LeMat pronunciation

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OK, time for the Canuck that has a little French training to step in.... :D

The best I can type a phonetic for the "Le" would be to say "Lew", as in the name, without the trailing -eoo on the end. Just chop it short at the "Le" without the trailing "w". And in French it's perfectly alright to say "Matt" just like the word "mat". But the French sort of chop off the "t" sound to kill the hard "-ta" at the end where the tongue lifts off the pallate and gives out that final little "tU" puff we get in a lot of english words. So it comes out sort of like "lemat' " Not "leemat" or "lumat". Sort of inbetween with the final puff of the t's chopped off by the tongue on the pallate and then relax before releasing it for the lightest or no end off the "t".

Howzatt?
 
And in French it's perfectly alright to say "Matt" just like the word "mat".
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Are you sure that's not Canadian French specifically? My French is really rusty, but I don't think that's the case in European French.

Of course, the Dr. LeMat who invented the LeMat was from New Orleans, so it should be pronounced with a Yat accent instead...
 
LeMat, for me, has always been said "Leh matt". I'd have to ask the designer, and since he's long dead... ;)
 
leh'MAt

But my French is so bad that when I speak the little I can in Quebec they respond to me in English. That means two things: they both know I am not French Canadian and that I'm American otherwise they wouldn't respond at ALL!

Al lu'VODka
 
I was eating French toast this morning and I ate French fries yesterday so I think I am qualified to take a stab at this one.......



I have no freaking clue.
 
You also have to realize that Southern French is different, as is Southern Spanish. Oxford, MS is in Lafayette County, we pronounce it "Luh-FAYE-it", but the proper way is "LAH-faye-ETT". I live near Saltillo, MS, but we pronounce it "Sall-TILL-oh", when it's supposed to be "Salt-EE-Oh".

Being Southern Creole, LeMat probably pronounced it "Luh-Matt". But I really want to know how to pronounce Bowie and carbine properly.:)
 
Yeah, well... from all this apparently we all got our crosses to bear.... :D

No doubt about it, accents can really rip into a language. A buddy of mine that knows German from his youth went to Germany to visit relatives. Keep in mind that here in the greater Vancouver area we're well used to constantly hearing "engrish" spoken with a strong Mandarin or Cantonese accent. So while in Bonn or wherever over there he gets a craving for chinese food and stops in at a restaurant. The waiter comes out and asks him what he'd like in Mandarin accented German. He tells me he managed to get in the order and then spent the next five minutes laughing at the incongruity, for him, of German with a Chinese accent instead of the "engrish" that he's used to hearing.

So yeah, I don't doubt that Creole French is quite the patois. So likely my idea of how to pronounce it is far from how the actual folks there spoke.
 
An LeMat was an aristocrat. They didn't speak like any of the rest of the folk south of the Mason-Dixon.
Al
 
BCRider said:
Yeah, well... from all this apparently we all got our crosses to bear.... :D

No doubt about it, accents can really rip into a language. A buddy of mine that knows German from his youth went to Germany to visit relatives. Keep in mind that here in the greater Vancouver area we're well used to constantly hearing "engrish" spoken with a strong Mandarin or Cantonese accent. So while in Bonn or wherever over there he gets a craving for chinese food and stops in at a restaurant. The waiter comes out and asks him what he'd like in Mandarin accented German. He tells me he managed to get in the order and then spent the next five minutes laughing at the incongruity, for him, of German with a Chinese accent instead of the "engrish" that he's used to hearing.

So yeah, I don't doubt that Creole French is quite the patois. So likely my idea of how to pronounce it is far from how the actual folks there spoke.
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I heard dat !! My father and I went to Noatak, AK to visit family. When I met my cousin and his wife... I had a real double take to contend with. The villagers don't speak with proper English... it's a sort of short-cut pigeon styled rendition... his wife spoke that, with a HEAVY Boston accent. She was from Boston and had adapted the local style of speaking.
 
Not only regional accents, but time can take its toll on pronunciation as well. A good friend of mine was born in Germany in the late 1940s, his family migrated to Australia in the '50s where he spoke German exclusively until he went to a public school at the age of about seven or eight. He can still speak German fluently, but has an Australian accent with no trace of a German one. About twenty years ago he visited relatives in Germany & found that people where having a hard time understanding him.....not due to his fluency but rather to the 'outdated' language he was using, as he was speaking German as his parents had when they left Germany forty years earlier & the word useage had 'evolved' over that time. I think we can see the same thing when we watch English-language movies from the 1920-40s & hear the way people spoke then. Also try reading a book that was written in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, it can be pretty taxing with the more 'flowery' language they used!
 
Double "yep" on how time and distance can mess things up. Our Canadian French is looked down on by the true French due to how it's an older version of the language that was then bastardized by time and isolation from the european home French language. To compare consider what Elizabethan English of Shakespere's time would sound like if combined with a strong southern drawl.... :D
 
I think BCRider's first post says to say "Luhhmahh", which is how my fake french accent was suggesting to say it. Cool. Who knew there were so many linguists into black powder?
 
Nope, not "Luhh-" like the first part of "lunch" More like the sound in the first part of "lewd". Just stop before you get to the stretch of the "w". And the "t" is sounded but just to the "t' ". You stop before making the short "-tuh" which we normally finish a "t" sound with.

PS; I just realized that most folks pronouce "lewd" as "lood". So that doesn't work. Let's try... um..... the first "le" from the word "learn". It's the first part before you hit the "r". And if someone tells me that down south it's pronounced "larn" I'm going to scream.... :D
 
I think I get it... it's tough to type it phonetically. BTW, why isn't phonetically spelled... the way it sounds?

I'm trying to pronounce it right, but I'm sitting with my wife, who is laughing at me (yes... at me). I think I look like Chris Farley in Black Sheep trying to pronounce "limit."
 
My French teacher (who was excessively demonstrative in his means of showing us how to pronounce) described it as: shape your mouth as if you are going to pronounce "O" (Oh), but say "ew", as in "yew" (drop the "y"). That was about a half an hour's worth of class time exercise... (good ol' Mnsr. Barnaud). :D
 
I'm Dutch, so France is'nt that far :)
After a couple of holidays and a year of French at school I would say that:

Le sounds like the Lu of Lurch
Mat sounds like Ma of Mama (the French are known for not pronouncing the T at the end of words)

I am 95% sure, but only a genuine French guy, like for instance Afy here on this forum, could make it 100% positive.

Hildo
 
Let's try... um..... the first "le" from the word "learn". It's the first part before you hit the "r". And if someone tells me that down south it's pronounced "larn" I'm going to scream....
Click to expand...

It's pronounced "lurn" over here, so that'd be the same as "lunch." (I also think the southern pronunciation is layrn?)
 
The wife has a double MBA in French Linguistics and Grammar from U of Ottawa and she says it is "Lu Mae", but also said that both Canadian French and Euro French has lost much of its correct pronunciation over the years. BTW, her native tongue is French and has studied in Europe as well as Canada.

t2e
 
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