And indeed, that’s the pronunciation used by announcers on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). Which has a strong tendency to standardize its announcers’ usage and which also has a considerable francophone organization.

However I have no knowledge of how the francophone-on-the-street pronounces it in Canada.

I think the answer you addressed to Jack (”the BBC recommendation has been /-prɪns/ since at least 1937″) may have been intended as the answer to my question how long the usual French pronunciation of which you write has been usual: “How long for example has that been common knowledge at the BBC?” Of course the BBC may never have concerned itself with the usual French pronunciation.

But nedecky on John Wells’s blog confirms my above-mentioned experience of the local (and more widespread Francophone) pronunciation pɔʀtopʀ̃ɛs, quoting Klincksieck, 1959:
” Port-au-Prince, capitale de la république d’Haïti, se prononce soit [pɔʀtopʀ̃ɛːs] (prononciation locale), soit [pɔʀopʀ̃ɛːs].”

My guess is that that local pronunciation has been current since 1959 as well, alongside the Creole Pòtoprens as one would expect, and that all the dictionaries I mention above as giving only the pronunciation with liaison for French are not as out of date as you might think.

being able to delete/edit posts is a feature provided by the blog software. So we’ll have to wait for Graham to find out if his blog provider offers this feature.

Graham,

you’re not in my debt for anything As you can see I had to mess around with html code to get the tilde over the vowel symbol. The result is a surprise in a few cases and may change with the browser used.

Port-au-Prince (pronounced /ˌpɔrtoʊˈprɪns/; French pronunciation: [pɔʁopʁɛ̃s]; Haitian Creole: Pòtoprens)

I wonder how long that has been the case. How long for example has that been common knowledge at the BBC? I always used to hear pɔrtopr̃ɛs, including from Francophone North Americans and Africans. Could it be part of the general loss of liaisons like that (and their insinuation into taboo places like les haricots)? Its Haitian Creole name Pòtoprens is obviously from the liaised form.

Larousse and Robert certainly now have pɔropr̃ɛs, but Collins, which is usually OK for the original languages (though horrendous for some, e.g. Japanese!) and sensibly gives anglicized versions for naturalized expressions, for example [o fɛ], [əʊ ˈfeɪ] where OED only gives [o fɛ], has pɔrtoprɛ̃s for the French, and so does absolutely every other English dictionary I’ve checked, in IPA or out of it, except Wikipedia, which is no less on the ball than usual with [pɔʁopʁ̃ɛs].

Wiktionary doesn’t have that but does have ˌpɔːtəʊˈpr̃ɛs and ˌpɔrtəʊˈpr̃ɛs as UK and US alternatives for the forms in ˈprɪns, as do many others in one form or another.

Like JWL I feel inclined to call it /pɔːt əʊ pr̃ӕs/, as I always have done in English. I however consider myself to be anglicizing the whole name, but I certainly agree that saying it with no final /t/ wd be as pretentious as using a uvular r for the word.