How is Pathe pronounced?
Darren
Path ayy
Pah - tay
Which is the correct pronounciation of "Pathe," as heard in France?
Darren
Evelyn C. Leeper
Well, "Pah-tay" is goose liver, spelled "pate" (with an accent grave
over the 'e'), so I don't see how that could be the correct spelling.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper
Faith is not so much a binary pole as a quantum state,
which tends to indeterminacy when closely examined. -John Updike
rod...@mont-alto.com
> Darren wrote:
> Well, "Pah-tay" is goose liver, spelled "pate" (with an accent grave
> over the 'e'), so I don't see how that could be the correct spelling.
Well, I know that's a W.C. Fields quote, but it's actually an accent
aigu (heading up) rather than grave (heading down), and it's likely
really an accent aigu on "Souse." And "Pathé" also has the accent
aigu. "Pathé" in French would sound a lot like "paté." The "th" is
slightly softer than the "t" in "paté," but not as soft as the English
"th" in "pathetic." The French don't have an English-style "th" in
their language, and thus tend to have a hard time pronouncing it --
leading to French accent intertitles (or Monty Python faux Frenchmen)
using "ze" for "the" and "wiss" for "with.")
So perhaps "Come wiss me to ze Cazbah" originally comes from a series
of English language practice tapes for French students.
Rodney Sauer
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
www.mont-alto.com
"C'est un cadeau."
"What?"
"C'est un cadeau!"
"What?"
"It's a gift!"
"Oh! Un cadeau!"
Andy
French we called the accent on the letter e "acute". Aigu (as far as I
know) is the term used specifically by the French. Getting back to the
question. The letter "h" is silent, the "t" isn't "tee" and the "e"
has the acute "e-h" sound. So the "th" sound in a name like Thierry
starts with a "teier" rather than "thier".
rod...@mont-alto.com
Well, when I studied French, we talked about it in French, hence
"aigu," which you correctly point out is "acute" in English. The point
I was making is that it's not "grave," which is a different accent
(and almost never found on a terminal "e" in any case). The real
problem is that without Henry Higgins' alphabet, it's kind of
pointless to discuss fine points of pronunciation by writing them --
especially in a language like English where the sound of any
particular combination of letters is completely unpredictable. (For
instance, you say the acute "e-h" sound. I'd think "e-h" would be
"eh," like in "egg," whereas I think you meant "ay" as in "bay"?)
What we need is for a native French speaker (which I ain't) to record
a sentence on youtube so we can all learn to say it properly. "Les
films Pathé du Café Boeuf ont trompé mon oeuil."
Next discussion -- how to differentiate the last two vowel sounds in
"Gabriel Thibaudeau."
Harold Aherne
wrote:
> What we need is for a native French speaker (which I ain't) to record
> a sentence on youtube so we can all learn to say it properly. "Les
> films Pathé du Café Boeuf ont trompé mon oeuil."
Note, too, that "pâté" (goose liver) has a circumflex (^) over "a". As
I understand it, the circumflex primarily indicates that an "s" has
been lost (e.g., <<tête>> for "head" is still <<testa>> in Italian.)
But it can also mean that the vowel is held longer than a non-accented
vowel. And of course, context is important too; no one would think you
a cannibal if you said <<C'est un des frères Pathé>>.
"-uil" endings can indeed be a challenge. If one doesn't have a
recording, the best approximation I can give for <<oeuil>> is to say
"oyee" very quickly, with the mouth tight at "oy" and broader at
"ee".
La langue française, elle peut avoir des difficultés pour les
anglophones, mais en tout cas elle ouverte des grandes portes
culturelles.
-Harold
Lloyd Fonvielle
> La langue française, elle peut avoir des difficultés pour les
> anglophones, mais en tout cas elle ouverte des grandes portes
> culturelles.
"C'est une langue bien difficile que le Francais." -- Colette
A statement which contains its own proof within it.
Mar de Cortes Baja
www.mardecortesbaja.com <http://www.mardecortesbaja.com/blog>
vhorowitz
French) speakers. Certainly French pronunciation rules have SOMETHING
to do with many names, but there are numerous exceptions. A classic
example is the composer Francis Poulenc. Many try to follow "the
rules" and give "enc" a "proper" nasal finish, which is absolutely
incorrect. "Poo-lenk" is the proper pronunciation.
mack
"vhorowitz" <vladho...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1187742359.0...@z24g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
Hmm. I've always heard them as Pathay and Poolank.
>
vhorowitz
> "vhorowitz" <vladhorow...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
Well, Poulenc is commonly mispronounced, but it doesn't make it right
to say "poolank". It's specifically listed as an exception in Thomas
Grubb's "Singing in French: A Manual of French Diction and French
Vocal Repertoire", which is considered the authoritative work on that
subject. Several other respected French language vocal coaches have
confirmed that when I asked.
rod...@mont-alto.com
Yes, and the composer Saint-Saëns has his own pronunciation pitfalls.
Usually in French the umlaut (or dieresis) indicates that you
pronounce the second letter separately from the first (as in Noël),
but here you don't.
French, German, and Spanish have the vast advantage that -- with
remarkably few exceptions -- you CAN deduce the pronunciation based on
the spelling *once you know the rules.* English is a much, much
hairier proposition, because there are so many words that are not
pronounced the way they are spelled. I still don't know how to
pronounce the name of one San Francisco street -- Gough -- it's tough,
though I can run through four plausible possibilities based on common
English words that have the same last four letters -- cough, cough.
Eric Stott
<rod...@mont-alto.com> wrote in message
news:1187748261.3...@x35g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
I still don't know how to
pronounce the name of one San Francisco street -- Gough -- it's tough,
though I can run through four plausible possibilities based on common
English words that have the same last four letters -- cough, cough.
Rodney Sauer
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
www.mont-alto.com
I'm not a San Franciscan (nor have I been there) but as you indicate that
Gough is generally pronounced Guff. The name Clough is also pronounced
Cluff, as in the word Enough.
Eric Stott
(who went through part of grade school being called Eric Snot)
Neil Midkiff
> French, German, and Spanish have the vast advantage that -- with
> remarkably few exceptions -- you CAN deduce the pronunciation based on
> the spelling *once you know the rules.*
Of course proper names often have idiosyncratic pronunciations in any
language, and the usual phonetic rules may not apply.
> English is a much, much
> hairier proposition, because there are so many words that are not
> pronounced the way they are spelled. I still don't know how to
> pronounce the name of one San Francisco street -- Gough -- it's tough,
> though I can run through four plausible possibilities based on common
> English words that have the same last four letters -- cough, cough.
In San Francisco it's pronounced "Goff" (rhyming with "cough").
I still have never found out whether Hollywood producer Walter Wanger
rhymed his surname with "anger", "hanger", or "danger".
But I have found one online citation for Pathé.
The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped is
a unit of the Library of Congress which provides recorded books and
other materials for those who are unable to use standard print.
They have an online guide called "The ABC Book" which details the
pronunciation of company names, brand names, common acronyms for
organizations and government agencies, and so forth. Presumably this is
meant as a guide for those who are recording their talking books. It's
at http://www.loc.gov/nls/other/ABC.html
The web site uses diacritical marks similar to those in most American
dictionaries, which I can't type in a Usenet post. For the film company
Pathé, the first syllable is just like the English word "path"
(unaccented); the second syllable is a stressed long A (same sound as in
"able" or "rate").
-Neil Midkiff
PS: I just looked at another page on the National Library Service guide
which gives pronunciations for names of over 9,000 public figures. It's at
http://www.loc.gov/nls/other/sayhow.html -- and it answered my question
above. Walter Wanger rhymes with "danger".
Greta de Groat
greta
"Eric Stott" <estott@localnetoSPAMcomMODE> wrote in message
news:13cn8mc...@corp.supernews.com...
Jim Beaver
"Neil Midkiff" <nmid...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:13cnkhp...@corp.supernews.com...
rod...@mont-alto.com wrote:
I still have never found out whether Hollywood producer Walter Wanger
rhymed his surname with "anger", "hanger", or "danger".
---------
Heard Wanger interviewed by Cecil B. De Mille on a Lux Radio Theatre. De
Mille pronounced it like "danger," which is how I'd always heard it.
Presumably Wanger would have corrected De Mille in rehearsal if he'd said it
wrong.
Now is Ann's last name pronounced the same way Antonin's is?
Jim Beaver
Eric Stott
to be done one way, they will do it another (lol)
Stott
(pronounced throat-warbler-mangrove)
"Greta de Groat" <gdeg...@stanford.edu> wrote in message
news:fagkcl$327$1...@news.Stanford.EDU...
Neil Midkiff
> Now is Ann's last name pronounced the same way Antonin's is?
According to the NLS site I quoted in my last message, it isn't.
They give a pronunciation for her name which I can best render here as
d'-VOR-ak
though they spell it with a schwa (upside-down e, for neutral vowel)
where I have the apostrophe after d, and with a circumflex (^) over the
O, meaning the sound that O usually gets before R.
In Czech, the composer's surname gets a diacritical mark over the r
which I can best describe as an upside-down ^; this indicates a sound
cluster spelled in our alphabet as "rzh".
If Ann Dvorak's family background is Czech, the accented r and its
special pronunciation presumably got lost when the name was Anglicized
at immigration.
Once again, the "Say How?" pronunciation guide for names of famous
people is at
http://www.loc.gov/nls/other/sayhow.html
-Neil Midkiff
Neil Midkiff
> I don't doubt you at all, but that's San Francisco: if you expect something
> to be done one way, they will do it another (lol)
>
> Stott
> (pronounced throat-warbler-mangrove)
>> "Eric Stott" <estott@localnetoSPAMcomMODE> wrote in message
>> news:13cn8mc...@corp.supernews.com...
>>> <rod...@mont-alto.com> wrote in message
>>> news:1187748261.3...@x35g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
>>>
>>> I still don't know how to
>>> pronounce the name of one San Francisco street -- Gough -- it's tough,
>>> though I can run through four plausible possibilities based on common
>>> English words that have the same last four letters -- cough, cough.
Here are a few more, in a locally famous poem (written by a UC Berkeley
music librarian, and publicized in Herb Caen's newspaper column back in
the 1960s and frequently reprinted):
In San Francisco, driving through
I came upon a street named Gough;
Allergic to a name like Gough,
I there began to sneeze and cough;
I parked my car beneath a bough
That overhung the street sigh "Gough,"
And rested there awhile, although
I did not like the street named Gough.
No, I did not like the street named Gough
About which this is quite enough.
-- Minnie Elmer
Let me repeat that San Francisco locals say it like "Goff".
-Neil Midkiff
vhorowitz
My authority for pronouncing Antonin Dvorak is Peter Sellers in his
EMI comedy skit called "The Trumpet Volunteer"......his very mod
rocker character mentions they're going to have a go at that "New
World fing by Vrunzhak"........then he corrects himself to something
like "Vergimurdinak".......sometimes life IS stranger than fiction,
though. I was working in a cd store a few years ago, and, I kid you
not, someone asked for the New World Symphony by "Doorvark"!!! That
was the same week someone asked for Mozart's "Juniper" Symphony!
Richard Lanham
<nmid...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Jim Beaver wrote:
>
> > Now is Ann's last name pronounced the same way Antonin's is?
>
> According to the NLS site I quoted in my last message, it isn't.
>
> They give a pronunciation for her name which I can best render here as
>
> d'-VOR-ak
<snip>
According to Wikipedia, quoting a book from 1936, she said it is
pronounced vor'shack, with a silent "D".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Dvorak
Rick L
Eric Grayson
> I still have never found out whether Hollywood producer Walter Wanger
> rhymed his surname with "anger", "hanger", or "danger".
Sylvia Sidney pronounced it like danger.
And Fritz Lang like Auld Lang Syne, not Long.
And those were about the only nice clean things she said.
Eric
David P. Hayes
>> rhymed his surname with "anger", "hanger", or "danger".
"Eric Grayson" <filmspam...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:220820071624059579%filmspam...@earthlink.net...
> Sylvia Sidney pronounced it like danger.
What's more, that's how Ralph Edwards pronounced it on the "This is Your
Life" episode devoted to Mr. Wanger. Considering the number of people
associated with that producer who cooperated with the "This is Your Life"
staff, and considering also Edwards's advance knowledge that he would be
addressing Walter Wanger throughtout the half-hour of the live broadcast, I
consider it almost inconceivable that the pronunciation could have been
wrong on that program.
--
David Hayes
Remove director name from address when responding privately.
Harlett O'Dowd
Evelyn C. Leeper
FWIW, in New York, Houston Street is pronounced "How-stun".
--
Evelyn C. Leeper
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses
are not subject to the regulation of conscience. -Adam Smith
mack
Yep, I think we can assure ourselves that Wanger is pronounced like Danger,
and Ann Dvorak sounds the way it's spelled, without the "ZH".
Many years ago a friend told me a story about Dvorak that may give you a
laugh. She had made a picture at a poverty row studio about a woman
photographer in Africa who had become lost, and her friends were trying to
locate her. She saw the film at a screening room upon its completion, and
at one point a friend is inquiring about her with a native chief, who says
"Ah, yes, there was white lady here....she go all around country with black
snapping box." At which Ann laughed so hard she almost fell on the floor.
Unfortunately I don't know the name of the film, nor whether that line was
left in it.
mack
Robert Osborne, introducing the film THE SEA HAWK. He named the stars, and
concluded with "Flora Robson"...except he pronounced her name to rhyme with
"Jobson" or "Hobson".
The guy is older than I am, but I knew by 1939 that the actress who played
Ellen in Wuthering Heights was Flora ROBE-son. I sometimes wonder whether
his usual expertise (and help from his staff) intimidates the folks at TCM
from correcting him when he goofs.
vhorowitz
Among the howlers nobody's caught at TCM is Osbourne trying to
pronounce the name George Melies.......which is on the bloody disc of
Around the World in 80 Days even, as "Meleez"!! Also, apparently,
they have aired rare films by a long lost wife or sister of Luis
Bunuel, "Louise Bunuel".
William Hooper
Eric Stott wrote:
> I don't doubt you at all, but that's San Francisco: if you expect something
> to be done one way, they will do it another (lol)
Not just San Francisco, it's regional.
Houston Street, NYC
Edinburgh, Scotland
Biloxi, MS
etc.
sir michael cat
So long as I can understand the meaning of what a person is saying I
am indifferent as to whether or not his pronunciation is correct or
otherwise. Same applies to grammar. It aint proper to humiliate anyone
Jim Beaver
with "sang" on the http://www.loc.gov/nls/other/sayhow.html#l? I just
looked, and it says Läng, which doesn't look like "sang" to me. Am I
remembering incorrectly? I can't find the original post.
Jim Beaver
Daniela C
"Jim Beaver" <jumb...@prodigy.spam> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:sjdzi.3277$JD....@newssvr21.news.prodigy.net...
pronunciation and it means "long". I've never seen his name written with a
Umlaut.
Jim Beaver
"Daniela C" <tito-th...@giovanni-severi.com> wrote in message
news:fajve8$oj3$02$1...@news.t-online.com...
The umlaut isn't an umlaut. It's a diaeresis, a diacritical mark used as a
pronunciation guide, and it's not written as part of the name, but as an
explanation of how to pronounce the vowel. According to the above-mentioned
pronunciation guide, the "a" in Lang should be pronounced as "ä" -- the "a"
in "father."
My German vocabulary is extremely rusty, but my pronunciation is accounted
pretty good. I've never heard the word "lang" pronounced to rhyme with
"sung." I've always heard it with the "a" from "father."
Jim Beaver
James Roots
And while the venerable town of Dalhousie is pronounced
"Dal-HOUZ-ee" in Nova Scotia, Dalhousie Street in Ottawa
is pronounced "Da LOUSY".
Jim
("Irrelevance R Us" Threads Unlimited)
William Hooper
Although most regional variations in pronunciation descend from
factors which are not intentional but more a heritage of the speech of
the locals, it really is the case in New Orleans that the local
pronunciation of a lot of local names descends from a heritage of
modification to satisfy the sheer joy of hearing crazy-sounding
things. Sort of like Shakespeare by way of W. C. Fields.
Calliope Street
Burgundy Street
etc.
Of course, Tchoupitoulas is pronounced exactly as you'd expect.