I’m surprised no one has disputed the post where someone bitched about pronouncing forte as forTAY. How the hell else would you pronounce it? Does anyone rally say “sorry, that’s just not my fort.”?
I imagine that’s just a fawks pass on their part.
Okay, but not while someone is still alive! Plus, trust me, this was bizspeak.
It sure looks Italian, doesn’t it? Just like the musical direction? Obviously! I used to think so too. But in fact as a loanword to English in the sense of someone’s major skill, it came from French and was all along pronounced just fort.
Ooh - I forgot to post another that causes angry twitches - ma TOO rity for maturity. It just sounds beyond pretentious to me.
Oh wow… that’s embarassing. I’ve been saying it as FOR-tay my entire life. Fort from now on though!
“Look, it’s Italian! Frah-jee-lay!”
Weirdly, the inverse of that mixup happened to furore: It was originally borrowed into English from Italian, and had 3 syllables: foo-roh-reh. But somehow people missed that fact and took it to be an ordinary Latinism ending in -or like color or honor, and it lost its final -e.
The Brits still spell and pronounce the final E. One friend in particular looked at me funny when I said Americans don’t. I’ve since heard enough Brits pronounce it to know it’s widespread.
Criminy! I’ve been mispronouncing forte as well.
Wow! You learn a lot by reading zombie threads, don’t you?
For “forte,” my American Heritage Dictionary lists for-tay as the first pronunciation and fort as the second. The online version too, with the following Usage Note:
“The word forte, coming from French fort, should properly be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort. Common usage, however, prefers the two-syllable pronunciation, which has been influenced possibly by the music term forte borrowed from Italian. In a recent survey a strong majority of the Usage Panel, 74 percent, preferred the two-syllable pronunciation. The result is a delicate situation; speakers who are aware of the origin of the word may wish to continue to pronounce it as one syllable but at an increasing risk of puzzling their listeners.”
I’m going to keep pronouncing it two syllables myself.
I made the opposite mistake with “tiramisu”. It just sounds so Japanese to me, I assumed it was a Japanese dessert (and found that odd – the Japanese are undisputed masters at all kinds of culinary arts, but milky, chocolately, sweet, cakey things are not their, ahem, forte.)
Turns out it’s Italian for “pick me up.” Partly, I was fooled because the English phrasal-verb-with-inserted-direct-object form is reflected word for word in the Italian – this sort of thing doesn’t usually happen (in my experience) when passing between Germanic languages and Romance ones.
(It seems that Italian uses “giu” and “su” – “down” and “up” – as adverbs in a way which sometimes coincides with certain English verb-plus-preposition phrasal verbs. I first came across the Italian practice thanks to rap/pop singer Jovanotti’s song “Piove”, which mentions “piove, senti come vene giu” – literally, “feel/notice how the rain is coming down”.)
When anyone says something like “I’m moving to the city”, I respond with “San Jose?”
That usually elicits a little laugh.
:eek: I do the same thing sometimes! 
These irritate me-
Share used instead of tell.
Feel used instead of think.
Impact used exclusively because the speaker thinks it’s better than affect or effect.
Anytime someone begins a sentence with “As a whatever,” supercilious bragging or chiding is sure to follow.
LORD is that way because of the taboo about not saying “YHWH” for fear of using the Lord’s name in vain. So when you see LORD, the Hebrew used the name “YHWH”.
And it irritates me when old timers (usually it’s old timers) who grew up with the King James pray in KJ language. I always want to say, “The King James bible uses that language because it was published in the early 1600s…not because God has this secret code of thees and thous he has to hear before he will listen to you!” Same with old people who demand nothing but hymns written in the 1800s. Those are great, but by those people’s logic, we should also sing popular music from the 1800s as well. After all, there’s nothing wrong with the old standards! Sorry about the rambling, but I’m a 31 year old deacon in a church where we still have a few vocal old timers who make it hard on us young whippersnappers…
Never have I seen anyone hoisted this high by his own petard.
Something inexplicable and annoying I would see all the time at one job I worked at: Using the verb *advise *instead of say.
Subject advised that his name is X.
Subject advised that the sky is blue today.
Subject advised he wanted to go home. Etc.
What the hell is wrong with saying say? If you think replacing it with advise makes you look smarter, you have another think coming. The two words are not synonyms.