How to Pronounce Espadrille in English, French and Catalan

In English, say eh-spuh-drill: three syllables, the last one rhyming with drill. That is the respelling given by SpanishDict, whose phonetic transcription is /ɛ-spə-dɹɪl/, identical in American and British English. The plural, espadrilles, simply adds a z sound: eh-spuh-drillz.

In French

French keeps the spelling but not the ending. The French Wiktionary transcribes the word as /ɛs.pa.dʁij/:

• es as in "less";
• pa with an open a, as in "father" but shorter;
• drille with the French throaty r and a final -ij, close to the end of "tree" followed by a light y. The double L is not heard as an L.

So a French speaker says something like "ess-pah-dree-y". Both versions are correct in their own language: English took the word from French, as English Wiktionary notes, and then pronounced it the English way.

In Catalan

Catalan does not say espadrille at all. Its word is espardenya, and English Wiktionary gives two pronunciations:

The ny is the same sound as the Spanish ñ or the ni in "onion". The stress falls on the third syllable.

Common mistakes

The usual mistake is to pronounce the double L as a plain L, or to add an extra syllable at the end. In English the word has three syllables, and the last one rhymes with drill, not with a longer ending. A second mistake is to give the English word a French final sound, which happens when speakers switch between languages mid-sentence. In Catalan the stress falls on the third syllable, so espardenya should not sound like the English word at all. Finally, speakers often mix the French y ending into the Catalan ny sound. They are different: the French ending is a light y, while the Catalan one is the nasal sound of ñ.

Quick reference

If you are curious why the French word has an r before the d in its older forms, see where does the word espadrille come from. For the Catalan shoe itself, see espardenya.