Ypres

[Jules001]

Please can anyone tell me is the letter 's' at the end of this placename silent ?

TIA

[Ethel]

Yes it is. It's hard to pronounce.

This is a near approximation:


Eh pree.

Not Eee pree

[Quizmonkey]

Not quite. Usually just eep or eep(rh) - the rh in brackets as it's 'half-pronounced', very difficult for most Brits as we don't have that articulation. The R gets pronounced more when preceding an open vowel: "Ypres est un..." = eep-rett-uhn" etc.

[spudqueen]

Commonly known in WWI as Wipers

[Jules001]

thanks everyone, you have all just confirmed that the way I have been pronouncing is indeed correct. My daughter and her history teacher can now be corrected with confidence :)

[juddlinski]

The British soldiers stationed there in the First World War pronounced it and spelt it 'Wipers' I believe.

[Narolines]

Of course, being in Flanders it also goes by its Flemish name of Ieper (that's a capital i at the beginning, not a small L !); not being a Dutch speaker I've no idea how it's pronounced........

[Narolines]

In response to myself, I gather it's something like "Yehper" in Dutch/Flemish.