Is it “Bom-bar-deer” (like the guy in WWII bombers whose job it was to, well, release the bombs over the target) or is it something closer to “Bom-bardee-yay”, what with it being a French name?
I wonder because I often see their name pop up in relation to things involving aircraft, trains, and tracked vehicles and it occurred to me I’ve always pronounced it “Bom-bar-deer” (too many Biggles books as a kid, I guess!) and that it may not actually be correct.
Any of our Canadian friends know for sure one way or the other?
Excellent- thanks everyone! Now I shall know to differentiate that aerospace and engineering company from WWII bomb-aimers when I need to refer to them in conversation…
I’d probably pronounce it as something closer to “Bombahdeeyay”; I spent several years learning French so I don’t get too tripped up by that sort of thing.
While I won’t presume to disagree with those who know what they’re talking about through acquaintance with the company and its employees, let me inject the note that Bombardier was (is?) a major manufacturer of snowmobiles, and those machines were universally known to everyone connected to the winter-sports industry where I came from as “Bomb-bar-deers.” Dialectal use? Probably – like calling the French cities Orleans (rhymes with ‘beans’) and Rheims (homonymous with bundles of 500 sheets of paper), instead of the proper French pronunciation.
I don’t know; I do pronounce it. It’s not as hard as the ‘r’ in the English word “bar”, but it doesn’t sound like ‘h’ as in Martini Enfield’s last post either.
Also, in French, the ‘m’ isn’t actually pronounced; it only serves to nasalize the preceding vowel. Unlike in English, where people usually pronounce it.
There’s little question that Joseph-Armand Bombardier, who founded the company, used the French pronunciation.
An interesting piece of trivia about his best-known invention: It was supposed to be known as the “Ski Dog” but a batch of literature produced for its introduction included a misprint that had this as Ski Doo. There wasn’t time to change the brochures, so the device acquired what was surely a better name.
I also remember how they got into rail transportation: They submitted a bid to build the second generation of Metro cars for Montreal, for the extensions being built for the 1976 Olympics. Everyone throught they were crazy – “the skidoo people want to build Metro cars?” But they got the contract, and the rest is history.
They advertise on TV regularly. As an anglophone I would say it sounds more like bom-bard-yay when they say it (no ‘ee’ sound).
I remember hearing bom-ba-deer or bom-bar-deer referring to snowmobiles as a kid as well. It wasn’t until relatively recently that I even made the connection that it was the same company that makes planes and trains. I think it was sort of a redneck thing (ie. “I ain’t pronouncin’ no Frog names”) .
Our company operates Bombardier aircraft, everyone seems to say bom-BAR-deer. Stress on the second syllable but the end of the word is the same as the dude who drops bombs. Not saying it’s right, that’s just how I hear it being said.
I recall hearing the cabin crew on a QantasLink flight recently refer to the plane as a “Bombardeer Dash-8”. At the time I found myself thinking “I thought Dash-8s were made by De Havilland?”, but later on I discovered that Bombardier had brought out De Havilland, which explained that.
They have a testing facility down the road from my house.
Most of us ‘townies’ call them Bomb-bar-dyay, but a few people call them
bomb-ber-deer.
I speculate the first one is correct, and the 2nd group just does it for the same reason that Don Cherry calls Patrick Roy (Roy) and not the french way it’s supposed to be said “Patrick Wah”
I work with the rail industry in Great Britain and hear the word “Bombardier” all the time (at the moment it is mostly in relation to the scandalously late delivery of a batch of trains for the Thameslink Programme). Everyone uses the French-style pronunciation.
Confusingly, there is a beer over here with the same name, brewed by Wells of Bedford. You always know when a railwayman orders a pint of it because he inevitably forgets himself and says Bombar-dee-ay instead of Bom-ba-deer.
Having worked at Bombardier Aerospace and having family members who know Laurent and Pierre Beaudoin, I can attest that, internally at least, the name is pronounced as J.A. Bombardier’s family pronounces it.
There are two slightly different pronounciations for English and French, but the latter is generally more correct.
Bon-bahr-dy’eh (with a nearly silent n and the Canadien eh sound at the end) is close to how it is prononuced in French, while Bom-bahr-dy’eh (with the m sound) is the English version. “Bombardeer” may be a name for the snowmobiles (I am not familiar with the Recreational products), but the company doesn’t use it to refer to itself.
And yes, Bombardier bought De Havilland Canada, at Toronto, and rebranded/modified the Dash-8 into the various Q-series aircraft (Q-200, Q-400, etc). They also bought Learjet, but kept that name as-is for marketing reasons. IIRC, the Challenger 300, which is actually not a descendant of the Challenger 600 from the original Canadair, began its design and development as a Learjet project.
This video describes an installation of Bombardier trams in Vancouver. The reporter pronounces the name in the conventional English style just after the 1-minute mark.
This video has the French pronunciation at 30 seconds.
