# Peugeot, Renault



## AndrasBP

Hello,

How do you pronounce the French car brands *Peugeot *and *Renault *in your language? How close is your pronunciation to the French original?

I think the Hungarian versions are fairly accurate, we say /'pøʒo:/ and /'røno:/, as if they were spelt "pözsó" and "rönó". 
We don't have a problem with /ø/ or /ʒ/, but we always stress words on the first syllable, and the /o/ is always long at the end of a word in Hungarian.

I've heard an Irishman pronounce Renault as /'renɔlt/, but I don't know if this is common there or it was just an idiosyncratic mispronunciation.


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## Dymn

I personally pronounce /pəu̯ˈʒɔt/ and /reˈnol/ so the former as if I read _peujot _in Catalan and the latter _renol _in Spanish. I have no idea why the difference honestly.


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## Sardokan1.0

In Italian are pronounced something like "pejó" and "renó"


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## apmoy70

In Greek they're [peˈzɔ] & [ɾeˈnɔ]


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## AndrasBP

Thanks for the replies. I've copied the following from Wikipedia:
*Peugeot* (UK: /ˈpɜːʒoʊ/, US: /puːˈʒoʊ/; French: [pøʒo])

If that's correct, there are at least five different vowels that are used in various languages for the first syllable of "P*eu*geot".


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## merquiades

[Pu 'ʒou]   and  [Rɪ 'nou] would be widespread in the US but there is much variation depending on the person and their desire to make it sound French.  Sometimes the first vowels could be reduced to schwas, sometimes not.


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## Määränpää

In Finnish they are pronounced as if they were written in IPA:
/'peu.ge.ot/
/'re.nɑult/


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## Stoggler

AndrasBP said:


> Thanks for the replies. I've copied the following from Wikipedia:
> *Peugeot* (UK: /ˈpɜːʒoʊ/, US: /puːˈʒoʊ/; French: [pøʒo]).



And /ˈɹɛnəʊ/ for Renault in British English.


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## Yendred

AndrasBP said:


> I think the Hungarian versions are fairly accurate, we say /'pøʒo:/ and /'røno:/



Yes, they are accurate. This is exactly how we pronounce them in French (except maybe for the 'r' in Renault which is the French 'r').

Prononciation de Peugeot : Comment prononcer Peugeot en Français, Allemand, Espagnol, Néerlandais, Portugais, Anglais, Italien, Suédois
Prononciation de Renault : Comment prononcer Renault en Français, Portugais, Anglais, Néerlandais, Espagnol, Turc, Allemand, Italien, Suédois



AndrasBP said:


> we always stress words on the first syllable



Generally, in French, words are stressed on the penultimate syllable. Since /'pøʒo:/ and /'røno:/ have 2 syllables, I guess we stress them as you do in Hungarian.


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## AndrasBP

Määränpää said:


> In Finnish they are pronounced as if they were written in IPA:
> /'peu.ge.ot/
> /'re.nɑult/


That's quite surprising. Do you also pronounce French place names and personal names like that?
What about "de Gaulle" or "Toulouse"?


Yendred said:


> Generally, in French, words are stressed on the penultimate syllable. Since /'pøʒo:/ and /'røno:/ have 2 syllables, I guess we stress them as you do in Hungarian.


My French is basic, but I've always thought it is common knowledge that French words are stressed on the *last *syllable. A Hungarian certainly hears the words stressed on the second syllable when said by a native French speaker. Here on the forum, I've seen a number of posts saying things like "the French don't hear it that way" or "the French have no idea where their word stress is". At first I found this very strange, but it seems that it's because the difference between a stressed and unstressed syllable is less marked in French than in English, Spanish, Italian or Russian, so many French speakers perceive their syllables to be equally stressed.
This phenomenon deserves a separate thread, perhaps.


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## merquiades

All final syllables of an utterance are longer and slightly accented. So the last syllable in Renault is accented if it is placed as the last word in the sentence: je vais acheter une reNAULT.

Otherwise in other positions no syllable is accented or it may even seem at times that it could be the first syllable depending on the rhytnm of a given sentence :  Les Renaults sont bien plus performantes que les PeuGEOTS.


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## AndrasBP

Dymn said:


> I personally pronounce /pəu̯ˈʒɔt/ ... as if I read _peujot _in Catalan


In Yendred's first link (post #9) there's an Argentinian pronunciation which sounds like your Catalan version, presumably because /ʒ/ is no problem for Argentinians as their <ll> is pronounced so, is that right?


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## Dymn

AndrasBP said:


> because /ʒ/ is no problem for Argentinians as their <ll> is pronounced so, is that right?


Yep, both _ll_ and _y_ are pronounced /ʒ/ in Argentinian Spanish, except for the younger generation (e.g. current footballers) who devoice it to /ʃ/.



AndrasBP said:


> A Hungarian certainly hears the words stressed on the second syllable when said by a native French speaker.


All Hungarian words are stressed in the first syllable, right? It shocks me how native speakers of languages with no stress or fixed stress can still perceive this difference and talk about it. For example I am tone-deaf and can barely hear it in Mandarin, so in a similar fashion I imagine you to be stress-deaf.


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## AndrasBP

Dymn said:


> All Hungarian words are stressed in the first syllable, right?


Yes. We share this feature with Czech and Slovak.



Dymn said:


> It shocks me how native speakers of languages with no stress or fixed stress can still perceive this difference and talk about it. For example I am tone-deaf and can barely hear it in Mandarin, so in a similar fashion I imagine you to be stress-deaf.


It can indeed be a problem for a Hungarian to _produce _a non-initial stressed syllable when learning a foreign language, but when _a foreigner says_ a name or a Hungarian word with the wrong stress, it just sounds totally foreign, it's just "off". I've heard a number of French people speaking or trying to speak Hungarian, and their word-final stress is *so *conspicuous.

.

I think I'll open a new thread about word stress problems.


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## bibax

In Czech, without making an effort, we say /'pɛʒot/ and /'rɛnolt/, as if they were spelt "pežot", "renolt" in Czech. Some people don't pronounce the final t but only in the nominative singular (in other cases there is an ending after t).

gen. sing. Peugeot*a* /'pɛʒota/, Renault*a* /'rɛnolta/,
dat. loc. sing. Peugeot*u* /'pɛʒotu/, Renault*u* /'rɛnoltu/,
nom. plur. Peugeot*y* /'pɛʒotɪ/, Renault*y* /'rɛnoltɪ/,
voc. sing. Peugeot*e* /'pɛʒotɛ/, Renault*e* /'rɛnoltɛ/, quite rare (můj milý Peugeote! = o my beloved Peugeot! could say Columbo to his car),
etc.

Czech has neither /ø/ nor /y/, we pronounce /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ instead, even in the case of the surnames of German origin that are common in our country (König /'kɛ:nɪk/, Mühlfeit /'mɪ:lfaɪt/).


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## mardabo

AndrasBP said:


> Hello,
> 
> How do you pronounce the French car brands *Peugeot *and *Renault*.



In America we usually hear Peugeot pronounced _PYOO-ZHO._
That is how I pronounce it as well. 
But don't be surprised if you hear it as _POO-JEE-AHT._
Renault is usually pronounced ruh-NAWLT.
I pronounce it ray-NO.


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## Määränpää

AndrasBP said:


> That's quite surprising. Do you also pronounce French place names and personal names like that?
> What about "de Gaulle" or "Toulouse"?


I think that in the case of Peugeot and Renault, the "uneducated" pronunciation has become the standard pronunciation in Finland because the cars are popular and everybody talks about them.

With De Gaulle, I'd say both pronunciations are possible. With Toulouse, only the French-inspired one.


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## AndrasBP

Määränpää said:


> I think that in the case of Peugeot and Renault, the "uneducated" pronunciation has become the standard pronunciation in Finland because the cars are popular and everybody talks about them.


The cars are also popular in Hungary but we use the "Frenchy" pronunciation, so there seems to be a different attitude to foreign words in Finland. 
Most Hungarians have no idea about French pronunciation rules, very few people study the language and they're shocked to see that the "Hungarian" word _randevú _is originally spelled _rendez-vous_. They don't even recognize it. Still, nobody says "Peugeot" the Finnish way.


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## Dymn

Yendred said:


> Yes, they are accurate. This is exactly how we pronounce them in French (except maybe for the 'r' in Renault which is the French 'r').


Should _Renault _be pronounced /ʁəno/, with schwa instead of /ø/? I've heard about some sort of merger between both sounds. Is this right?


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## Yendred

It's more /ʁəno/ but these slight differences depend a lot on the region and each people's habits.


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## Perseas

apmoy70 said:


> In Greek they're [peˈzɔ] & [ɾeˈnɔ]


And the respective words in Greek are "πεζό" & "ρενό".
"πεζό(ς)" is also the Greek word for "pedestrian"!


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## bibax

Slightly OT:

Peugeot is nicknamed Pažout ['paʒout] in Czech.

*Pažout* is a Czech surname, rather rare and funny (meaning: *a voracious man*). It was used in the Czech translation of The Merry Wives of Windsor: Page (family) > Pažout, Margaret Page > Margareta Pažoutová.


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## Pedro y La Torre

mardabo said:


> In America we usually hear Peugeot pronounced _PYOO-ZHO._
> That is how I pronounce it as well.
> But don't be surprised if you hear it as _POO-JEE-AHT._
> Renault is usually pronounced ruh-NAWLT.
> I pronounce it ray-NO.



My mother pronounces it ''purr-zho''. I've no idea why.


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## AndrasBP

Pedro y La Torre said:


> My mother pronounces it ''purr-zho''. I've no idea why.


"Purr-zho" is apparently a common version in the UK (see #5) and I think it's fairly accurate, although the French vowel is short.
However, in a rhotic accent like Irish, "purr" does not really sound like "peu" in French, in my opinion.


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## Pedro y La Torre

AndrasBP said:


> "Purr-zho" is apparently a common version in the UK (see #5) and I think it's fairly accurate, although the French vowel is short.
> However, in a rhotic accent like Irish, "purr" does not really sound like "peu" in French, in my opinion.



You're right. It doesn't. I've tried correcting the pronunciation, with little success.


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