"Stubborn mule" could be said "tiestou bådet". The pronounciation is more or less like "chess" (tiest-) + "to" (-tu) + first syllable of "boar-der" or "bore" without the "r" (bå-) + "debt" without the "t" or "dead" without the "d" (-det). So if you go: "chess to bo(re) de(ad)" (not meaning that chess playing is deadly boring, of course!), it should sound ok. According to the dialect spoken, the "to" part could be pronounced like a stressed or an unstressed "to". Speaking of stresses, they are placed on the "to" and the "dea(d)", not on "chess". I'd never thought how hard (and how fun) it is to describe a pronounciation without using the International Phonetic Alphabet... Maybe someone could send an avi file? Luc, you do have a microphone next to your computer, don't you?
Now can you place "Ki ça vos våye bén" in a phonetic language for
me so I can learn the correct pronunciation?
Jeanne
Ok, I'll try the game again before Luc sends a wav file, so that you can check if my description is accurate or just funny.
The words mean, literally, "That it you go well". "våye" is the subjunctive of "aler" (to go). "vos" is the polite 2nd person pronoun (the not so polite form is "ti" - seldom used, except in bars, while playing cards and drinking beer) .
Now, for the pronounciation, try "Kiss a vow vie ba(n)". Ahem... The problems here are in "vow", which contains a diphtong in English but a monophtong in Walloon; and then "ban" which is pronounced with two sounds only in Walloon: the "n" is not pronounced but indicates that the vowel in "bén" is nasalised.
The International Phonetic Alphabet transcription would be: [kI sa vo vaj bê] .
If you are interested in phonetics, here are some more gory details: the [I] in [kI] is rounded. In the Walloon of Wisconsin (coming from the Walloon dialect spoken in our province of Brabant), it is not unlike the "u" in "but" or "cup", or even the "a" in "about". The [a] in [vay] can be short or long, open [a] or mid-open [o]. Finally, the nasal vowel in "bén" is most often the nasal equivalent of "è" (the "e" in "bed"). But it can also be the nasal equivalent of "é" (more or less the first part of the "ay" in "bay").
Of course, the above description is very rough at the edge and everything will be much clearer and more obvious when you actually hear it...