How do I say "raison d’etre" without sounding like an idiot?

November 26, 2007 5:32 PM

How do you say the commonly used phrase "raison d’etre"? Anybody have a sound file I could listen to?
posted by survivorman to Writing & Language (32 answers total)

RAISE-un DEH-truh
posted by thinkingwoman at 5:34 PM on November 26, 2007

reh-ZON DEH-truh.
posted by phaedon at 5:39 PM on November 26, 2007

I'd say if you don't have any French, you can get away with raise-on DETre (that last e is a shwa) or rehzon DETre. I would say there is one major stressed syllable in that expression rather than two, indicated by capitalization. Of course, some idiots will mock you for not having a French accent, but they're wrong. It makes sense to incorporate foreign words into your own speech's natural flow of phonemes. I couldn't find a soundfile of this, but I could get my sis to make you one in about two seconds if you like.
posted by Listener at 5:43 PM on November 26, 2007

Wiktionary has some good audio files (one for both UK and FR).
posted by sbutler at 5:44 PM on November 26, 2007

Wow. Now I can speak french. It feels awesome being bilingual.

Thanks everyone.
posted by survivorman at 5:44 PM on November 26, 2007

reh-ZON DEHt. You kind of swallow the "truh".
posted by acoutu at 5:45 PM on November 26, 2007

Seconding Phaedon.

And if I could hijack a bit, because it seems to have been answered, I would like to know the same for schadenfreude.
posted by wuzandfuzz at 5:45 PM on November 26, 2007

Yes, schadenfreude. I want to know German now. The women will go mad with desire!
posted by survivorman at 5:48 PM on November 26, 2007

wuzandfuzz, here's James Earl Jones. It's SHAH-den-froy-de. American Heritage has a dictionary at Bartleby, and Jones is their reader. Quite awesome, in my humble.
posted by cgc373 at 5:51 PM on November 26, 2007

Isn't it SHAHD'n-FROI-duh? I took two years of high school German. I know EVERYTHING. As long as it involves counting, the alphabet, some stuff about hospitals, and the word for "eraser."
posted by katillathehun at 5:52 PM on November 26, 2007

Yeah, the German accent would be more like katillathehun's, strong SHAD(in) with a slightly less strong FROY(duh)
posted by mhz at 5:56 PM on November 26, 2007

(I guess I could link The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, huh?)
posted by cgc373 at 5:57 PM on November 26, 2007

Clarification: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary/ Encyclopaedia Britannica online did work - just not in Internet Explorer (imagine that). In Firefox it worked fine.
posted by survivorman at 6:00 PM on November 26, 2007

I always remember how because Dogfish Head has a beer called raison d’etre that is brewed with raisins. It's good too.
posted by melissam at 6:17 PM on November 26, 2007

Haven't ever seen that Simpsons episode where Lisa tries on different personas eh? She says raison d'etre in that ep.
posted by IndigoRain at 6:24 PM on November 26, 2007

Rubber. Makes sense. Also the coolest thing about German stationary is Tintenkiller. Ink Killer, how fking cool is that? Way more interesting than 'White-out'. Plus white-out doesn't dissolve the ink or anything kickass like that.
posted by Phire at 7:01 PM on November 26, 2007

ray son dee truh
posted by Electrius at 7:31 PM on November 26, 2007

The Buzzcocks song "Raison D'Etre" isn't a bad place to get an idea of how most English-speakers say it. Phaedon's got the English pronounciation pretty right, but as Acountu says, one should "swallow" the "-re" a bit, and make the "zon" kind of nasal, that'd be closer to the French.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 8:42 PM on November 26, 2007

I'm Canadian, so perhaps I'm doing a Canadian (and French-influenced pronounciation). But that's really how people here say it. Not sure what the world standard would be.
posted by acoutu at 9:47 PM on November 26, 2007

What Dee said. The "n" in raison is silent, but you can still tell it's there, and that last syllable in être is like the sound of a quickly-deflating balloon.

Personally, I'd go with "life's purpose" or somesuch.
posted by Reggie Digest at 9:55 PM on November 26, 2007

How do I say "raison d’etre" without sounding like an idiot?
Pronouncing it "my reason for being" and you won't sound like an idiot.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:55 PM on November 26, 2007

Agreeing with acoutu and Dee Xtrovert, if you want to say it with the correct French pronunciation. You'd also want to roll the first R a bit. For an English pronunciation, phaedon's got it.
posted by teg at 9:57 PM on November 26, 2007

You don't roll 'R's in French; they are pronounced from the back of the throat. And as for the d'etre part, I learned that in colloquial French they don't really say it. So d'etre would sound like debt, except you want to say the 'T' very distinctly.
posted by zorro astor at 6:10 AM on November 27, 2007

Edit above: They don't say the re part of d'etre
posted by zorro astor at 6:12 AM on November 27, 2007

My wife and her sister like to say "raisinette" for this phrase; it's so catchy I find myself doing it, and someday I'm going to embarrass myself in public.

For the love of god, don't pronounce borrowings from French with a French accent when you're speaking English. Vikings will come and slay you in your dreams.
posted by languagehat at 7:18 AM on November 27, 2007

Not to derail, but I speak French and never know how to use French terms like this in English without worrying that something thinks I sound like a pompous jackass. Are you saying I should use a wrong Anglified pronunciation?
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:42 AM on November 27, 2007

CuniningLinguist, I have the same problem with German words and phrases such as the aforementioned schadenfreude. To my ear it's a German word and it just sounds completely wrong to mangle it with an English-speaking accent.
posted by geckoinpdx at 10:09 AM on November 27, 2007

Are you saying I should use a wrong Anglified pronunciation?

No, I'm saying you should use a correct Anglified pronunciation, of which there are usually several. For this phrase, for instance, you can say reh-ZON DEHt, reh-ZON DEHt-ruh, raisin deht, raisin deht-ruh, and probably several other things without setting off any alarms. But if you say rrrreh-ZOHNH DEHTRRRRRR, with ostentatious French r's and nasalization, yeah, you're likely to sound like a pompous jackass.

Imagine the situation with a language you don't know. When I speak Russian I say the name Khrushchev more or less like khru-SHCHOFF, with a nice spittle-spraying kh and a rolled r. When I speak English, I say KROOS-chef, just like everybody else, and I'm pretty sure you'd think I was a jackass if I came out with khru-SHCHOFF. Or take wasabi: in Japanese the accent is on the first syllable, but I bet you don't say WAH-sah-bee.

I mean, you say Paris and not pah-RREE, right? English is English and French is French. Also, when the French borrow English words and phrases, they Frenchify them (notice how a French person says smoking or parking?), and turnabout is fair play.
posted by languagehat at 11:07 AM on November 27, 2007

Eh. I hear what you're saying but I'd rather be considered a pompous jackass than pronounce it with an American accent. Not that I go out of my way to roll the French Rs, but there is an R in there, damnit, it feels like pandering to know-nothings to say "raisin debt" or whatever.
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:15 PM on November 27, 2007

I don't see how speaking English the way English-speakers speak it could be considered "pandering to know-nothings." Do you consider French-speakers know-nothings when they say "pahrrr-KEENH" instead of good old English PAR-king? And do you apply the same stringent standards to borrowings from other languages, taking pains to acquaint yourself with the correct Greek pronunciation of Socrates, the Latin pronunciation of et cetera, et cetera?

I guess there's no point arguing about it, but it seems bizarre to me: I can see wanting to show off the fact that you know French, but the whole "pandering to know-nothings" thing seems pointlessly insulting.
posted by languagehat at 5:17 PM on November 27, 2007

Anglified or not, you'll get an eyeroll from me. Say something else.
posted by Reggie Digest at 9:06 PM on November 27, 2007

Top marks to Electricus for breaking the uniform consensus of broadly-right-ness, and choosing instead to try making the OP sound like an idiot.
posted by genghis at 1:11 PM on November 28, 2007