How do you pronounce “Meaulnes”?
Here’s the trailer for the film version (youtube) in which the name is pronounced - apparently both the L and the N are there.
I’d guess “Moan” is closest.
Sounds more like myooln when the girl says it towards the end of the clip there.
(with yoo being the IPA [y])
Here you go. Sounds something like “mooln”.
Rather “Moln”
Depends on how you hear it and choose to transcribe it. That’s how I would transcribe the two linked audio pronunciations without using IPA. If you consider those two pronunciations correct, that’s definitely closer to an American “oo” to my ears, not a “o.” But the audio link should solve that transcription problem.
“oo” like in “moon”?? That’s not what I hear…
But that is what I hear. The sound I hear is closer to “oo” in “moon” than the long “o” in “moan.” It’s not quite either vowel in American English, so far as I can tell, but I hear it much closer to the first. “Moo-ln” sounds closer than “Mole-n” the way I would pronounce it. Once again, hence why I linked to the actual audio, so people could try to mimic it themselves. ETA: I know it should be “o” as “eau” is pronounced that way in French, but that’s not how I hear it in the audio.
Here’s the problem: the sound in IPA is /o:/. That does not really exist in American English. What we call a “long o” as in “goat” or “moan” is a diphthong, either /əʊ/ or /oʊ/. The “oo” in “moon” is /u:/. Still not the same vowel, but, to my ears, closer. Now, there are some dialects of English where I have heard an /o:/ sound–I believe in Scotland. But it doesn’t exist, to my knowledge, in my American English dialect and the /u:/ sound is a closer approximation–to me–than the /əʊ/ or /oʊ/ sounds. YMMV.
clairobscur is definitely right. The sound in Meaulnes has little to do with the sound in moon, and “mole-n” is a closer approximation. I linked to the actual audio before you did - does it sound like ‘moon’ in that trailer as well? If that’s what it sounds like to you, which I suppose is possible, then that’s fine, but then there’s really some issues with how your ears and brain are trained to be perceiving the sounds of French.
I’ve explained quite clearly above what the problem is: there is no corresponding American English sound. And, yes, to me in the trailer, it sounds closer to “oo” than an American long “o”. /o:/ is neither an American “oo” as in “moon” or an American “oh” as in “boat.”
It’s possible this is my idiosyncrasy of how I hear it. I do speak multiple languages, some which do have the /o:/ sound in them, but I think “oo” is a closer approximation in American English in that particular case. (It doesn’t sound quite as much as “oo” to me in the word eau, for instance.) If other American English speakers come here and say, no, it’s closer to “oh” as in “boat,” then I will concede this is just personally how I hear French.
For example, look at this IPA vowel chart. The sound in “Meaulnes” is a long back close mid vowel. The “oo” in “moon” is a long back close vowel. So, same basic vowel (long, back) just more closed.
Meanwhile, the /əʊ/ of “oat” is a diphthong. Not even a pure vowel. Now, depending on how you pronounce it and the word, it’s either /əʊ/ or /oʊ/. In the first case, it starts central mid and ends up near back, near close. In the second case, it starts out like the vowel in “Meaulnes,” just shorter, and ends up going a bit more to the front and bit more closed. I say “oat” as /əʊt/. To me, that vowel is farther away from /o:/ than the /u:/ in “moon,” both by the way I hear it and by how the vowel is actually formed.
Well, we can be idiosyncratic together.
Plus there’s just the simple fact that French vowels are more close than American ones. It’s something I learned in my French diction class. Many report that, for example, the French /ɛ/ sounds closer to our /ɪ/.
Still, I was sure I heard a mixed vowel when the lady said it at the end in the clip, although I’d now say it was closer to the IPA [œ] or possibly [ø], both of which sound rather similar to me.
And I would not have been referring to oo as in moon but oo as in book.