How to pronounce French words
If you’ve ever tried to learn the French language, chances are you know that most words are pronounced differently to how they’re spelt; for starters, the last letter is normally left off. For instance, “un chocolat chaud” is actually pronounced, starting with a nasalised “a” sound: “a shoh-koe-lah shaw”.
Following this rule, La Clusaz is actually pronounced “la cloo-zah”. No problems there. So it was with great surprise the other day, when I ventured to a neighbouring ski resort called La Giettaz (“la jee-etah”, right?) is actually pronounced “la jee-et”. What happened to the “ah”? How can two village names, just fifteen minutes apart from each other by road, and spelt with so many similarities, be said differently by the locals? Turns out it’s not an exception. It’s just what the locals call the place.
Non-locals do indeed include the “ah” at the end of La Giettaz. So when I heard my friend talk about a chairlift called Torraz — in the epicentre of a ski resort called La Giettaz — I was surprised when he pronounced it “toh-raz”, complete with the “z”. So, what we’re looking at here is a chairlift called Torraz (“toh-raz” in a resort called La Giettaz (“la jee-et”) just around the corner from La Clusaz (“la cloo-zah”).
Yes, that’s three different endings for three different words with the exact same written endings. No wonder Spanish is all the rage these days.
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I'm a technical author, journalist and writer from Australia who has been living in Europe since 2000 and exploring the world from there. My passions are writing, snow sports and travel.
It’s already hard for french people to understand this rules- well there are no rules in fact-, it just help to make the difference between locals and tourists. And all this village names are not french , their are savoyards…
Well, let’s not forget that English is not exactly easy when it comes to word endings: cough, bough, through,tough, though etc.
But it’s place names that I love; Mousehole – Mowzel for example, but I think perhaps as this is a French blog, I’ll stick to the classic misinterpretations of French names in the UK Beaulieu (Bewley) and Beauchamp (Beecham) being the clasiic cases…
Can I add Hautbois (pronounced ‘Obbis, or Hobbis if you’re anxious to be heard pronouncing it properly) to Geoff’s list? It’s a village in Norfolk and must refer to a ‘High Wood’.
Yes, you’re all right. I’m just incredulous that locals can pronounce three very local words so differently when they’re all so close together other both physically and when spelt. English, apparently, is just as silly.
You are right, Spanish is an easy language to learn compared to others. I’m fluent in Spanish and am currently learning Italian. Both languages are very similiar.
We have the same issue here in the UK. A village near me is called Baswich which is pronounced baz-itch whereas one 5 minutes up the road is named Colwich and is pronounced coal-witch.
No wonder learning languages can be so difficult with this sort of variation in pronunciation!
You are right, It’s very common to encounter this behavior around France.
There’s signifant differences between regions when it comes to pronounciation and vocabulary in general.