Pronunciation of foreign languages, accents and diacritics

French pupils are élèves

To remember the up and down accents on French words I look at the French word for pupil, secondary school pupil eleve.

Look at the up and down accents.

élève

The first upward accent makes the sound ay as in hay. The second downward accent makes the sound ev as in every. You automatically raise your voice slightly when saying ay. You automatically make a lower sound on the ev sound.

The cedilla or tail under the c turns the c into an s sound. Think of the words palace, pencil, police in English.

English and the Magic E - for kings George V and George VI

People learning English complain that they don't know when a c has a hard sound like K. The secret is that in English an e after g makes the g soft. Age. Page. Rage. Sage. Percentage.

In the name George, the g is twice followed by an e which changed the hard g into a soft J sound.

Garage

The first g is hard. The second g is oft because the e is added to tell you so. GE=J

 Useful Websites

To find a foreign place name or any word, pronounced by male and female speakers with different accents from each country and region (you get several options) try forvo.

I used it for Italian and Albanian.

Useful Websites 

forvo

Also if you are teaching English and want people to pronounce words the English way

https://es.forvo.com/languages/es/

A new bust of footballer Ronaldo, and Sculpture of Fishermen At Sea to See

Map of Portuguese speaking Madeira in the Atlantic from Wikipedia. Note the proximity to Portugal, Gibraltar on the tip of Spain, and the coast of Morocco.

Problem - What To See and Where in Madeira?
Madeira used to be one of the world's dangerous airports, they say, until the runway was built out into the sea on stilts. Now you can arrive with your mind on the tourist sites you plan to see.

Cristiano Ronaldo Airport, Madeira. Photo by Peter Forster, from Flickr via Wikipedia.

1 Cristiano Ronaldo Bust At The Airport
The first site for visitors to look for on arriving at the Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport is the bust of the footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo, created by sculptor Emanuel Santos when the airport was renamed.

When the sculpture was unveiled in 2017, although Cristiano himself liked it, many people on the internet did not. Frankly, I think it's very good. But then I am a caricaturist. I like the slight exaggeration which captures a character, whether or not it is flattering, it is memorable. The twisted mouth, the lopsided smile. Excellent.

Emanuel and Jesus
The sculptor, Emanual Santos, was very hurt by the criticism, although he came up with a wonderful motivational line: 'You can't please everyone. Even Jesus didn't please everyone.'

However, March 29, 2018, Emanuel Santos revealed his new, more serious face of Cristiano.

2 Fishermen Sculpture in Caniçal
I was very heartened to read that he was commissioned to create a sculpture of fisherman, two fishermen in a boat with oars, delightful white, in his home village of Caniçal. (It is pronounced canny Sal, like a canny girl called Sally.) The name comes from the Portuguese for fishing lines, and the area is now the main cargo port.

Portuguese Spelling And Pronunciation
That sign under the c turns it into an s sound, which is what it looks like. We are all familiar with words using the c is an s sound: place, palace police, pronounce.

Think of canister. You can see that the first letter of the name is c pronounced like a hard c like k.

The c with the cedilla, is easy to reproduce. ç (Type it and hold down the c key and tap the number one to get it printed in a text).

The capital of Madeira, Funchal, is on the south coast. Caniçal is anti-clockwise up the coast of the island.

3 CR7 Museum of football, Funchal, Madeira
CR stands for Cristiano Ronaldo.

Cristiano Ronaldo's CR7 Museum in Funchal, Madeira. Photo from Wikipedia author AbbyM.

Another photo opportunity with a full-size statue. It costs 5 Euros to go inside plus another 5 Euros for a photo with a Ronaldo mock-up. What do you see? Tropies, videos of scoring goals, fan letters, news of his donations, enough to entertain football fans and others. 

4 Wine Museum
Wine museum, winery and wine tour.

5 Cable car
Goes up to Monte. Monte like mountain, easy to remember. From there another cable car takes you to the botanical gardens. If you like that sort of thing. I prefer my feet on the ground.

6 Walks
Around town and across the island. See in Funchal on Avenido Zarco (Zarco Avenue) the statue of the man who discovered Madeira and was its first governor.

Of Passing Interest
You might pass the outside of the synagogue or the door of the cemetery. The synagogue is disused due to declining population of Jews. Zero.

Photo from Wikipedia.

So is the cemetery. Last used when the last Jew on the island died in 1967.

Photo from Wikipedia.

Christopher Columbus house
You might wonder why everybody needing better-paid employment didn't leave Madeira and go East to Spain and Morocco or west to America. One famous person did Christopher Columbus. It must be admitted that Christopher Columbus seems to have been born and died all over the place. So Madeira can lay claim to ancient and modern heroes, Christopher Columbus, explorer, and Cristiano Ronaldo, footballer.

I found a Jewish website which taught me about the geography and history of Madeira. Jews went west to Madeira from Gibraltar and Morocco. Madeira is in the ocean west of Morocco, and Gibraltar which points from Spain south to Morocco.

Food and Drink
Food is fish, fish, and more fish.
Madeira wine.
Passionfruit cocktail.

Souvenirs and Shopping
Madeira wine.

Madeira Wine Bottles at a wine tasting in England at Eton Vintners, Windsor and Eton. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Getting To Madeira
TAP Portugal (Star Alliance with Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and others) goes to and from Madeira (you have to type in Funchal FNC, Portugal).  You can go from New York or Brasil and other American continent airports, from London, Gatwick (LGW) or Portugal and other European destinations. You can also have a stopover in Portugal at Lisbon or Oporto.

(Other airlines include British Airways and some budget airlines.)

Hotels
The five-star Reid hotel where Winston Churchill stayed is on the top with an outdoor pool and sloping gardens. Winston Churchill stayed here. So did Bernard Shaw an several other famous people.

The rival luxury hotel is down by the sea.

Useful websites
Wikipedia Madeira
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira

Madeira Official Tourist Board Site
http://www.visitmadeira.pt/en-gb/homepage

Coniçal
Cristiano Ronaldo, footballer
Emanual Santos, sculptor
TripAdvisor

BBC article on Ronaldo statue
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39442098

Where Next? Cardiff, Wales - Emanuel Santos Bust
If you'd like to see another footballer's bust by Emanuel Santos, there's one outside Cardiff Stadium, of Gareth Bale, who plays for the Welsh team and Real Madrid (meaning not real Madrid but royal Madrid). The sculpture shows Gareth Bale's distinctive beard, moustache and topknot.

If you are not planning to visit Cardiff, at least when travelling to and through Wales you can think about it.  You see the stadium as the GWR train from Paddington goes west through Wales.

Cardiff Stadium, from the window of the GWR (Great Western Railway) train. 

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/05/gareth-bale-statue-emanuel-santos-cristiano-ronaldo-real-madrid

A detailed description of the life, problems and persistence of the sculptor Emanuel Santos.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2766946-a-year-after-internet-infamy-ronaldo-sculptor-gets-another-shot
Madeira wines and bottle labels:
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/madeira.html

http://www.cntraveller.com/article/travel-guide-madeira 
Mentions Columbus's house on Porto Santa, a 20-minute flight or two and a half hours by catamaran.

For a great photo of Emanuel Santos's sculpture of fisherman in a boat, see:

https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/cristiano-ronaldo-bust-artist/

Travelling to Madeira? Check out Tripadvisor.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g189167-d5993654-Reviews-CR7_Museum-Funchal_Madeira_Madeira_Islands.html
You can check out museums, landmarks, hotels and get ads for tours.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several posts on learning Portuguese and on Madeira. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

Fruit is Fruit - and Five More Easy Romanian Words For Food

Problem
How do you remember them?

Answer
Look for similar letters.

English - Romanian
and - si (note cedilla or comma shape which should be under the s converts the sound to sh)
banana - banana
coffee - c a f e a
fruit - f r u c t (plural is f r u c t e )
knife - c u t i t (looks like cut it!)
with - cu (short version of the Latin word for with, cum as in magna cum l a u d a an academic term meaning with great honour)

Romanian - English
banana - banana
c a f e a - coffee
cu - with
c u t i t - knife (spell checker preferred cutie)
f r u c t - fruit

For more see www.D u o l i n g o .com (no spaces)
www.romaniatourism.com
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and speaker and teacher of English and learner of languages such as Romanian.
I have several more posts on Romanian, French, Italian, German, Hebrew, Greek and other languages. Please share posts.

What French accents mean - how to pronounce French

Problem
What do the French accents mean? How do you type French accents?

à - type this accent by pressing down the a key and then without releasing it, press 1 (one).à
This means the a (ay) if pronounced a s h a r p a as it cat.
For example
à la mode - the first à is sharp, as if (as in as and at) as if you were pricked by a pin.
The second a in la sounds like do re mi fa so la - la or lah, as in laugh!
voila

Let's look

the cédille Ç,
the accent aigu é,
the accent c i r c u m f l e x (spaces to thwart spellchecker changing the word)
â, ê, î, ô, û,
the accent grave à, è, ù
and the accent tréma ë, ï, ü.
French accents - Rocket Languages

ç Cedilla underneath c
ë To get the double dots over the e, press down the keyboard key for e and hold it down. Up op a series of letters e with different accent. Whilst holding down the e, tap the number 4. ë
The cedilla is like a comma under the letter c.

â Circumflex above
The circumflex is like a hat or roof. It usually stand for a missing letter, commonly the S.
For example tête meaning head. (Press on the e key - tap the number 3.)

Another circumflex is on the a. â

é è Aigu and Grave above
Take the word for school pupil at a secondary school: élève
The first accent on the e, going up, is the a i g i meaning sharp, indicating an upward or sharp 'eh!'
The second accent called grave (pronounced g r a h - v )as in la la la, far.

Tréma or double dot above ë or ï
For the letter i, type i and then the number two.
It is used to show both the letter (vowel) is it above and the previous vowel are both pronounced.
For example
heroīne
Israël
Noël
Just think of the two dots meaning pronounce two letters.

Tips
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic) (explains the double dot)
http://www.tolearnfrench.com/exercises/exercise-french-2/exercise-french-18620.php (explains the double dot)
https://www.rocketlanguages.com/french/lessons/french-accents

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, and language teacher. Please share my posts.

How to remember Spanish for winter and season - plus French and Italian and Portuguese

I already know French. What next?

Now I am doing Duolingo Italian language learning exercises. But I am also learning Spanish. It helps that I already know French.

One of today's sentences was :
Inverno es una e s t a ç i o n .  Winter is a season. (I've inserted spaces to stop spell checker changing the word, although I clicked x for no on the suggested alternative.)

The first time I tried to remember inverno is winter I remembered invert-o, so I checked again.
Inverno.

No - it was invierno.

Later I checked reverse translate winter on Google and up came the Portuguese I N V I E R NO.

Oh No!

I tried Italian.

Inverno.

No wonder I am getting confused.

I now have all three:

Portuguese is  - I N V E R N O

I T A L I A N is IN VERNO

But Spanish is I N V I E R N O.

That upsets my first idea that the Italians added the I for Italy. They don't.

I told another member of my family. The pointed out that the word is similar to the French HIVER for winter. That is similar to our word Hibernate.

So now how do I remember which language has the extra I?

I can do it geographically. And visually.

oIo

Portuguese on the west of left of the map is just o.

SpaIn In the mIddle is invIerno.

Italy on the East is just in - v - erno. (Spell checker prefers inferno.)

France and Spain are adjacent and Spain has the I like France in  h I v e r.

Now I remember:
wINter IN - verno
 Winter inVerno
wintER - in v- ER - no
wiNter - in v er N - no
NO I don't like winter - inferno.

Portuguese and Italian in-verno.

But Spain in the middle is INV-I-erno.

Winter is the Season  in Spanish - when we are stationed in Spain.
estaçion

Add the cedilla under the c . Press down on the letter c on a keyboard and hold it. Up comes a choice of accents for the letter c. You just need the first and most frequent in both French and Spanish. ç

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and author and English and languages teacher.

French words of the weekend - 'le weekend' in Franglais

France has borrowed words from English and during 'le weekend' let us reciprocate by observing which French words we use every day, or at least in the weekend newspapers. Before lunchtime on Saturday, catching up on yesterday's newspapers, I have noticed or been reminded of several French words.

To test whether they are French, when reading a newspaper or book, look for the signs which help you to pronounce the letters.

(Sorry, in my posts I don't always have the accents, nor cedillas (little s signs under the letter C which tell you to pronounce is as S.) When I wrote my earlier posts I didn't know how to add accents.

Now I know, sometimes I'm sorry. I tend to leave accents off in my draft, hoping to come back later, because it's such hard work and so time wasting trying to hold down the a or e QWERTY keyboard key. You need to hold it down long enough to bring up the alternative Es, half a dozen of them, by the time you have chosen the right accent, you get triple letters. Then I try to delete two, which then deletes all the vowels. So I have to start again.

Now I am looking in an etymological dictionary, COLLINS, which is big and heavy.

Often I test by trying to use the word in a French sentence. If you speak French fluently as I do, or even just a little, try using the word in a French sentence. For example, "C'est bizarre!" That sounds right in French. (No cedilla under that C - I wonder why. Ah - because the e after the c softens it from K to S? )

cul-de-sac - We could translate this as Close in a English street name, but we use the French term to describe it. Sac is sack or bag as in rucksack, haversack - but that leads us on another linguistic trail.

bizarre - oui, tres bizarre

cafetiere - plunger coffee maker

Colleague - co-worker

league -

regime - rule or ruling group

foie gras - gras, literally grease, swollen liver from well-fed, or over-fed duck, creating expensive, luxurious liver paste or pate (pronounced patay)

culture -

royale - royal, as in kir royale, sparkling pink drink. A Kir is made from cassis (sweet black currant juice) mixed with dry white wine, whilst Kir Royale is the upmarket and pricier version made with a bubbly wine. Named after Canon Kir of the region. I visited the Kir factory in the Lyons area driving from the Chamonix ski area in the south of France back to London, England.

dialogue

Au revoir! - Bye-bye! Literally  to (until next time)  see (you) again.

TIPS for TRAVELLERS
1 Carry a notebook to write down new foreign words. Rule each page into two columns.
2 Use Google translate - and put their icon on your computer's, laptop's, ipad's dock for speed
3 Invest in an etymological dictionary and keep it on your desk to check foreign words
4 Press the vowel key on your computer/laptop keyboard to add accents to French words

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer, photographer, author and speaker