12 French Cheeses You're Mispronouncing (Say Each One and Score)

At a fromagerie the cheese is not wrapped and priced on a shelf. It sits behind a counter, and someone asks you what you want. To get it, you have to say its name.

This is where the pointing starts. The fromager holds the knife over a wheel, you nod, they move to the next wheel, you shake your head. You leave with the right cheese and a small, private sense of defeat — because you could read every label in the case.

The trouble is that most French cheese names reached you in English first, on supermarket packaging, with English sounds attached: CAM-em-bare, ROKE-fort, groo-YAIR. You are not learning twelve new words. You are overwriting twelve old ones.

And, as on a restaurant menu, twelve names are not twelve problems. They are five traps, repeating.

Trap 1 — The written consonant nobody says

A consonant at the end of a French word is usually silent. Cheese names are built almost entirely out of words that end that way.

Two things to notice. First, the r at the end of Camembert and Roquefort is said — it is the t after it that disappears. R is one of the few final consonants French usually keeps, so the word ends on [ʁ], not on a vowel.

Second, Saint loses its t as well. There is no liaison into Nectaire, because liaison only happens before a vowel; Saint-Émilion would link, Saint-Nectaire does not.

Trap 2 — The letter that is not there in the middle, either

French does not only drop letters at the ends of words.

Neufchâtel is [nø.ʃa.tɛl]. The f of neuf is silent here. English speakers almost always say "noof-sha-TEL", with a clear f — reasonably, since neuf on its own ("nine", "new") keeps its [f]. Inside this compound name, it does not. It is a fixed pronunciation of a place name, the kind you learn one at a time.

Reblochon is [ʁə.blɔ.ʃɔ̃]. The first e is the unstressed [ə] — short, neutral, over almost as soon as it starts. English stresses it into "REB-lo-shon", which puts weight on exactly the syllable French treats as the weakest in the word.

→ Why that e is so weak, and when it vanishes entirely: The Disappearing E: Why "Je ne sais pas" Becomes "Chais pas"

Trap 3 — The m and n you should not hear

Look again at Camembert. There is an m before the b, and you do not pronounce it. em before a consonant is not "em" — it is the nasal vowel [ɑ̃], air through the nose, lips never closing.

The same thing happens across the case:

The tell of an English speaker is closing the mouth at the end of the vowel — a little [m] in Comté, a little [n] at the end of Reblochon. The nasal vowel is complete on its own; nothing comes after it.

A note on Munster: many French speakers, especially in the north, no longer distinguish [œ̃] from [ɛ̃], and say [mɛ̃s.tɛʁ]. Both are normal. What is not normal is "MUN-ster", with the English vowel of fun and a real [n].

→ The mechanics, drilled: French Nasal Vowels AN EN ON IN: Practice Without Pronouncing the N

Trap 4 — Munster keeps its r, Morbier drops it

This is the one pair on the counter where a rule would lead you wrong if you only knew half of it.

Munster ends in -er, and it is said [ɛʁ]: mœ̃s-TAIR, with the r.

Morbier ends in -ier, and it is said [je]: mor-BYAY, no r.

The -ier ending is the one you already know from premier, papier and every -er verb: the r is silent and the vowel is [e]. Munster is a borrowed Alsatian name and behaves like hiver or mer, where the r stays. So English speakers get these two wrong in opposite directions — "mor-bee-AIR" with an r that is not there, and "MUN-stuh" without the one that is.

Gruyère, while you are at this end of the counter, is [ɡʁy.jɛʁ]: its r is said, and the vowel before the y is the French [y], not "oo". "Groo-YAIR" is the English version.

→ French U vs OU Pronunciation Practice: 20 Minimal Pairs, Scored

Trap 5 — The endings English adds or deletes

The last two cheeses go wrong at their final syllable, in opposite ways.

Chèvre is [ʃɛvʁ] — one syllable, ending on a v pressed straight into a soft French r. English speakers either cut it down to "shev" or pad it out to "SHEV-ruh". The final e is silent, but the vr before it is not.

Époisses is [e.pwas] — two syllables. The -sses spelling gives you one [s] and nothing after it. "Ay-PWAHS-ez" adds a syllable the word does not have.

→ If the r at the end of chèvre is the part that collapses: The French R for English Speakers: 12 Words, 5 Minutes a Day

Drill 1 — The 12 cheeses

Say each one out loud. Reading down the column silently proves nothing: your eyes already know these words and your mouth does not.

Brie is on the list as a warm-up, not a trick. Most English speakers get its vowel right. The r is where it goes wrong — an English r turns bree into something audibly not French.

Drill 2 — The sentences you will actually say

A cheese name in isolation is not the test. The test is saying it inside a sentence, at the counter, while someone holds a knife.

1. Je voudrais un morceau de comté, s'il vous plaît.
2. Vous avez du Saint-Nectaire ?
3. Un petit morceau de Roquefort, pas trop.
4. C'est un chèvre au lait cru ?
5. Je peux goûter le Morbier ?
6. Un Camembert bien fait, pour ce soir.
7. Le Reblochon, c'est pour une tartiflette.
8. Lequel est le plus fort, l'Époisses ou le Munster ?

Sentence 4 hides the trap from Trap 4 in a new place: cru is [kʁy], the same [y] as Gruyère. Sentence 5 puts it next to its opposite — goûter is [ɡu.te], with a real "oo". If cru and goûter come out with the same vowel, that is the sound to fix first.

At the fromagerie

Fromager — Bonjour ! Qu'est-ce qu'il vous faut ? Vous — Bonjour. Je voudrais un morceau de comté, s'il vous plaît. Fromager — Le douze mois ou le vingt-quatre mois ? Vous — Je peux goûter le vingt-quatre ? Fromager — Bien sûr, tenez. Vous — Il est très bon. Celui-là, alors. Et un morceau de Saint-Nectaire, aussi. Fromager — Comme ça ? Vous — Un peu moins. Parfait, merci.

Watch vingt-quatre: its t is pronounced, [vɛ̃t.katʁ], unlike vingt on its own. Between comté, Saint-Nectaire and vingt-quatre, the exchange puts three nasal vowels and two silent-or-not _t_s into eight lines. Say it aloud twice.

FAQ

Will the fromager understand me anyway?

Almost certainly — there are only so many cheeses in the case, and you are standing in front of them. The reason to say the name properly is not comprehension. It is that a mispronounced name is often the moment a shopkeeper switches to English, and then the rest of the conversation — how old it is, whether you can taste it — happens in English too.

Is it le chèvre or la chèvre?

The animal is la chèvre. The cheese is le chèvre — short for le fromage de chèvre. The pronunciation is identical, [ʃɛvʁ]; only the article changes.

Why isn't Emmental on the list?

Because French speakers themselves say it more than one way, and a drill needs one target to score you against. The same goes for a handful of regional names whose local pronunciation differs from the Parisian one.

What about cheese on a restaurant menu — raclette, tartiflette, croque-monsieur?

Those are dish names, and they belong with the other dishes. → French Menu Pronunciation: 20 Dishes to Say Before You Order

Where do the names come from?

Most are places: Camembert, Roquefort, Époisses and Neufchâtel are all villages or towns, which is why their spellings are fossils rather than rules. If place names are what trips you, the same traps show up on a map. → Reims, Versailles, Auxerre: 15 French Place Names, Say and Score

Say them and find out

A phonetic table tells you what Camembert should sound like. It cannot tell you whether the thing your mouth just did had an [m] in it — and a closing lip, a dropped r or an extra syllable are exactly the errors you cannot hear from the inside.

Say the twelve cheeses into Simply French and get each one scored, sound by sound, before you are at the counter.

Related

• French Menu Pronunciation: 20 Dishes to Say Before You Order
• French Food Vocabulary: 120 Words for Every Meal
• French Nasal Vowels AN EN ON IN: Practice Without Pronouncing the N
• French U vs OU Pronunciation Practice: 20 Minimal Pairs, Scored
• Reims, Versailles, Auxerre: 15 French Place Names, Say and Score