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Isn't it the L that makes the difference? The way I remember spraining my vocal organs long ago, one has two different L sounds in English, the light L at the beginnings of words (or syllables) and the dark L, pronounced further back in the mouth, used post-vocalically. And French only uses the light-L version, wherever it appears in a syllable; this makes the ee sound less like itself to English ears. Eh bien, I was never much good at it and the only Odiles I've ever known weren't French anyway ...