A propos of not much - I recently went to the Taittinger house in Reims. They start the tour with a brief promotional film about the history of the winery and the caves. We saw the English version, and the narrator kept talking about the Tat-en-jay family but then the Tat-in-jer Champagne. Very odd.
Thatās interesting! Never thought about. Thanks. A completely different story than Alsace, which was German-speaking through most of its history. No surprise that the producers there have names like Zind-Humbrecht, Schlumberger, Weinbach, Trimbach, etc.
Pee-peh(r) Ayd-seek ā¦ (like (h)ide without āhā)
French cannot pronounce the āHā in Heidā¦ so itĀ“s definitely left out.
Usually the ending -er is pronounced -eh, but IĀ“ve heard some pronouncing the final ārā very softly ā¦
A good suggestion from the excellent Bellucci book about wine pronunciations is that you think, but donāt say, the r in Piper. Having the thought of the r sound in your head as you say āpehā helps you strike a relatively better balance in the way a French speaker would pronounce it.
Otto, who would be more qualified than Mr. French to help us pronounce something in French? Actually I find his description fairly accurate even though hearing the word pronounced after his description would help bring home his point. Cheers. -Jim
Oh, but I did not say a single word about whether the description was correct or not. My comment was only about the remark on throat utterance and letter.
Toddās description on the pronunciation of āPiperā sounds quite accurate, in fact.
Interesting way to put it. I only have college level French, but always thought of French as only half-pronouncing many letters. Particularly when compared to the firmer pronunciations common in Germanic languages, but also more so than the other Romance languages.
The problem is that usually there likely is no standard Brit or US version, while in French there is likely a ācorrect answerā. In this case, I assume there may be a common US version (Pipe-er Hide-Sick), just because Piper is an actual English word, and Heidsieck seems to only have a couple of possible phonetic possibilities in English). Most Brits and Americans just do their best to pronounce a name based on typical English phonetics, which may result in various different pronunciations. Some may have a limited knowledge of French pronunciation rules, so for example may go with the āsilent Hā at the beginning of Heidseick. Some may say āHide-sickā, some āHide-Seekā and others āHeed-Seekā. (I know someone who says āCotey-Roteyā, but that doesnāt make it the āUS versionā of Cote Rotie)ā¦
Not really proud to say this, but I would bet a good bottle that most French people who donāt actually know how it is pronounced would butcher it. You could go from āPee-perrr Hide-sickkkkkā to āPiii-pair Hid-secā depending on the folks.
Edit: so the good news is you canāt really be wrong when talking about this wine around French people!