How do you pronounce Juliet?

[Amethyst24]

I ask because my sister is called Juliet and I think it's a beautiful name. My parents intended it to be pronounced, she pronounces it, and all the family pronounce it, JULy't.

However her whole life she's been called Julie-ETTE and has given up correcting people. It seems like such a popilar name on here and I wondered how people think it should sound.

Joo lee et

IF french I would say Jule-ee-ay but generally its pronounced Julie ette in the UK.

Not sure how to pronounce is as JULy't

The French don't say jule ee ay, they do pronounce the T (The French spelling is Juliette)

OP i say joo lee ett but I think all syllables stressed roughly the same, not Julie ETT nor JOO lee ett.

And fwiw I love the name

I would say JUlie-et

as in jewel E et same as shakespeare wrote it.

Sort of Julie-ut but the 'ut' is very soft. Emphasis on the Julie part.

Lovely name.

Joo Lee ett - same weight on each syllable.

Oh hell, DD is due any day now and we are planing to call her Juliet - now I am having a crisis over how I pronounce it!

I think the emphasis on the first syllable. Lengthening the 'et' makes it sound like the French version. However DH is a fool disagrees

Julie-et

Julie-et

Where does your parents pronouciation come from?

Interesting - thanks all. As far as I can tell Shakespeare intended it to be pronounced with the emphasis on the JU and a neutral vowel rather than an ET sound at the end. Like Harriet. But yes, the -ette pronounciation does seem to be quite common and I think that's a shame - it makes the name a bit naff and overly girly imo.

I agree, like Harriet. That's what I was clumsily trying to say up thread.

I have never heard it pronounced like Harriet

Joo-Lee-et.

JUlee-ette.
I don't like it, though. ... Pretentious maybe?

Ju-li-ette is always how I've pronounced it but got told off for doing so by my drama lecturer years ago because it is supposed to be Julie-utt as Shakespeare intended.

Yes as a drama practitioner I'd argue Shakespeare's Juliet is closer to Harriet in emphasis

Lovely name . Julie-ET if spelt Juliette, otherwise JUlie-ut, imo

Really don't see how it could be thought pretentious

As in this song:

I think it's really difficult to talk about pronunciation on paper, so I looked up some audio files, and see that it is apparently an issue (possibly because of people doing productions of Romeo and Juliet?)

I haven't found any sites (yet) that have an 'English' pronunciation (and in any case I imagine that it varies significantly across English accents) but here are two sites with audio files for Juliet:

www.forvo.com/word/juliet/

www.pronouncenames.com/search?name=juliet

On the forvo site the second pronunciation comes closest to how I would say Juliet (even though it's from an American)

We have a Harriet and a Juliet in the family and I'd say that they sound pretty similar, but then I might say Harriet differently to other people too

Oh and I wouldn't expect to pronounce Juliet and Juliette differently (assuming they were both English). I thought that the ette spelling was just a variant.

By the way my DSis has survived more than 50 years of mispronunciation so this is in no way a matter of urgency.

Is it mispronunciation if the majority of people say it that way?

I think it's a bit difficult to know how Shakespeare intended the name to be pronounced given he's been dead quite some time and generally speaking made up quite a lot of the words he used.

Also standardised spelling didn't exist when he was writing his plays and didn't until Doctor Johnson's dictionary.