One More Pronunciation Please
 

How do you pronounce "quai"? Thanks

K

Are you sure it isn't "key"

sorry, quay is key

Like the italian "che". Hope you speak some Italian. ;)

Che in Italian is also "K" I stick to my original assertion.

quay (English) is "key" - - but "quai" (French) is much closer to "kay" - - or a hybrid between "kay" and "keh".<BR><BR>We've had this discussion on the sounds of mes, mets, mai and mais before.<BR><BR>You'll do fine with the "kay" sound.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>

But in Italian, the letter K is pronounced kappa. So is quai really pronounced kappa? :-)

Very cute, Kappa.

So does that mean, in Italy, one orders a quaicinno in the morning? :~)

What is a quaicinno? You lost me.

*If* "quai" = "kappa" then...

Quai can be k or kay or cay. It's not a sound on the river, of course, or what the late marshall called himself. This is being overstudied, naturally. Just give it the AO-K, and drop the Don Jo or caribbean sound portion. K?

In French, "quai" as in the thing running along the Seine or the thing you stand on before you get onto the metro is pronounced : "kay".

Sally,<BR><BR>Quai is pronounced "keh". Saying "kay" will instantly give you away as a native English speaker (not that saying "keh" will stave that off an awfully long moment though, or so I supose....;-)).<BR><BR>Phil

Capo, you have way too much time on your hands.

Phil is right; "quay" is pronouced "keh". C'est comme cela qu'il faut prononcer !

Speaking of pronounciations...<BR><BR>In addition to the one on London, I also watched a Travel Channel show on Rome last night. The narrator kept pronouncing "pasta" as if it rhymed with "fast-a", not "cost-a." <BR><BR>In the U.S. it seems to be generally prounced as rhyming with "cost-a." Isn't that also the way it's pronounced in Italy?

My Canadian (Vancouver) friends all say past-a like fast-a. (They also say Mazz-da for the car.) I have always wondered if Italians pronounce it to rhyme with fast-a....

It's a British (and apparently Canadian) quirk. Italians say it to rhyme with "hasta" (as in la vista).

Grazie, jahoulih; that's what I thought.<BR><BR>I don't think the narrator was British, but he may have been Canadian, as he had a slight (to my ears) accent.

It isn't any British quirk - we pronounce pasta to rhyme with "hasta" (la vista) too, just like the Italians, although with a slighly different emphasis.<BR><BR>I got confused by this post for a while as many British people (northerners especially) would also pronounce "fast-a" to rhyme with "hasta". I presume you were meaning "farst-a"?<BR><BR>And Maren - how else does one pronounce Mazda but to (almost) rhyme with "hasta". Am now most confused....

AnnaC, the British (in my experience, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary) tend to pronounce the first vowel in "pasta" the same as the vowel in "can" or "pan"--while the Italians (and Americans) pronounce it to rhyme with "hasta". I think this is the same distinction that Maren was getting at with regard to Mazda.