Then I went to Ireland. First time bona fide came out of my mouth, nearly a half-dozen Irish youths collapsed beneath the table in laughter. “It’s bo-nah FEE-day, you bloody stupid American!” they jeered.
Well, that beery Latin lesson brought me 'round pretty quickly to “bo-nah FEE-day”. Since I was 21 I’ve been pronouncing it thusly.
Then, at a party last weekend, a snotty friend, let’s call him Joe Pedant, stared long and hard at me down his nose, and announced, with Ivy League disdain, that it’s “bo-nah FIDE-ee”.
Well, what the fuck is it? My dictionary tells me it’s "bo-nah fide (rhymes with tide, again), or “bo-nah fide-ee”. No mention of “bo-nah fee-day”, though a sizable portion of the Irish lads I got to know nearly laughed me out of the pub for thinking otherwise. Now Joe Pedant (who is almost never wrong, goddamn him) has weighed in. Oooo, I would love to stick it to that bastard, but he’s smarter than I am, which makes it doubly annoying when he knows he’s right. Thing is, maybe all the pronunciations I’ve heard are “right”, and it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s just personal preference. Which is why I’m asking here:
For the love of McPete, what are the bona fide pronunciations of “bona fide”?
From what Latin I remember, “fide” should be pronounced “FEE-day.” The I like ee, the e like ay.
But! That’s, I think, the Classical Latin pronunciation. During the middle ages or the Renaissance or somesuch, pronunciations of Latin started changing, like substituting a soft g for a hard g, things like that. And I the vowels sometimes changed around, too.
AND! Added to that you have simply a shift in pronunciation borne of not as many people knowing or giving two whits about Latin, AND! you have certain professions having different pronunciations becoming accepted as standard.
In the US, I think bone fide rhymes with tide most often. FIE-dee sounds like porkypine in the porcupine thread.
BUT! things like, I think, fish taxonomy involves weird pronunciations of Latinate words, so don’t be completely flummoxed if you run across a plumber or someone who swears up and down, and is right, that the National Association of Plumbers calls it FIE-dee. 'Cause people are weird.
You had the typical U.S. pronounciation originally. Sometimes in the legal community it’s pronounced the way the Irish folks said it (because we lawyers are Latin snobs), but in standard American conversation, fide rhymes with tide.
Nope. “Forte” pronounced “for-tay” is a music direction meaning “loud.” But “forte” pronounced “fort” is the thickest and thus strongest part of a fencing sword, typically the ten to twelve inches of the blade directly above the guard (i.e. at the handle end). Hence, when one wants to use a word to mean “one’s strength or strongest area,” one should say “forte” pronounced “fort.”
However, it’s been misused so widely and for so long that no doubt the descriptive-not-prescriptive dictionaries will have “for-tay” as the primary pronunciation for all usages soon, if they don’t already, thus making it “right.” Sigh.
Here’s a description of usage per forte from Merriam-Webster dot com, somewhat contrasting to that which seems usual with regard to tone (and amusingly so):
And, upon preview, I see Cervaise beat me to it, sigh.
Not true. I pronounce it “bonah fidee”, and my (British English) dictionary agrees with me, giving that as the only pronunciation for the adjective. (In IPA, 'b@un@ 'faidi, where @ = schwa and the i has no dot).
The noun “bona fides” is pronounced the same, with a Z sound at the end.
Interestingly, given the OP’s Irish experience, it also gives a secondary sense, this time with the pronunciation “BAW-na FIDE” (rhymes with tide), meaning “Irish informal: a public house licensed to serve alcohol after hours to bona fide travellers.”
I’m normally on the side of the Latin snobs, but this is just ridiculous.
In the US, rhymes-with-tide is the only way you will get your point across in most contexts.
The plural noun (‘gotcher “bona fides” right here, buster!’) is bona-fiedz, (hard ‘s’) which is hardly correct since it’s originally an adverbial phrase, but that doesn’t mean it is ‘wrong’.
The ‘British’ pronunciation is ‘bonah fidee’? Really? Well, I’ll be goll-darned. Even the dictionary agrees, along with my informal poll of two actual Brits. Whuddaya know?
