Pronouncing french.

Factual Questions
1

I need a site where I can type in a french word and hear a soundfile of the pronuciation.
I’m interested primarily in food items. I’m reading Julia Child and want to say “potato soup” (Potage Parmentier?) in french.
Merci
mangeorge

2

This text-to-speech demo page renders a pretty accurate rendition of it. Just choose French as your language and type in Potage Parmentier.

“poh-TAWJ par-MON-tea-eh” (the French “r” sound in “par” doesn’t exist in English, but you should be fine if it’s just a food)

You can find the individual words in audio dictionaries:
Potage Parmentier*

*Membership is required for the Parmentier link, but you can look at the written pronunciation guide and compare it to the text-to-speech pronunciation.

3

FYI Potage parmentier is the name of the dish. Potage is soup and Parmentier is a proper name. Potatoes are pommes de terre or patates. Plainly (i.e., with any other veg), potato soup would be soupe de pomme de terre.

I’d write “par-MON-tea-ay” to eliminate any ambiguity.

4

And the accent’s always on the last syllable, so it’s par-mon-tea-AY, although that form of transcription crudely eliminates the final semi-vowel, so it’d probably be nearer to par-mon-TYAY.

5

I’m with Gentle Robot on this one: “POTE-ahj pahr-mon-TYAY.” For the consonant at the end of “pahr” you need to say the vowels as though you were going to end the syllable with an R… and then not end the syllable with an actual R. We were always told to “swallow” the R, so the corners of your mouth either pinch in place or pop out towards your ears instead of pronouncing it.

The emphasis on the syllables is roughly the same as someone exclaiming, “What a lovely day!”

6

Say it just like “drench” but with an “f”.