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Lost in Translation Twenty Eight

October 24, 2008
11:20 AM

When it comes to pronouncing foreign words it is totally true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Take Noilly Prat, the excellent French Vermouth (made from my favourite Picpoul grape) which is produced in Marseillan just down the road from us in France. I had always presumed-along with most of the wine guzzling population of Ireland-that it was pronounced, a la francais Noieey Prah.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, as it turned out, it is pronounced directly as it is spelt, which(rather unfortunately) is something that rhymes with oily prat.

The first time I realised the treachery of the French language was when I was ordering a case of Chenas Burgundy from a wine merchant.
I, of course, called it Chenah, as you would, he gently corrected me and told me that there “they pronounce the S”
I fell into this trap at on at least two other occasions while holidaying in the south west of France. I mistakenly called called Ceret, Ceray and did precisely the same with Peret.
Both have in fact retained their t sound at the end of their names.

There is of course nothing strange at all about this.
In French, as in other languages, these unpronounced letters were originally pronounced.
The English word knowledge, for instance , was originally pronounced “kenowledge”

But it is always dangerous to assume the correct pronounciation of any word without checking with a native.
A great friend of mine while working in a pub in London in the early seventies corrected a Scotsman’s pronounciation of Drambuie.
She, assuming incorrectly that it was French , said “Oh you mean Dhrambweee
Mind you sometimes it does become a little difficult, I defy any (non Polish) person to correctly pronounce my Polish fellow blogger’s name: Jedrzej.
(In fact, he tells me, it is pronounced something like Yendashay.)

The best incidence of this little knowledge was when the Befrocked Greek Mountain, singer Demis Roussos became popular in Ireland.
All the RTE DJs, to prove that they knew how to speak foriegn (i.e. French) insisted in calling him Demmy Russo

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