you to approximate the sounds...but for some of the french sounds, there is none...like trying to cut wood with a hammer, it can be done, but not as smooth as a saw (poor try at simile)...so no 'y' in "une", but unless you can hear the word it is so tough to 'spell it out'

But I'll take a shot at it...

Think of the word shananigan, that irish word for less than honest deeds...take the "an" ending...that, depending on your accent, is "une"

Celia, no one will slam you for snobbishness or elitism because you mention phonetics or IPA. To be sure, no one even acknowledged their existence at 12/11/2004, 11:48 am.

Michel Paris: I've always heard the unstressed final "-an" syllable in "shenanigan" pronounced with the schwa sound, nohing at all like the sound in "une." Could shenanigan really be pronounced that differently in Canada?

Merci, mon cher Robespierre!

Celia and Robespierre: I had also said on the PREVIOUS (now closed) thread that the International Phonetic Alphabet would be the best solution to explaining sounds in a new langauge (if only we all learned it). But it is not a popular suggestion, since some people just love to try to approximate the sounds here, with the limited characters available, even in a situation like this one when the original poster never asked for an explanation of the pronunciation.

Must be my Irish background :)
OK, here is another one...take the word galleon, as in Spanish treasure off Florida...the 'eon' at the end could be "une"...like I said, its hard to find that 'aha' word that matches perfectly...my luck was that I started learning french when I was 6, before age calcified my learning centers ;)

Not that I want to drag this discussion out, but I'm not getting the relationship between "galleon" or "shenanigan" and "une" at all. Seems to me if you want to pick a word that approximates the "une" sound it would be something like "tune."

St Cirq...I'm starting to believe we pronounce things differently here in Canada :)

Dragging it on and on...."une" does not have the 'oo' sound, as in woohoo,its more of a lower octave sound than that... but I guess that may be the closest we can get.. I suggest a class field trip to a city of much light, where we can practice..."UN macaron et UNE madeleine svp"

<<...."une" does not have the 'oo' sound, as in woohoo,its more of a lower octave sound than that... >>

Michel: I'm very well aware of that, having been forced by Monsieur Vincent starting in second grade to repeat "Jules, as tu vu le mule?" ad nauseum. I've got my French "u" pretty well perfected.

And that's why I didn't suggest "spoon," for example. I think some Americans at least pronounce "tune" with a hint of a French "u" in it, not the flat oooo sound.

I agree - a field trip is in order. Find me a good airfare and I'm there!

To hear what is very close to the pronunciation of the indefinite article in the feminine : "une", you could go and listen to the "audio-dico" created by my American friend, Laura, on her French site which helps non speaking French people to brush up their French.

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

When there, click on "un" and listen, then, go and click on "unetelle", you'll hear, first, "untel" and then "unetelle", thus you'll get the sound of "une" if you pay attention to the way Laura pronounces the very first syllabe "une" in "unetelle". Laura speaks French wonderfully, her accent is perfect, so don't hesitate whenever you feel like listening to the pronunciation of a word in French :-) Bon courage ! Marie