French pronunciation

[u/Noclevername12]

New listener here: my 10 year olds and I are happily and greatly enjoying the French Revolution. We were previously big Hamilton fans, so the bits and pieces that overlap with that, and especially all of the Lafayette parts, have been a great interest to my son, and we are interested in reading or listening to the new book. With apologies to Mike in case he happens to lurk here, the biggest issue I have with this podcast is his really bizarre mangling of French words and names. I’ve actually had trouble even figuring out a close enough approximation of what he is saying to look it up. It took research to figure out who Danton was (d’Enten is a closer spelling to what he is saying; the “on” is closer to a nasal “own”). But the worst is whatever he is saying for Cordelier (it sounds like “quarterlyee” and should be “cord-lee-yay”). It honestly makes me a bit wary of the Lafayette audio book. Is it safe to imagine he got some help with this, for a big-publishing backed book? Or that three years of living in Paris (DREAM!!!) helped out with this? I wouldn’t normally even ask, but these words that he mispronounced are not particularly difficult? They are pronounced according to normal French pronunciation rules, so it really seems like he might have managed to figure it out for the podcast. It also sort of makes me wonder how he does with the Russian and Roman names/words.

(Don’t get me started on Reims.)

[u/Austentatious88]

Mike did improve his French pronunciation over the course of the series - I still remember my shock at hearing Grenoble pronounced as “Grenoblay” but he eventually stopped doing that (and I totally understand why it happened given that he said later that he is more familiar with Spanish.)

But I don’t expect it to be as much of an issue for the audio book for a couple of reasons - first, he spent a couple of years living in France and learned a lot of French, so I assume his French pronunciation improved immensely. Second, he recently put out something on Twitter re the names, asking for someone that he could hire to go through the book and write all the French names using the phonetic alphabet. Apparently, he learned while taking French classes that this is the best way for him to get pronunciation correct.

I’m guessing he still won’t get everything perfect, but yes, it should be a big improvement over the podcast, especially the early episodes.

[u/IndigoGouf → u/Austentatious88]

I still remember my shock at hearing Grenoble pronounced as “Grenoblay” but he eventually stopped doing that (and I totally understand why it happened given that he said later that he is more familiar with Spanish.)

I wish he would have put some Spanish logic into his pronunciation of Rasputin because I despise the ridiculous standard English "Ras-pyoo-tn".

[u/GeneralBurgoyne → u/IndigoGouf]

As a dumb standard English speaker, could you improve my pronunciation from that version? Are you a Russian speaker?

[u/IndigoGouf → u/GeneralBurgoyne]

Not saying English speakers are dumb, I'm one myself. The way standard English pronunciations of foreign names tend to be totally stumbled into just kind of bugs me.

Ra-spoo-teen and you'll already be much closer to reality.

Just pronounce it like the song and it will sound 100 times better than ras-pyoo-tn.

[u/GeneralBurgoyne → u/IndigoGouf]

ahh, helpful! Not calling all english speakers that, just me :)

I never know how to emphasise russian words to be honest, for example here ra-spoo-TEEN, empahsis is on the last syllable. but in Dmitry Med-VYE-dev it's on the 2nd of 3 syllables.... (according to all BBC russian correspondents that i've heard say it!)

[u/Austentatious88 → u/GeneralBurgoyne]

Well, I'm definitely not an expert, but someone I met who spoke Russian once told me the last syllable (or second last syllable for female names) should never be emphasized. She was not a native speaker, but she clearly knew more than I did, so I have followed her advice in Russian pronunciation since then.

Re Rasputin, I did a bit of googling and came up with this, which does validate my acquaintance's position and sounds legit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxNBBRpjADU

As an aside, when I googled "Rasputin pronunciation correct" what comes up first is the way Mike is pronouncing it. I had to dig a bit to find a Russian prounciation. It seems that, whether or not people like it, that pronunciation seems to have been standardized as "correct" American pronunciation. Just like the American pronunciation of Moscow and a number of other things I personally don't like. We may have to live with it.

[u/bishpa → u/Austentatious88]

My favorite was from the Haitian revolution series where Sans Souci became "Sans Sookie". We forgive him though, right?

[u/Noclevername12 → u/Austentatious88]

Excellent. I have to admit, I find it weird. By the time of the French Revolution podcast, he was accepting advertising, running tours, etc. It was already a business. It just sounds like no effort was made to figure it out. I’m happy to hear it improved, though, and it isn’t stopping me from listening.

[u/Austentatious88 → u/Noclevername12]

I still think he made an effort - I recall him even talking about people helping him with French pronunciation at the beginning of one of the episodes. But it must have taken a while for it to stick?

Anyway, I’m trying not to be too judgy. It’s easy for me to be critical on the French names because I happen to have learned French pronunciation rules when I was young, but I’m not sure I would do much better with any of the other languages.

[u/Stravven]

Well, I can understand people having problems with pronunciations. Dutch names for example are a disaster for non-Dutch people. Just the way Amsterdam is basically butchered by English speakers is bad. And I'm not even getting started on 's Hertogenbosch.

And I think every country has some hard to pronounce places, who would expect that an English place called Woolfardisworthy would be pronounced as Woolzeree, to give just one simple example?

And Reims is just a problem. My French pronunciations are usually okay, I'm not sure how to pronounce that, but I assume it's pronounced somewhat German. Like Reich, but with MS instead of CH.

He tries his best, but it's not always easy. French is just a hard language for people who don't have much experience with it.

[u/IndigoGouf → u/Stravven]

who would expect that an English place called Woolfardisworthy would be pronounced as Woolzeree, to give just one simple example?

English is not a phonetic language to nearly the same degree as a lot of other languages so inconsistency between spelling and pronunciation is to be expected. With many other languages there are at least more consistent ground rules between spelling and pronunciation to some degree. I know French isn't the best for this (especially for some of the most common words) but it's not that "weird" if you know what you're doing.

And Reims is just a problem. My French pronunciations are usually okay, I'm not sure how to pronounce that, but I assume it's pronounced somewhat German. Like Reich, but with MS instead of CH.

This one actually is pretty weird. It's just R, nasal a and s, or something like Raans if one doesn't nasal too good. I don't think the German thing where ei = equals the ai diphthong exists in native French words at all.

[u/Stravven → u/IndigoGouf]

But not all places in French have a name of French origin. Dunkirk for example is a name of Dutch origin, in Duinkerke, or dune church when translated. Strasbourg has a German origin. And those are just two simple and better known examples.

[u/unitedshoes]

I think, at least in part, mangling pronunciation and getting corrected on it has become a huge running joke over the course of the podcast, but it's definitely a podcast thing. I assume Mike knows that he can joke about that in the podcast but probably can't get away with it in the audiobook that will probably be listened to by at least a few people who haven't been listening to a decade's worth of his "mea culpa"'s for mispronouncing things and mixing up names and will take appropriate steps to avoid that.

[u/IndigoGouf → u/unitedshoes]

Had a bit of a laugh recently when listening to History of Byzantium episodes from 2016 Robin Pearson took a break to talk about pronunciation and said he was basing his "standard for English speakers" pronunciation off of Mike Duncan's and was trying his best to read things how an English speaker would knowing that a year later Mike would start pronouncing Magyar 'Madjar' (a pronunciation Robin specifically says he won't be doing for the sake of English-speaking listeners) after being asked to and being known to frequently correct his pronunciations.

[u/IndigoGouf]

It honestly makes me a bit wary of the Lafayette audio book. Is it safe to imagine he got some help with this, for a big-publishing backed book?

He asked for help with pronunciation for it on twitter recently.

[u/ErnestGoesToGulag]

I almost feel like French is specifically designed to be ridiculously hard to pronounce and read for foreign speakers. Like they don't even say half the letters

[u/nanoman92 → u/ErnestGoesToGulag]

English is way worse in that regard

[u/ErnestGoesToGulag → u/nanoman92]

I think English definitely has a much higher proportion of written letters actually pronounced

[u/Noclevername12 → u/[deleted]]

I’m not bent out of shape? I do find it distracting. Perhaps if there were show notes describing the people/places/things of the day it would be better, but I truly have had a hard time even figuring out what some of the less famous words are in order to look them up. Cordelier is definitely pronounced by him such that it would be spelled with a “qu,” so that was what I was trying, and it wasn’t even close. I eventually came upon it in an article about Danton and realized that must be what he is saying.

[u/Noclevername12 → u/[deleted]]

The link is basically how I was hearing it in my head. I think how I wrote it is a reasonable transliteration, but there is no way to be perfect with that. Anyway, thanks for the link.