# Eiffel pronunciation **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 24, 2026, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732 "2026-03-24T16:15:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/61 "2026-03-26T18:11:46Z")
Here’s my pronunciations of the two diphthongs, and side and sight. The last one has the “əɪ” diphthong. [Link here](https://www.peterpawinski.com/sight.m4a). ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/62 "2026-03-26T18:14:35Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > I grew up speaking Great Lakes accent too, and I do not pronounce those differently at all. I lack the raising. I trust that you don’t, but it is a feature of at least some speakers of the area. It’s even mentioned in the Wikipedia page on Canadian raising, and also how I said we don’t raise the “ow” but we raise the “eye.” > [@](#): > > while a number of [American English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English) varieties (such as [Inland North](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_North), [Western New England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_New_England_English), and increasingly more [General American](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American) accents) have this feature in [/aɪ/](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English) but not [/aʊ/](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English). Note the “Inland North” in there. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/63 "2026-03-26T18:14:38Z")
In English, pronounce Eiffel the usual English way, which matches the original German. There’s no call to imitate the French pronunciation when speaking English. How do they say it in Germany, after all? The name isn’t of French origin. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/64 "2026-03-26T18:16:26Z")
I am Inland North, but I haven’t taken on the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. Somehow I wound up imprinted with a more conservative level of Inland North. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/65 "2026-03-26T18:18:21Z")
I had some odd pronunciation quirks when I was younger. For whatever reasons, I always insisted on pronounced “tube” and “Tuesday” as “choob” and “chooseday,” and for the life of me I don’t know where that influence came from. I wasn’t exposed to accents outside the US in my formative years, except for Polish-American ones, and they certainly wouldn’t pronounce it that way. I would also use a flap or trill “r” until first grade, but that one is obviously from Polish. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/66 "2026-03-26T18:21:07Z")
I’ve been mulling over a thread on idiolects. This must be the time to proceed. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/67 "2026-03-26T18:23:37Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > For whatever reasons, I always insisted on pronounced “tube” and “Tuesday” as “choob” and “chooseday,” and for the life of me I don’t know where that influence came from. Some sort of British accent. The progression goes something like: /tub/ → /tjub/ → /tʃub/ “toob” → “tyoob” → “choob” Similar to how “what are you” becomes “watcha”. > **[Pronunciation - tube - Wiktionary, the free dictionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tube#Pronunciation)** > > tube (plural tubes) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/68 "2026-03-26T18:57:29Z")
Yeah, I was wondering if it was some form of UK accent, but wasn’t sure whether they went from the palatalized /ty/ to a full-on /tʃ/ or not. The way I remember saying it, it was more like /tʃ/ than /ty/, though I may have vacillated between the two. Ya know, now that I think of it, my dad was fond of watching “Benny Hill” when I was a kid. That’s about the only British influence I could think of. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/69 "2026-03-26T20:06:04Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Here’s my pronunciations of the two diphthongs, and side and sight. The last one has the “əɪ” diphthong. > > [Link here](https://www.peterpawinski.com/sight.m4a). That’s pretty much how they’re said in Scotland. Hike and hide would both be pronounced like sight though. I don’t think the Irish “royt” for “right” starts with a /ə/ , it’s a different sound. Choob and chooseday are pretty standard in Britain, probably because no-one anywhere in Britain as far as I know would say “toob” or “toosday” - it would always be a form of “tioo…”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/70 "2026-03-26T20:59:10Z")
> [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](#): > > don’t think the Irish “royt” for “right” starts with a /ə/ , it’s a different sound. I agree. I say “right” with the “uh”-starting diphthong and it does not sound Iike what I think of as Irish to me. I think it may be more like /ɹɑɪt/. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/71 "2026-03-26T20:59:35Z")
In German they say _der Ai-fell Turm_, which transcribed into pseudo-English would be more or less Eye-fell, wiht a short Eye, with stress on the first E (or a). ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2026, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/72 "2026-03-28T04:38:09Z")
One thing I remember about French is that a lot of vowels are pronounced more close than their phonemic transcriptions might indicate There is this guy who would teach French speakers how to speak English. A lot of them would have a problem distinguishing, for example, ship vs. sheep when speaking. He taught them to use the vowel in chez. That’s technically he French /e/ vowel (similar to the Canadian eh or A sound). But the mouth is so closed that it sounds just like the British KIT vowel. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2026, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732/73 "2026-03-28T05:00:24Z")
Interesting. Yes, makes sense. Rather like how my name is John. My friends in Mexico gradually realized their closest equivalent is “Chan” (actually a pretty common last name in Yucatan, since it’s a Maya name and word). “John” basically sounds just like that, only with that initial consonant voiced. (That English hard “J” is not a sound in Mexican Spanish, though the “ll” can come pretty close sometimes, or even the occasional “y”). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eiffel-pronunciation/1028732.md?page=3)