What is the difference in pronounciation between those words? I don’t hear them spoken much, so I can’t guess.
I always pronounce them the same.
As far as I know, there’s no audible difference in the words. They’re loanwords from French which likes to do things like that. Another less well-known example is brunette/brunet. I’m a brunet and my sister is a brunette.
(But I, like many other progressive people, wouldn’t bat an eye if you chose one gendered form and used it without exception.)
I wold agree that in spoken form there is no difference, as I cannot think of an example where you would not know the sex of the person referred to in the sentence you were using it.
A gay couple? (If you don’t know the speaker is gay)
Both of them are pronounced fee-YON-say.
I’m guessing that people in the US do what they normally do to French loan words, which is to emphasize the final syllable?
In French, they’re pronounced the same, but you can tell the difference from the article/pronoun - mon fiancé but ma fiancée. English doesn’t have this helpful feature, so I guess you have to rely on context to determine the gender - if you need to. After all, the word “spouse” isn’t gendered, and it doesn’t seem to cause a great problem, even where gay couples are involved.
Do most Americans do that? I’ve always heard it pronounced as you wrote it, and yeah, same for both genders.
The pattern holds for other words, but apparently not for this one. I do hear it when an American is affecting a French accent, though.
I’ve always heard the accent on the second syllable.
fee-YON-say. Both times.
Agreed.+