Reading some History of Photography on the Web, I was amazed with the spelling
which was : "Nie(e-acute)pce" instead of just "Niepce". After consulting a few
french encyclopedias I was quite sure the right spelling was "Niepce" without
any accent, until I found a reproduction of a document from the very hand of
Nic(e-acute)phore himself:
The "e" of "Niepce" was bearing an accent, but it could have been the
prolongation of a extremely decorated "uppercase N"
Happily that doesn't change the pronunciation quite much in french.
"Nay-epps-ah" seems OK.
I was a bit out of the topic.
Mes excuses, je dois etre un peu jaloux de Judy ou Terry qui nous abreuvent de
leur savoir. Je suis un vrai fan, continuez.
Philippe,
URL: http://www.knoware.nl/users/philippe/
P.S.
The original question of Bob was, how to pronunce Steichen. Am I wrong is I
say that "Steichen" was born in Luxemburg. If this is the case, his name could
have had Dutch origin, this means that you can pronunce "Stay-run". Anyway
when I pronunce it in french you can't hear any difference with "station" ;-)