Thanks. I'm not convince dabout French being SINK. When I was at school we were always taught "un, deux trois , quatre, cinq , six..."(un, durr, trwa, katre, sank, cease) and I've always said it like that when 'teaching' French or speaking it- and have never heard it pronounced sink. But Spanish is pronounced 'sinko' and in Catalan it is definitely pronounced SINK so maybe the setter is catalonian. Maybe other languages pronounce it SINK too
FF, my French language skills are non-existent, but... I've just checked Chambers and the pronunciation guide it gives has the exact same for both 'sink' and 'cinque'.
But the French for 5 is CINQ not CINQUE unless things have change dsince I was at school.
I think there is some confusion here about the language.
It's nothing to do with French (cinq/sank).
Chambers says 'cinque', singk, is the number 5, as on dice'. The pronunciation for 'synch' is exactly the same - so the clue seems fine to me. The pronunciation guide for 'cinquecento' follows your way for the Italian 'five'.
FF, the clue didn't ask for 'French five' - if it did, your pronunciation would be correct. Cinque, pronounced sink (and like synch) is defined as 'five'.
cinque
sɪŋk/Submit
noun
noun: cinque; plural noun: cinques; noun: cinq; plural noun: cinqs
1.
the five on dice.
2.
BELL-RINGING
a system of change-ringing using eleven bells, with five pairs changing places each time.
Origin
Latin - Old French
I agree. CINQUE is actually old Normandy French. The answer is fine on that basis. Some of the above justifications though referred to the French CINQ which is pronounced sank not sink. i didn't help by misspelling CINQ as CINQUE in one of my earlier posts