How do you pronounce it?

These are probably cases of me being an English only speaker and butchering French and Spanish words lol, but

Baucher ? (Everyone I know says Bow-share but that can’t be right, can it? Bow-Shay maybe?)

Grulla (Grew-yah? Gruh-yah?)

Tobiano (Toe-bye-no? Toe-beano?)

And the one I will not say in lessons because I know I will sound dumb 100% of the time no matter what pronunciation I try : Demi arret

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Baucher: BOO-sheh

Grulla: GROO-yah

Tobiano: toe-bee-AH-no

Demi arret: demmy ah-RET

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Well I was about to say I feel really stupid because I don’t even know what the last term means but now I think I may possibly have figured it out lol.

I’m assuming half halt. Can someone enlighten me, especially if I’m wrong?

Rebecca

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It literally translates to half halt… but at least English language dressage trainers use it to mean slightly lifting your hands to raise the horse’s head, explicitly not a half halt, so go figure. I also have heard “ demmy air-ette”most frequently but in French it would be “doomy array,” no?

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I think that should be demmy ah-ray.

it’s a quiet T but it’s there!

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=cfcd3706826e13a2&cs=0&sxsrf=ADLYWILdYLk0fH0DwZQdmLN-cm6DeerDLg:1719261270632&q=Arret+pronunciation+in+French&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiT9ruqi_WGAxXRIUQIHXOiBUAQpboHegQIARAA&biw=1352&bih=872&dpr=2

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Yes, and the e is more soft eh than long ay due to the circumflex accent (aka little hat lol) :slight_smile:

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When pronouncing foreign loan words, it’s complicated by the fact the original language may have vowel sounds that don’t quite exist in your dialect of English, and different rules for silent or muted consonants. Not to mention stress and rhythm patterns. I spent several years auditing clinics by a young Frenchman, and recall trying to transcribe his English phrasing as well as his French pronunciation, just because dialogue and accents interest me. None of us basically monolingual Anglophones would pronounce demi arret like he did, but we could make ourselves understood.

If you are functionally bilingual you can pop a “correct” pronunciation into an English sentence but it’s hard otherwise. I have watched random video of younger Americans who sound totally American and are ethnically ambiguous and then they pop out an American place name with full correct Spanish pronunciation and it sounds totally different, and a clear marker they are bilingual.

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Janet is correct. If there is an e after t, then it would be ah-ret.

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[quote=“jvanrens, post:90, topic:796391, full:true”]

Actually there would be a “tuh” at the end if we’re talking verb as opposed to noun. Ah-reh-tuh.

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Yes, I agree. But definitely no audible “t”.

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That’s what I meant too. Sorry to offend your sensibilities sascha, one day I might remember all the proper shortcut keys for the French accents, but not likely. I wasted 10 years in french classes, little of it stuck. :wink: