French Wine Names in English

"Ken Blake" wrote in news:44e46dae$0$17971$ snipped-for-privacy@authen.yellow.readfreenews.net:

A minor (except perhaps to HRH's subjects) exception is to call Bordeaux, Claret.

Perhaps there is a connection with the 100 year war and the alliances with the Dukes of "Burgundy".

So, you don't drink "Gray-ves?" :-)

"Joseph Coulter" skrev i meddelandet news:Xns982262459F2FEyourvacationcomcastn@216.196.97.136...

BESIDE THE point but related, German wines used to be called Hock after the town of Hochheim (iirc). To continue, Sherry is a corruption of Xeres (pronounced with an achlaut). Port is a corruption of Oporto.

Is it realistic to claim that the latter two have become standard names in many countries because so much of the export was handled by Brittish merchants?

Cheers

Nils Gustaf

The more colloquial use the more it's probably bastardized over history. French (and many other) place names have always been butchered by the British Empire...Even entire country names. Of course the opposite is equally true. The French words for the United States and England are translations of the (root) words.

We don't pronounce Paris or France right.

Hello, Ron! You wrote on Thu, 17 Aug 2006 10:08:45 -0400:

??>> I'm sure there are historical reasons for why Burgundy and ??>> Champagne are different in this regard, but I don't know ??>> what they are. Can someone enlighten me? Can someone point ??>> out other French wines with different English/French ??>> spellings or pronunciations? ??>>

RN> The more colloquial use the more it's probably bastardized RN> over history. French (and many other) place names have RN> always been butchered by the British Empire...Even entire RN> country names. Of course the opposite is equally true. RN> The French words for the United States and England are RN> translations of the (root) words.

It's often not butchery and, like most other languages, French and German have modified place names over the centuries. Sometimes English preserves an older pronunciation. An example is "Munich", from the old Munichen (of the monks) rather the current elided "Muenchen" (Swiss spelling since I don't know whether the umlaut will get thro the Internet!)

James Silverton Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.comcast.not

Sorry, the original post is not (yet?) on my newsserver, so reply comes here.

Lynch Bages immediately comes to my mind as another example.

I don't know whether there are many Brits who pronounce "riesling" as in "to rise", but many Americans do.

See above. But even Chateau Palmer - another name of Anglo-Saxon origin - is pronounced in the French way.

M.

il rit wrote in news:ec2106$9ip$ snipped-for-privacy@zinnia.noc.ucla.edu:

non, key hint how do you pronounce cedille? soft c with e hard with a and o

Yes, but that's really a completely different word--not so much a matter of a different spelling or pronunciation.

LOL!

Yes, I was thinking in particular of French, but there's no reason why my question couldn't be broadened to include other languages. What struck me particularly about French, though, was that English gets it mostly right--how few exceptions there were.

Yes, certainly. For example, English names for well-known Italian cities like Roma, Napoli, Firenze and Venezia are spelled and pronounced differently from their native ways. But less well-known cities (especially in southern Italy) like Parmermo, Catania, and Taormina are left intact.

I don't find that particularly surprising, but what I was commenting on was how *seldom* that seemed to happen with wine-related terms, in particular in French. I was wondering why there were so few exceptions and what caused them.

Yes, but that's just out of ignorance. Unlike with champagne, where the non-French pronunction is the standard English one, rise-ling is just wrong. It's like people mispronouncing the name of the Italian painter Modigliano, and sounding the "g."

I would suspect that the answer might lie in the difficulty of the sounds being pronounced by an Anglophone. Bourgogne presents the difficult "gn" sound as well as the pesky trailing "e;" the same "gn" shows up in Champagne. Names such as Boardo, Lwahr, Rown, Allsauce, Bozholay are much more easily pronounced IMO.

Mark Lipton (who was gently schooled in the proper pronunciation of Beaulieu by the redoubtable Jacquie Hoare)

Pouilly Fousse is left intact by English speakers, but usually mangled by them.

NO, a thousand times no! It's pronounced "car-neh". The "nay" ending is an awful gringoism, despite the fact that I've actually seen it in textbooks. Makes you wonder about the authors.

Jose