BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture French Culture Does you speak French?

I don't. Took Spanish in HS.

I'm in a choir and one of the pieces we're singing is in French. I have absolutely NO idea how to pronounce this stuff. Someone in the group who speaks French quickly went over it with us one time, but I can't remember everything she said.

If wonder if anyone would be willing to translate the words phonetically for me. (E.g., Dirait-on = deer-rayt-on)

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you in advance!

Abandon entoure d'abandon,
tendresse touchant aux tendresses...
C'est ton interieur qui sans cesse
se caresse, dirait-on;

se caresse en soi-meme,
par son propre reflect eclaire.
Ainsi tu inventes le theme
du Narcisse exauce.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, from Les Roses

Beautiful, isn't it?

Joyseeker

I will try. I have a masters in French so yes I am fluent. Let me try to give you the phonetics.

Aban-don (accent is on the end of the word) on-tour-a (like a in abc) d'aban-don
tandress tochante o tandresse
se ton in-ter-ior

Ok forget it, this is too hard. I have recorded myself reading it at this link

[url=feed://annalaurab.hipcast.com/rss/learnfrench.xml][url=feed://annalaurab.hipcast.com/rss/learnfrench.xml][url=feed://annalaurab.hipcast.com/rss/learnfrench.xml]feed://annalaurab.hipcast.com/rss/learnfrench.xml[/url][/url][/url]

Click on les roses to listen.

I hope this helps.

It's a good thing you went ahead and recorded that. It is a beautiful poem, but it would be hard to transcribe it phonetically (to someone who wasn't familiar with the international phonetic alphabet, at least) because of all the nasal vowels and the ever present silent consonants!