Sombreuil=som bru ee

Kate

A good place to start would be the book "How to Pronounce French Rose Names" by Diana Bellucci.

Here is a link that might be useful: How to Pronounce French Rose Names

I read that the chateau at Malmaison was a sanitarium for lepers sometime in the middle ages, and that was why it was given a name meaning sick house. In French, mal can mean sick or bad.

Kate did the hardest one, but here is my attempt at the other three:

Lutea = loo'-tee-ah
Banksia = bank'-see-ah
Lucetta = loo-chet'-ah

The following are fairly close, I think . . .

zeff-eh-REEN drew-AN (soft final 'n')

MAY-yon (again, soft on the 'n')

moll-an-YEW

som-BREW-ee

Literally, Malmaison = House of Evil

I think it is ZEFF - FIRE - REN..With the ZEFF sounding quickly like ZEFIREREN..

I'm confused. This site pronounces DEUIL as DAYuh

Here is a link that might be useful: Forvo pronunciation site

Hmm, I think it is Zay ( accent aigu é) feer-een
and about half way between droon and droo un.

meilland = may- ahhn

This post was edited by lola-lemon on Sun, Mar 10, 13 at 7:30

Although I can understand alittle French (my grandma is is French Canadian, but their dialect of French, Quebecois, is alittle different than proper French), I still have a really difficult time with the names! This link has been very helpful :)

Tammy

Oh, good, Tammy, I can ask you. When I was a kid, my girlfriend across the street was French-Canadian. To my recollection, she called her mother maw - man (short a and n so soft it wasn't there). The maw was almost moh - somewhere in between. So that's how I say Maman Cochet and I can't break the habit even after learning that the French pronunciation is ma - mah'. Am I remembering correctly? You'd think it would be easy for me just to say Ma-ma' Cochet.

When you go to the Forvo site, try Capitaine Dyel de Graville. That one showed me that even though now I wish I had taken French, I know I would have failed it.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Sherry, I've always called my grandmother, and my great grandparents when they were living, "meme" and "pepe" (add in the accent marks over the e's) ...pronounced mim-may and pip-pay. My grandmother refers to her mother as "mama," but I'd assume she would write it maman. I guess if your neighbor was from a different part of Quebec, they may have pronounced it differently?

My grandmother almost always spoke English around me because my grandfather was born in the US didn't speak any French (his parents came over from Italy right before he was born, but never taught any of their children Italian)....but to this day, if you get my meme riled up, she starts jabbering on in broken French...I just love hearing it because she doens't speak it too often :)

Its a fun language, I just wish I understood it! I can pronounce things fairly well, but just don't ask me what they translate to! LOL

Tammy

I always thought that Malmaison meant the bad house and indeed,in the first days, the old keep on the property was under siege a few times, forcing the owners to relocate. Later on it became a hospital someone said which gave it it's name when Josephine lived there.

I never know which pronunciation to choose so I just mumble. E.g.--most everyone pronounces Sombreuil as above, but this site has a French speaker saying: "SOHM bray-ul." Maybe there's some Anglicization to the more routine pronunciations?

That rose book sounds great--hope it is available again sometime

Here is a link that might be useful: Forvo pronunciation

I am skeptical of the Brew-ee pronunciation ending on Sombreuil... if only because euil in french is commonly pronounced like oy- yuh.

Squirrel (a popular topic herein!) is spelled écureuil in French. (the same ending letters) listen here and it is clearly
Ay kü ROYyuh.
(é cu reuil
So- I think it would be Sahhm broyyuh.
Here: http://french.about.com/library/media/wavs/ecureuil.wav

thus Deuil is also actually Doyyah

here's a link to hear the french word for morning (le Deuil) pronounced
http://french.about.com/library/media/wavs/deuil.wav

But I think we need to find a person from France to set us straight because proper nouns can be weird.

Here is a link that might be useful: euil pronunciation guide at about.com

This post was edited by lola-lemon on Wed, Mar 13, 13 at 19:19

Many of these suggestions are very close to French pronunciations- as close as you can get using improvised phonetics.
Lola- putting the final "uh" syllable on these words is often done when really emphasizing the word, but isn't normally considered part of the word's pronunciation. ÃÂcureuil doesn't really have a yuh sound on the end of it, unless you're really exaggerating the end of the word. Likewise, Sombreuil doesn't normally have a Yuh on the end- Sombreuil is Som (not Sahm) brooy.
Zay-fee-reen Droo-uhn is the best I can suggest- but the nasal vowels like the uhn don't exist in English and can't really be simulated with phonetic writing.
Anyway-
TNY- please don't contrast Canadian French with "proper" French. It's unkind and untrue. There are many, many dialects and accents of French in the world. Some of the most traditional (and best) French in the world is spoken in Quebec. Some of the most careless and grammatically compromised French in the world is spoken in Paris, just as London features all levels of English from cockney to posh.

(Ok- at this point all the rose folks are going - Geesh, we just wanted a little hint!)
..................................................
Note: I have edited out a big chunk of my post to save future readers time ....someone has found a good site to hear the pronunciation of Sombrieul, below.
listen here: http://www.forvo.com/search/sombreuil/
...................................................

continued from previous:

But anyway- unless someone actually knows a Mr. or Mrs. Sombreuil, all this could just be Moot and it's why I didn't jump in on this one initially. It's like using Math and Science on a mythical subject. I enjoy it, but it might be totally wrong. We are making educated guesses.

Which makes me think of the the City of Vallejo in California. I used to hike my dog in the hills above the Carquinez Straits and I met a man once who told me he had graduated from Valley Joe High in the 50s. I was scratching my head wondering where Valley Joe was, when I realized it was just how the locals back then pronounced Vallejo. I thought it was silly he did not know it was Vallay HO-- it's spanish right?
Of course I realized later, it actually ought to be Bai yay ho, if we are using Spanish!
Anyway- this is just to say that depending on where you are, things can be said differently.

Cheers

Here is a link that might be useful: Larousse dictionary

This post was edited by lola-lemon on Fri, Mar 15, 13 at 17:13

AAAAaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhh!

This is why I mumble. And re. Anglicization /mispronunciations familiar to me, in Tx:

"Amarillo" is pronounced "am a rill o"
but "tortilla" as in Sp., "tor tee ya"
"Refugio"--Ree FUR ee o
"Pedernales" is slurred into "Perd(n) al es
"Mexia"--meh HAY a instead of meh HEE a
and so on, including the way "Texas" itself is pronounced (instead of the Sp. "Tay has"

The "Vallejo" story is funny & I remember wondering whether CA residents said it "Va LAY ho or Va Yay oh". I grew up saying "Yah ma" for the animal, but everyone here says "Lah ma".

Finally, I know someone from El Paso who SWEARS he was asked how to get to "JAR-ez, Cha-hoo-ee-hoo-ee"
(Juarez, Chihuahua).

It's hard to sort the outright mispronunciations from regional dialect, here. So correct pronunciation of FRENCH seems impossible.

I asked my french son-in-law about this...and he laughed outright and did an impression of a marseille accent, then a brittany one...and finally, one from alsace. I got the message that french, like english, is not homogenous but is as prone to regional accents as anywhere else.
For myself, I speak french with a pronounced lancashire accent (proudly) with no attempt to roll my rrrrrrs or miss out the dipthongs of my native speech patterns. Making the attempt is what counts.
He pronounced Sombrieul - sahm brey h, with a gentle aspiration of the 'h' but basically in 2 syllables.

Donald, if you would have read my post, you also would have read that my family is French Canadian. By insinuating that I was trying to insult French Canadians, when I myself am the grandchild of someone French Canadian, you make no sense....Quebequois is a DIALECT of French, and not what is taught if someone were to take a French class at a school or University.

Tammy

I found a French man with the last name Breuil! (he's a well known runner)
Here - in an interview -he introduces himself in the first 2 seconds. (quote: Bonjour Wanarun, Thierry Breuil)

(broyy)

... I think I am going to call it Colonial White now (Just kidding)

Honestly tho-- clem' uh tiss , cle ma' tiss right?

alors, sahm broyy!

Here is a link that might be useful: Monsieur Breuil

This post was edited by lola-lemon on Fri, Mar 15, 13 at 13:44

Thanks for the link to the Forvo site. I'll send the link to my 14-year-old granddaughter who has just began studying French at school. The way the voice said Sombreuil is how I pronounce it, the standard French taught in Swedish schools.

Oh my! yes! There is also a French speaker giving the pronunciation for sombreuil. !
(I swear. I watched an hour of French rose videos and NOTHING!)

The Forvo site is great- it can show regional variety too, I bet (Campanula's son in law showed the variety!)

Here is a link that might be useful: Sombreuil pronounced by French

Dag Nabbit! I don't know how in heck I managed to do a double post of ^^^^^^^ the above post .........a full day later. i didn't even visit this thread??? it spontaneously appeared.

so sorry.

anyhooo- it's deleted.

This post was edited by lola-lemon on Sat, Mar 16, 13 at 19:56

"the Château de Malmaison, home of Napoléon's first wife Joséphine de Beauharnais.

The name Malmaison comes from Medieval Latin mala mansio , meaning "ill-fated domain", "estate of ill luck". In the Early Middle Ages Malmaison was the site of a royal residence which was destroyed by the Vikings in 846, hence the name. "

How do you pronounce Beauharnaise? Bur nase?

I don't think there is an e on the end of Beauharnais.

Bo are nay

Sherry, Dyel = "jell" because "di" followed by a vowel is how our hard J sound is spelled in French. In the case of Dyel, I guess an archaic spelling was preserved in a proper name. A Google search turns up some French Diels.

My new favorite site, Forvo, gives the pronunciation of Beauharnais.

Here is a link that might be useful: Beauharnais pronounced

The Forvo site was a great success with granddaughter as her French textbook doesn't have the phonetic alphabet my old books had. We've been practising words like juillet (she) and Roseraie de l'Haÿ (me).