Yeah. I remember that song for my kids, along with Petit Escargot.
That extra vowel as syllable is very common in francophone church hymns. Otherwise the rhythm would not work.
In the name of the city “Aix-en-Provence”, the “x” is pronounced.
But only in liasion with the following “en”. The French name for the German city Aachen is Aix-La-Chapelle, where the ‘x’ is silent.
This surprised me because I always heard the x pronounced in English, so I assumed it would be in French. I know x is very often silent at the end of French words (prix, roux, voix) but it’s not usually silent in learned borrowings from Latin and Greek (larynx, vertex, climax). There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to proper nouns.
The x’s in Bordeaux and Montreux are certainly silent. But the x in Aix-la-Chapelle is not silent according to wiktionary and French Wikipedia. It certainly doesn’t sound silent at the beginning of this short YouTube video in French. Do you have some other information?
I once dated a French girl named Silenn, with the final double consonant pronounced.
Another one from the classical music world: composer/conductor Pierre Boulez pronounced his last name “boo-LEHZ,” not “boo-LAY.”
No, sorry, I was just going from memory, and obviously my memory was wrong.
Yes, there are lots of Breton names ending with double-n and other non-silent final consonants. Gwenn, Yann, Katell, Solenn.
I had always heard the x in Aix-La-Chapelle. On the other hand there is a small Swiss town in Canton Vaud named Chateau D’Oex, pronounced rougnly Chateau Day.
Ha! I must have a thing for them. I fell for a Katell in third grade.
All the various Aixes trace their name back to Augustus, both the name of a particular Roman emperor and, after him, the one of the titles used by subsequent Roman emperors. It indicates a town founded under imperial rule. And because of that link to Augustus, you’d expect the x to be pronounced.
We (Switzerland) have a town called Bex that does not pronounce the X. And on the other end of Lac Léman is the French town of Gex that does pronounce the x
French placenames are their own thing when it comes to pronouncing final letters. And Swiss-French placenames are their own own thing because of the odd way Arpitan spelling uses “-az” “-oz”, “-ix”, “-ex” and similar endings.
In general it’s impossible to guess whether a final consonant is pronounced in a placename even where it would definitely be silent in a normal word. How do you pronounce “Anglet”? What about “Le Vast”? “Vitrac”? “Morcenx”? “Brix”? Could go either way, right?
Punching way above my weight, I once tried Wordle in French, and the word turned out to be STRESS. You would think that made it easy, but the opposite was true because I wasn’t expecting an English loanword.
The cycling GOAT Eddy Merckx pronounced the ‘x’ in his last name, iirc.
Correct, but that’s a Flemish name, so the rules are different. Typically, final letters are pronounced in Dutch.
Hector Berlioz is pronounced BARE-lee-ohze, with a definite final Z sound
The R in Hector is also kinda-sorta-mostly pronounced.
The late-summer month must have missed that memo!
Are you sure of that? I had always heard that Aix-en-Porvence, at least was originally called Acqui-sixtus for 6 waters. The inhabitants are called Aquisextains. Aixois can also be used. Amusingly, the inhabitants of Trois-Rivières in Quebec are called Tri-fluviens.
Aix is derived mostly from Latin aquae meaning “water”