Actually (and bizarrely?) a lot of people who aren’t French pronounce French words in an attempt at a French accent (eg ambience). I’m pretty sure that the French don’t pronounce English words in an English accent.
I think what we’ve got is a right old pot-pourri. As far as I know, many froggies pronounce le weekend, for example, pretty much borrowing the English pronunciation.
My all time favourite has to be the cogniscenti who pronounce Munich as Munichhhhh (rather than Munchen - with umlaut) for authenticity!
Reminds of the joke about the British football fan who thought that Borussia Moenchengladbach versus Borussia Dortmund was a derby match.
Excalibre
I see it more as a question of accuracy and never pronounce words or phrases correctly to show off. I didn’t fly to work today, I drove. Just telling like it is.
Most people pronounce “mischievous” as “mis-chee-vee-us.” So what, that doesn’t make it right.
“No love was lost between them” actually means they love each other a lot - think about it! All their love for each other was still there, so none had been lost.
It comes from the original Babes in the Woods* folk tale and describes how much the two siblings love each other.
So far as I know, this pronunciation is the accepted Irish one.
Imasquare
Actually (and bizarrely?) a lot of people who aren’t French pronounce French words in an attempt at a French accent (eg ambience). I’m pretty sure that the French don’t pronounce English words in an English accent.
What do you call someone who can speak three languages?
Trilingual.
What do you call someone who can only speak one language?
American.
roger thornhill
That may very well be. I’ll bet many Americans would say the same thing. But they’d be wrong.
“Wrong”? Come now.
Okay, if “wrong” has such a negative connotation, let’s just say “inaccurate.”
I think you mean “conservatives.”
[sub]bolding is mine[/sub]
"near miss"
If you nearly miss someone, you have hit them.
**“I hope my application passes the mustard.” **
passes muster
And here’s one I was guilty of as a kid: Chester drawers instead of chest of drawers. I hear it all the time.
No, Marge, I mean liberals - American style.
So what does make it right?
You claim that you’re not trying to show off, but when you mispronounce “forte” in order to give it a French pronunciation, your purpose is clear. “Forte” as an Italian word, used in music, has no doubt influenced the pronunciation of “forte” as in strength. But the fact is that the English word “forte”, as in strength, is pronounced with two syllables. I say “the fact” because the only criterion that can be used to determine a word’s pronunciation is how the speakers of the language pronounce it. You can try to advance other criteria, but I promise you that I will manage to demonstrate why each one is flawed.
The pronunciation you use is really only used by those attempting the sort of excruciatingly correct grammar that comes not from any actual facts about the nature of the language but only from the careful cultivation of varietal differences done in order to emphasize economic status or educational achievement. You may claim that you’re not trying to “show off”, but you would pronounce the word as native English speakers pronounce it otherwise.
Hmm. I’ve had these discussions before on here. And in fact, I inevitably win. Nonetheless, I find them dull.
That’s an example in which I explained why there are two correct pronunciations of the word “nuclear” and bravely fought off all attackers. Much of the reasoning will be the same, and it seems a waste for me to repeat it over and over. Take a look through my posts, if you like.
The liberals are not the rednecks in the States. The conservatives are the ones with the shotguns, the big belt buckles, and the “Vote Bush” bumper stickers on their enormous pickup trucks.
The liberals are the vegetarian tree-huggers who want to save the planet.
[sub]Yeah, I’m stereotyping[/sub]
Excalibre
No. First of all I’m not a conformist. Second, there are other people(native English speakers) who pronounce "mischievous’ for example as “mis-chi-vus.” It’s not just me. There is no “i” or “e” or “y” or otherwise any letter that would produce an “ee” sound between the “v” and “o”.
Excalibre, will you please break down the word “ain’t” into the two words which form the contraction?
I once chipped a tooth listening to a voice mail in which a coworker (customer? I forget…) used that word about three times in five sentences…
You seem to be under the misapprehension that somehow writing is sort of the “primary” or core form of language, when in actuality writing developed as a mechanism to record speech. Much as we pronounce many words in ways totally at odds with their spelling (Wednesday, anyone?) the insertion of an epenthetic vowel into “mischievous” is not surprising at all; comparison to many other words (“previous”, “devious”, etc.) demonstrates that “vious” is far more common a word ending than “vous” - which is an explanation for why people inserted that extra vowel. But it doesn’t really matter in the end, since no one pronounces English words as they are spelled, and if you decided to start doing so, you’d become incomprehensible. There’s nothing “special” about spellings - when they poorly reflect a word’s pronunciation, it should be regarded as a sign that our writing system is flawed, not our pronunciations. After all, it’s not as though God handed Moses a copy of the OED to be used as a pronunciation key until Judgment Day. Our spellings are simply the conventions we use to capture speech on paper.
“Am not”. Isn’t this common knowledge?
Marge, I’m deliberately subverting the accepted order of things. It is one of my great and abiding beliefs (adumbrated ad nauseam here by not only me but other Brits) that US liberals are about as pink as Genghis Khan or Maggie Thatcher.
They loves 'em their guns especially.
Hmm–I’m really not sure I believe you. I think you’d know just what I meant, and I think you’d know just what I meant if I said, “I couldn’t care less about Madonna.”
If you pretended that you didn’t understand in order to score points against me or something like that–well, I couldn’t care less if people want to make their own comprehension of language difficult, so have at it!
Me, I think idioms are great, and attempts to psychoanalyze idioms, cross-examine them, catch them in a contradiction before the jury, falsify them, are all the results of the sort of superstitious nonsense propagated by one too many insecure English teachers.
Daniel