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Re: Denise
Here in South Africa people always say de NEES instead of the more Frenchly authentic de NEEZ. How does it sound where you live?I do prefer the z sound, but not enough to make me like the name.
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Americans say de NEES also. I've never heard anyone say de NEEZ. Americans don't make an effort to pronounce French names the French way.
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Yeah, but you all say Louise with a z sound and so do we. And it's pretty general for Afrikaans-speaking parents to name boys Charl, so that it gets the French sound (but not spelling) rather than the English. There are a lot of Afrikaans surnames that were originally French, so it's logical that they should want to be a part of their heritage; plus, English was the language of the colonial power and therefore less than popular!

This message was edited 1/28/2011, 1:23 AM

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