Some brightness for your weekend. Enjoy! Photo taken in Paris.
Beautifully renovated and decorated home in the Luberon. 4 bedrooms and a study with a sofa bed, each with ensuite (full) bath. This villa comfortably sleeps 7-9 adults.
What are the hardest French words to pronounce?
Longtime reader, Hampton, forwarded me an article from The Local listing Ten French Words You’ll Never Pronounce Right, including mille-feuille, pneu, grenouille, and serrurerie.
Eep! Tell me about it!
Hampton suggested I get Jean-Marc or Jackie or Max to pronounce these tongue tricky words. But because my family is away at the moment, I thought you and I could make our own list, here, and then have our resident Francophones choose ten of them to record. Sound good? Are you chiche, or up for it? I am–I can’t WAIT to know which words you find difficult to pronounce.
Allons-y! Lets go!
Tell us what are the hardest French words to pronounce. Click here.
As for me, I cannot for the life of me say the word TRUFFE. Don’t believe it? Here goes: Download MP3 or Download Wav
Truffe! J’adore manger les truffes!
Truffles. I love to eat truffles!
(Did you hear Jean-Marc laughing in the background? “Pourquoi tu le prononce comme ça?” he says.) CLICK HERE to tell us which French words are hardest to pronounce.
SABLET HOME for high quality vacation rentals in the heart of Provence. Particularly suited to groups of up to four discerning travelers: www.sablethome.com
If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you’ve seen the rest of these photos and stories by now…
The Little French Seamstress. Celebrating with my 17-year-old in Cassis, after she was accepted for a second internship (this one in Marseilles). Jackie will be apprenticing for a Tunisian-French woman who once sewed uniforms for the French military and now runs her own business from her tiny living room. Sales recently took off when same sex marriage became legal in France. “It’s fun designing for grooms,” she says. Should be a great experience for Jackie.
Fig trees, olive trees, and umbrella pines, below. In the center, a stone cabanon; the new red door has many past lives: it floundered for a time at the junk store, then moved to a wall inside our house. Next it filled in a gap below our kitchen window. We then moved, taking the old red door (really a shutter) along with us to Bandol, where it found purpose as a gate on the dog run….only to become a foot bridge between unlevelled land. Last week we dusted it off and leaned it gently against the little stone cabanon. I think it finally found a home!
COMMENTS welcome here, and don’t forget to mention which word you have the most difficulty saying in French. Merci et bon week-end!
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“rue” I can do interior r sounds like a native, but sometimes words that begin with r just won’t pronounce properly. I avoid the word rue like the plague. 🙂
“Truffe”, pas de problème, mais “YAOURTt” je trouve difficile.
écureuil—c’est impossible for my American mouth!!
Trois — I can’t get my lips around this oh-so-common word, and it always ends up sounding more like toi. My French friends laugh and laugh.
dessous vs. dessus!! I could only finally hear the difference when a five-year-old was told to say the words for me. Now I try to diphthong the first one but I always have to stop and think, hard.
When we lived in france one of my neighbors called my two year old “ma petite ecureuil”.
This last word is a difficult one to pronounce for most students. Janine Cortell
English people almost always pronounce Reims wrong!
Ingres …le peintre …
Heureuse– I tried to use it in a little thank you talk to our host community in Vanves, which had so warmly welcomed our fifth graders from Ripon, Wisconsin, in an exchange. I’m still trying to say it correctly……..
The worst problem isn’t individual words but liaison between words. The rules are complex and subject to “levels” of speech, and there are many exceptions.
cucurbitacée!
I agree yaout (yogurt, dont think i spelled it correctly) and pouilly-fuse
Tammy
Chirurgie
Vous charrieriez
Selon toutes les indications ce serait la /r/ suivie de /y/ qui pose le plus de problèmes pour les anglophones. J’ajoute ici la /r/ en positions multiples dans le même mot..
My hardest word to pronounce is “fourrure,” (fur natch). I have been speaking French since age 14 and normally have very good pronunciation for an American, but this one is a bit of a tongue-twister (literally LOL).
Limeuil a village close to where I live.
FOURQUES the LD where I live, even the French have trouble with this.
Chirurgien, c’est trop pour moi et Brie malheureusement.
Yes, “grenouille” is very difficult for me to say. But I usually turn it around and ask my French friends to say “frog.” They can’t do it without their French “r.” Come on, it’s only one syllable!
And these words are difficult in both languages too: “ecureuil” and “squirrel.”
l’ours (bear) is at the top of my list! Trop difficile for this American mouth.
Hands down for me: heureux. That word does not make me happy…
My pet-peeve, simply because I order them for desert whenever I see them on a menu, is mille-feuille….MEEL- foy?!? Usually the waiter will smile ruefully and understand what I want. Can’t be the worst attempt at pronouncing the word he’s ever heard, or can it be?? Would love to hear it pronounced correctly. Merci!
Definitely rue, but agree with most of the others mentioned.
The hardest French word for me to pronounce is the name of a French town in the Luberon called Buoux. I simply can’t deal with that “u” in front of an “ou”.
Chirugie, serrure, ecureuil, et RER !
“Rue” it was hard for me back when I lived and worked in Paris, 1971-76, and it is hard now. My mouth could never form the sound, even after countless repetitions. Now it doesn’t matter that much, I just figure an American accent is ok at my age.
Some words in succession can be a little challenging, such as
“rue du loup,” especially when said quicky.
My husband, who likes fizzy water and wine (not together!), cannot pronounce bouteille. It comes out sometimes sounding like “boo-tay” or “boule-tay”, and that’s on a good day. Needless to say, drinking in France sometimes poses problems for him.
Translate:
“The surgeon does surgery”
Nancy , NC
“accueil” was always hard for me
When I studied French decades ago, I was told by one prof that during the war, écureuil was a test word used to ascertain whether the speaker was, indeed, French or perhaps a spy.
This word remains difficult for me to this day.
Roi… blanc… et les Bourbons!
Atterrir surtout au futur — vraiment tous les mots avec 2 ou 3 “r” au futur!!
I grow antique roses, and the beautiful white “Sombreuil” is almost impossible for me to say.
“r” as in Robert
Un mot difficile pour moi c’est une rue à Paris: Montregeuil ( J’ai peur de demander où se trouve cette rue, à cause de ce nom!)
😃
Rue eceureil and heureux
“Roi”. When I first started studying French in high school I learned that word and have never been able to pronounce it correctly. It sounds so garbled. By the way, your “trouffe” sounded extraordinarily similar to mine. Oh well, it is good to help others laugh.
Trottoir – tres difficile pour moi!
Any one having trouble with the letter J, pronounced G and vice-versa in French and English?
You pronounce ‘truffe’ perfectly. Tell your bad husband to be quiet!!!The word ‘fourrure” is hell to pronounce!!!
My teacher at Berlitz was M. Grenier and he allways said, ‘PAS grennouille, bon!” Loved him. Talked food the whole time….
C’est très difficile pour mon oreille anglaise à distinguer entre les mots rue et roue (street and wheel). Peut-être vos experts peuvent
composer une phrase avec les deux mots? Merci beaucoup. Joanne,
Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA
fruite
truite
Chirurgie est difficile pour moi!!
Rural, rurale, ruraux, and, in Paris, Avenue Ledru Rollin. It’s that nasty “dr” that my tongue just will not do.
Coo-ee !! – Couilles…………….??
Regarder has always been hard for me. Starting the word with that French R and then another one in the same word. Zut alors!
There is a street in the 15th arr of Paris called
“le Docteur Roux” and if i had to tell a taxi where to take me it was impossible to say ” La Rue du Docteur Roux”.
Try it!
Though I like to stroll by the cafes, bakeries, fish and cheese shops on Montorgueil, I have trouble pronouncing it.
Once when speaking to a travel agent in Paris, we were nearly booked for a train trip to Cannes, instead of Cain which was our chosen destination.
There are tricks. For regarder (Americans often find it challenging), add a syllable in the middle. Instead of trying to roll the second “r” in your throat, say re gar (re) der. It works a treat. For the crazy “u” , you can pinch up your mouth like un cul de poule and keep it that way while saying long E as in see or free. Soon it will come naturally. It’s about building those muscles. Takes exercise. Also practice making that hanging down palate thing in the back of your throat wiggle when you say “r”. Say “Trois Gros Rats” at least ten times a day until that muscle strengthens. You will see. After about a month you’ll begin to sound like Edit Piaf singing “Rien. Rien de rien…”
Ecureuil. Our French “daughters” still challenge us with that, and llaugh at us, but what about our favorite French little cake with molten centers?
I usully fink put on ordering that and have a tart pomes instead.
Anything with a “u” — including, I’m sad to say, “un” and “une”. (Years ago, I was hitch-hiking from Grenoble to a Swiss friend’s home. When a driver stopped in the town of Pully, we were totally confused. We’d tried to ask for “Prilly”! I still can’t pronounce them differently.)