How is “femme” pronounced in French?
- speaks aloud at the reply box *
Basically, it’s the way an english-speaker would pronounce “fem”. Now, in some dialects you can’t hear the trailing ‘e’ at all, and in some it’s more obvious, leading to “fem-uh”. As well, depending on you local accent, the first e can drift a bit towards the ‘a’ sound in the english word ‘tram’, giving you something closer to “fam”.
Incidentally, the word means ‘woman’, but can also mean ‘wife’. Une femme, les femmes: ‘A woman’, ‘the women’. Ma femme: ‘My wife’. The same is true of ‘homme’, which means both ‘man’ and ‘husband’.
I sort of associate the more slangy, drawly “fam” pronunciation with the ‘wife’ meaning, but I think that distinction is not generally applied. Final caveat, I’m from Canada, and somebody from Toulouse probably would have a slightly different answer for you.
In France it’s basically ‘fam’ - short ‘a’ (in most regions), no hint of an ‘e’. One syllable, no distinction between ‘wife’ and ‘woman’. Some of the southern accents fully enunciate the ‘m’, or even add an extra syllable - ‘meuh’.
So can I pronounce femme fatale as fem faytal and not look like an uncultured moron?
I’ve only ever heard it pronounced as “fam” with the a pronounced as in “tram”. The Académie française fwiw, agrees with that pronounciation.
More like “fem fat-al”, but yeah, you’d at least pass as partially cultured.
Ooh, I don’t know if I wanna say fat-al.
Really? Can someone check in on whether this in a Canadian thing? I never heard this in all my years of taking French-- it was always le or mon mari.
I’ve never heard “mon homme” for “my husband” its always “mon mari” over here. Further, my English/French dictionary lists “mari” as the only translation for husband, and there’s no indication under the entry for “homme” that its ever used in place of “mari”.
I’ve seen Mon Oncle - does that count? 
I’d say fahm fah tahl
This is the pronunciation that I’m challenging. I’ve been told that “femme” rhymes with “Tom” or “bomb,” and I think it should rhyme with “Sam” or “ham.”
Three examples.
Nicole Croisille insists on the second syllable -me, but that’s because she’s signing. You get the “fam” pronunciation though.
Serge Lama signs “Femme femme femme”.
For a Quebec version, Claude Dubois.
I would say it’s about as often used in french for husband as you would hear someone say in English “He’s my man” meaning “he’s my significant other” which could mean husband depending on the situation. For example the famous song by Mistinguett (also covered by Edith Piaf) C’est mon homme.
I think you’re correct. My high school French teacher taught us to say it that way. He was a stickler for pronunciation. It definitely shouldn’t be the same vowel as in fatale. There are two subtly different vowels in femme fatale.
One thing that may confuse people about this is that the French a tends to have a more “front” quality than the sound in American English father or bomb.
It doesn’t rhyme with any of those words. The vowel is closest to the English “schwa” sound, but really it doesn’t line up with any English vowel, so an English speaker is really free to choose any of them.
And for many English speakers, “ah” does not indicate the vowel in “Tom,” you might me misperceiving something there.
How can “Tom” be pronounced differently from “Tahm”?
In fact, the sound is akin to “ham” or “jam”.
When I say Tom it rhymes with on.
Femme rhymes with ham.
In many British dialects, it’s a pronounced ‘tom’ - hard O - Struggling for an example word to illustrate, and failing, because if you pronouce Tom as ‘tahm’, you probably pronouce Bomb as ‘bahm’ etc.
I pronounce ‘Tom’ like this