Delphine Ménard wrote:
*If anything, it's 'Lee-Bray-Ree', Librairie, not exactly Lie-bree, which sounds rather like wine and cheese (French enough, I might add) . But I may have lost the punch line, I am but a foreign-speaker. :)
I think what was being discussed was the way Londoners pronounce "library" - that is, bibliothèque/Bibliothek/biblithoeek/bibliotek
France is hard to govern, as De Gaulle did put it, because it has "as many kinds of cheese as days in the year". Way more than 246, that is.
The French say soixante-dix, quatre-vingt and quatre-vingt-dix The Belgians say septante, quatre-vingt and nonante The Swiss say septante, huitante and nonante, some even say octante. They are the only ones who got it straight. (And I am French)
What do the Québecois say?
The Dutch and Germans haven't got it very straight either - we say tweeënveertig (zweiundvierzig), whereas other languages just say fortytwo/fyrtiotvå/quarante-deux/quarantadue
regards, Gerrit.
P.S. I am currently doing a Swedish course in a group of 21 different nationalities. The English speaking people have by far the worst pronunciation, where the Americans are worse than the Scottish, Canadians or Australians (we don't have any English people). The worst way to write down a pronunciation is by trying to write it phonetically in English - you end up with pronunciations that are totally different from the way it is actually pronounced. My name is NOT pronounced "Gair-Rid Hole" - not even near (see [[en:User:Gerritholl]] for how it is), but I can't think of a closer approximation using this "phonetic transcription".