A Reddit user on Monday (Jan. 16) posted a handy guide to pronouncing common French last names in Louisiana, setting off a lengthy discussion about Cajuns, the French language and the many ways to pronounce French in Louisiana.

The Reddit user, Garrett Rosemont, claimed to be a sales executive at a New Orleans-based firm who said the one-page guide was handed out on the first day of work. The person wrote that the guide had “saved me so many times,” presumably of the embarrassment associated with calling someone with the last name “Hebert” and saying “Hee-Bert” instead of “A-bear.”

The list only focuses on common last names, so it won’t save you from accidentally saying Commissioner of Administration and former Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne’s last name as “Dar-denne” instead of “Darden.”

But it would be helpful to anyone unfamiliar with the nuances of Louisiana-French pronunciations, as in the use of a hard “t” in “Thibodaux” or the fact that “Billiot” rhymes with “yacht.”

It also includes such pronunciation curiosities as Aucoin (pronounced oak-wan) and Voisin (pronounced waz-zin).  The post had generated more than 1,000 comments and more than 8,000 up-votes after it was posted to Reddit’s “Mildly Interesting” section.  Some Reddit users pointed out that there are some errors in the list. For instance, Aucoin is spelled incorrectly and New Orleans-area people would pronounce it “oak-win,” not “oak-wan.”