How do you say "Laissez-faire"? (1 Viewer)

[Officer Pete Malloy]

This is important.

 

[Aerial Assault]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

 

[rockaction]

I will make sure to say "cutter" in your presence over and over in 2022.

 

[Sarnoff]

Lay-zay faire, but almost les-zay fair (les as in Lester)

 

[DiStefano]

I think this calls for government regulation.

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

For context: I said "Lay-say" in front of a bunch of private school seniors and about 3/4 of them thought they needed to correct me with "Less-say".

So I asked them how you say "Paris". BURN!

 

[Aerial Assault]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

For context: I said "Lay-say" in front of a bunch of private school seniors and about 3/4 of them thought they needed to correct me with "Less-say".

So I asked them how you say "Paris". BURN!

They're not exactly right, so they were tools.

 

[Ketamine Dreams]

Dahn

 

[timschochet]

I think each person should be allowed to say it exactly as they choose.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

Les Incompetents

 

[Aerial Assault]

I think each person should be allowed to say it exactly as they choose.

good one, tim

 

[Josie Maran]

"Au revoir, les enfants. That means F### YOU!"

--Steve

 

[Binky The Doormat]

I think this calls for government regulation.

oui - also throw in some health care and free bread

 

[jon_mx]

I just say lazy chair.

 

[dozer]

How can you have such a laissez-faire attitude about this?

 

[Ignoramus]

I call them Freedom Fairs.

 

[gianmarco]

They obviously know nothing about your French benefits.

 

[matuski]

Lah-zay. Your pole has fallen short of my needs.

 

[Bucky86]

Lah-zay. Your pole has fallen short of my needs.

Happens to the best of us.

 

[Jeff Vader]

Lay Says Far E

 

[Evilgrin 72]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

Not fluent, but that's how I say it. I guess it sounds a touch closer to less-ay, so I went with that. Yep, that's my lone vote.

 

[mr roboto]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wIWyJiEfOA8

 

[chet]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

For context: I said "Lay-say" in front of a bunch of private school seniors and about 3/4 of them thought they needed to correct me with "Less-say".

So I asked them how you say "Paris". BURN!

None of the options is correct. Both you and the private school kids are wrong.

AA is correct. Also, depending on where you are in France, the "faire" will have an additional e sound at the end which is either very subtle or pronounced but it doesn't sound like an American fair.

 

[cdubz]

Lah-zay. Your pole has fallen short of my needs.

This.

 

[Captain Quinoa]

Sorry, I don't speak surrender.

 

[butcher boy]

The second option is the closest to how it is pronounced in French and since it's a French word I guess they'd know.

 

[DiStefano]

I think this calls for government regulation.

oui - also throw in some health care and free cake.

Fixed.

 

[D in the D]

I generally try to stay out of these sorts of discussions.

 

[Corporation]

I generally try to stay out of these sorts of discussions.

Mission failed Well apparently I was wrong on this one as I voted LAH say fare, but I know I'm in the right on biopic.

 

[fantasycurse42]

This is important.

Diasgree

 

[Cyclones]

Grew up in Canada and took French for 13 years in school, would call my self semi fluent, and I would go with option 3, Less-ay. Of course, French Canadian and France French have many subtle differences, so there are probably multiple answers.

 

[Norman Paperman]

How do you pronounce Versailles?

 

[DiStefano]

How do you pronounce Versailles?

Rumpelstiltskin.

 

[joffer]

The lesbian one

 

[glock]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

Yet all those guys disagree.

 

[EYLive]

Lay-Zay Fare

 

[Andy Dufresne]

Does Merriam-Webster have it wrong?

I've always said it "Lah-szay", but I've never bothered to see how right that is.

 

[Fennis]

I call them Freedom Fairs.

damn it, too slow. I wish I was awake and online at 4:16 AM PST.

 

[Freelove]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

For context: I said "Lay-say" in front of a bunch of private school seniors and about 3/4 of them thought they needed to correct me with "Less-say".

So I asked them how you say "Paris". BURN!

None of the options is correct. Both you and the private school kids are wrong.

AA is correct. Also, depending on where you are in France, the "faire" will have an additional e sound at the end which is either very subtle or pronounced but it doesn't sound like an American fair.

This is only "correct" if you're speaking in French, to an audience of Frenchmen.

When using loanwords, there are rarely any cut-and-dried pronunciation rules, but by far the best and most often cited is to say the word as you believe the majority of your audience would be most comfortable with it. Think how absurd "le hot dog" would sound in Paris, if the last two words were pronounced as a man from Minneapolis would say them.

Which is to say, loanwords follow the same sort of dialect-based rules for correctness of pronunciation that all other words in all languages do.

For the average, Middle American audience, the fourth option is probably the most correct, but one could do worse than simply use the results of this poll to determine correctness.

 

[Freelove]

(I voted for it, and in doing so, helped to make it more correct. )

 

[jamny]

Lay-Zay Fare

 

[pollardsvision]

Don't care. I take a hands off approach to the pronunciation of this word, and let people do as they will with it.

 

[17seconds]

None of the above

Lah-zay

 

[Aerial Assault]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

For context: I said "Lay-say" in front of a bunch of private school seniors and about 3/4 of them thought they needed to correct me with "Less-say".

So I asked them how you say "Paris". BURN!

None of the options is correct. Both you and the private school kids are wrong.

AA is correct. Also, depending on where you are in France, the "faire" will have an additional e sound at the end which is either very subtle or pronounced but it doesn't sound like an American fair.

This is only "correct" if you're speaking in French, to an audience of Frenchmen.

When using loanwords, there are rarely any cut-and-dried pronunciation rules, but by far the best and most often cited is to say the word as you believe the majority of your audience would be most comfortable with it. Think how absurd "le hot dog" would sound in Paris, if the last two words were pronounced as a man from Minneapolis would say them.

Which is to say, loanwords follow the same sort of dialect-based rules for correctness of pronunciation that all other words in all languages do.

For the average, Middle American audience, the fourth option is probably the most correct, but one could do worse than simply use the results of this poll to determine correctness.

Enh. There's some truth to this, but actually, in English, a lot of "loanwords" do retain their original pronunciation or something quite close to it, whereas in other languages, they frequently do not. Your hot dog example speaks to the latter, because when the French borrow a word or phrase, they definitely turn the pronunciation into something that sounds French, regardless of the origin language. In English, though, 'taint so.

Not only that, but I've been around for a while and have never heard anyone say "LAH-say Fare" whether they know anything about French pronunciation or not. That's just an obscene bastardization that makes no sense phonetically in either French *or* English - I can't think of too many English words with the "ai" dipthong that result in an "a" sound as in "father." Most U.S. speakers who use this term who don't know any French probably say "LAY-say Fare."

 

[chet]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

For context: I said "Lay-say" in front of a bunch of private school seniors and about 3/4 of them thought they needed to correct me with "Less-say".

So I asked them how you say "Paris". BURN!

None of the options is correct. Both you and the private school kids are wrong.

AA is correct. Also, depending on where you are in France, the "faire" will have an additional e sound at the end which is either very subtle or pronounced but it doesn't sound like an American fair.

This is only "correct" if you're speaking in French, to an audience of Frenchmen.

When using loanwords, there are rarely any cut-and-dried pronunciation rules, but by far the best and most often cited is to say the word as you believe the majority of your audience would be most comfortable with it. Think how absurd "le hot dog" would sound in Paris, if the last two words were pronounced as a man from Minneapolis would say them.

Which is to say, loanwords follow the same sort of dialect-based rules for correctness of pronunciation that all other words in all languages do.

For the average, Middle American audience, the fourth option is probably the most correct, but one could do worse than simply use the results of this poll to determine correctness.

X

OP asked for prononciation and cited a group of private school kids who claimed his was incorrect. It's a French term so OP is asking for French pronunciation. Of course, you can butcher the pronunciation of any term you'd like but it doesn't make it correct.

 

[Doug B]

... actually, in English, a lot of "loanwords" do retain their original pronunciation or something quite close to it, whereas in other languages, they frequently do not. Your hot dog example speaks to the latter, because when the French borrow a word or phrase, they definitely turn the pronunciation into something that sounds French, regardless of the origin language. In English, though, 'taint so.

Don't agree at all here, though maybe the disagreement is over a matter of degree.

Loan words nearly invariably are pronounced in English according to the ground rules of English pronunciation. American polyglots can pepper exceptions into their English speech, but that doesn't represent how most Americans would pronounce them.

 

[Cyclones]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

For context: I said "Lay-say" in front of a bunch of private school seniors and about 3/4 of them thought they needed to correct me with "Less-say".

So I asked them how you say "Paris". BURN!

None of the options is correct. Both you and the private school kids are wrong.

AA is correct. Also, depending on where you are in France, the "faire" will have an additional e sound at the end which is either very subtle or pronounced but it doesn't sound like an American fair.

This is only "correct" if you're speaking in French, to an audience of Frenchmen.

When using loanwords, there are rarely any cut-and-dried pronunciation rules, but by far the best and most often cited is to say the word as you believe the majority of your audience would be most comfortable with it. Think how absurd "le hot dog" would sound in Paris, if the last two words were pronounced as a man from Minneapolis would say them.

Which is to say, loanwords follow the same sort of dialect-based rules for correctness of pronunciation that all other words in all languages do.

For the average, Middle American audience, the fourth option is probably the most correct, but one could do worse than simply use the results of this poll to determine correctness.

X

OP asked for prononciation and cited a group of private school kids who claimed his was incorrect. It's a French term so OP is asking for French prononciation. Of course, you can butcher the prononciation of any term you'd like but it doesn't make it correct.

Actually, the OP simply asked "How do you pronounce Laissez - Faire," not "what is the correct or accepted pronunciation."

Judging by the results of this poll, most people pronounce it incorrectly, but that's outside the scope of the poll.

 

[Aerial Assault]

... actually, in English, a lot of "loanwords" do retain their original pronunciation or something quite close to it, whereas in other languages, they frequently do not. Your hot dog example speaks to the latter, because when the French borrow a word or phrase, they definitely turn the pronunciation into something that sounds French, regardless of the origin language. In English, though, 'taint so.

Don't agree at all here, though maybe the disagreement is over a matter of degree.

Loan words nearly invariably are pronounced in English according to the ground rules of English pronunciation. American polyglots can pepper exceptions into their English speech, but that doesn't represent how most Americans would pronounce them.

I probably wrote that wrong. I meant that in English, you're much more likely to hear loanwords pronounced with some vestiges (or even straight rendering) of their source language pronunciation than you are in other languages such as French, Spanish, German, and Russian, the other languages with which I'm most familiar. It's really rare for a borrowed word to retain its source pronunciation in those languages, but in English, it happens a lot more frequently, probably because of the prominent role of English as a lingua franca.

 

[Freelove]

I think what English is most likely to do is give it some kind of bastardized neither-this-nor-that pronunciation. Especially in 'Murica, where we pride ourselves on both our melting pot worldliness and our stubborn parochialism, simultaneously.

 

[chet]

I know this won't help tremendously, but said properly, it's sort of a mix between "LAY-say" and "LESS-say." Depending on any individual French speaker, you might hear either, or the mix, which is hard to render phonetically. LEZZ-say and LAH-say are inarguably dead wrong.

Source: me, fluent in French and speaking it for about 32 years.

For context: I said "Lay-say" in front of a bunch of private school seniors and about 3/4 of them thought they needed to correct me with "Less-say".

So I asked them how you say "Paris". BURN!

None of the options is correct. Both you and the private school kids are wrong.

AA is correct. Also, depending on where you are in France, the "faire" will have an additional e sound at the end which is either very subtle or pronounced but it doesn't sound like an American fair.

This is only "correct" if you're speaking in French, to an audience of Frenchmen.

When using loanwords, there are rarely any cut-and-dried pronunciation rules, but by far the best and most often cited is to say the word as you believe the majority of your audience would be most comfortable with it. Think how absurd "le hot dog" would sound in Paris, if the last two words were pronounced as a man from Minneapolis would say them.

Which is to say, loanwords follow the same sort of dialect-based rules for correctness of pronunciation that all other words in all languages do.

For the average, Middle American audience, the fourth option is probably the most correct, but one could do worse than simply use the results of this poll to determine correctness.

X

OP asked for prononciation and cited a group of private school kids who claimed his was incorrect. It's a French term so OP is asking for French prononciation. Of course, you can butcher the prononciation of any term you'd like but it doesn't make it correct.

Actually, the OP simply asked "How do you pronounce Laissez - Faire," not "what is the correct or accepted pronunciation."

Judging by the results of this poll, most people pronounce it incorrectly, but that's outside the scope of the poll.

At best the question is ambiguous but given the context provided, it should be clear to the most casual observer that the OP is asking for guidance in the correct pronunciation rather than a broad sample of largely incorrect pronunciations.