Or south to Vienna (VY-eena), Georgia.
I’ve lived on the West Coast all my life and have never heard may-nayze.
The heart of almond growing country is the town of Chico, and ammin is the default pronunciation there. I know, because I grew up there, and had to learn to re-pronounce it once I moved away.
Neither have I. But “man-ayze” - with the first syllable pronounced like exactly like the word for a male human - is pretty common.
Coupon - from the French for “to cut.” It’s coo-pon. Not cyew-pon. (And I don’t really find it bothersome that some folks change the emphasis on syllables. But ever since my high school journalism teacher pointed this out to me? Drives me buggy. Thanks Mrs. Pool!)
And I can’t convince my husband about “forte” = strong = one syllable. Nor “cache” = one syllable. He’s just habituated to pronouncing those words incorrectly. Similarly, my mother insists on pronouncing “concierge” with no final “g”/“zh” sound. She heard once upon a time that French final consonants are never voiced, and remains convinced.
I usually commute alone to work. And it’s just as well, because I cannot (and have no reason to) restrain myself from correcting radio announcers when they say “San Peedro,” “Tia-Juana,” and “Noter Dayme.” My family are good enough to tolerate me when I do, but I suspect that a coworker or two might have a problem.
And I am uncomfortable with letting people get away with saying “comfterble” in my presence.
That’s how people who live in San Pedro pronounce it. Including a Hispanic woman I used to work with who lived there.
Well, they can damn well start saying it right.
I grew up and lived there for 20+ years and I never heard that either. Reread what I wrote; you’re disagreeing with something I never said.
I never heard that other thing, either.
Too many people mispronounce data. Of course, they should pronounce it correctly, but they don’t!
I say it MAN-nayz, but the “man” part is that may-uhn way of saying “man”–which I occasionally use for emphasis.
You know, like when saying. “Man! That’s sucks.”
Honestly, I’m probably the worst when it comes to “writing things the way they sound”. Pronounciation guides in dictionaries always confuse me. To me, a lot of non-native speakers use -ay, whereas my ears hear -eh (example would be guacamole).
Suffice it to say, the American pronouncistion is definitely not the same as in Spanish.
I mean as in barbie girl, as in “she’s such a bimbo”… and apparently we agree on how to pronounce it. Now, if Bimbo is trying to get a different pronunciation north of the river than everywhere else, that’s a different problem.
No, the correct (french) pronunciation is indeed ‘neesh’.
American here living in a french-speaking country for the past 15 years. All my family is still living in the US, and I cannot tell you the number of times that I have had to consciously make myself pronounce a french loan word the incorrect American way. If I say it the french way my family calls me pretentious. :smack:
The one I love is ‘fleur de lis’ , which is the emblem used by the Scouts, with the last word usually incorrectly pronounced as ‘lee’.
I can find people saying that’s wrong, but no indication why. That is not how French orthography normally works–an S at the end of a word is silent. You’d need to add e at the end. If it’s an /s/ sound instead of a /z/ sound, you’d need it to be ce instead of s.
Concierge is different. There’s no reason to think that g would not be pronounced.
If anyone knows, I’m curious why lis has an irregular French pronunciation.
I have heard that the “s” is pronounced in “lys” to distinguish it from “lit,” but I have no idea whether that’s true.
I can’t tell you why, but “lis” or “lys” is indeed pronounced [lis]. There are a handful of French words (“fils” is another one) that fit this pattern. As far as I know, the reason is “because”.
I doubt it, given that there’s no attempt to differentiate between other words that sounds the same (like, say “cor” and “corps”, or “cour”, “courre” and “court”).