[QUOTE=robardin]
…What I think is that a lot of people are misspelling “cachet” as “cache” thinking it’s a Spanish word frequently used in English, like ole or hombre, since they hear “cash-ay” all the time and are more used to dealing with Spanish than French. Never mind that that would mean it should get pronounced “catch-ay” if that were the case; having seen the word “cache” in print and heard “cash-ay” verbally, once the two are linked I can see how it’s hard to unlink.
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FWIW, I thought that “cachet” meant “a stash of stuff”. So maybe that’s part of the confusion. I am familiar with “cache” (pronounced “cash”) from both the military and computer worlds. I’m not sure what I thought that the difference in “cache” and “cachet” were. I never really thought about it.
[QUOTE=BetsQ]
Cache is also used in the term cachepot, which means a decorative pot that you put an aleady potted plant in, as I recall from my days of working at Crate & Barrel. Here’s an example:
IIRC, it was generally pronounced “cash pot.”
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Literally, “hide pot”, and I would pronounce it as “cash poh”, as the “t” isn’t pronounced in French.
FWIW, I’d pronounce “cachet” more like “cash-eh” than “cash-ay”, which just sounds very exaggerated to me. The latter is closer to my pronunciation of the past participle of “to hide”, caché, but even then the accented e isn’t nearly as stressed as the “ay” sound usually is by non-francophone speakers. Perhaps writing it as “cash-ei” would be better… the é is more like the sound in “weigh” than it is like the sound in “say”.
[QUOTE=mnemosyne]
Literally, “hide pot”, and I would pronounce it as “cash poh”, as the “t” isn’t pronounced in French.
FWIW, I’d pronounce “cachet” more like “cash-eh” than “cash-ay”, which just sounds very exaggerated to me. The latter is closer to my pronunciation of the past participle of “to hide”, caché, but even then the accented e isn’t nearly as stressed as the “ay” sound usually is by non-francophone speakers. Perhaps writing it as “cash-ei” would be better… the é is more like the sound in “weigh” than it is like the sound in “say”.
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“Weigh” and “say” have the same sound in my dialect. (Chicago - South Suburbs)
[QUOTE=BetsQ]
Cache is also used in the term cachepot, which means a decorative pot that you put an already potted plant in, as I recall from my days of working at Crate & Barrel.
IIRC, it was generally pronounced “cash pot.”
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At my company, it’s pronounced “cash-poe”… except when I call them “catch-a-poots”.
[QUOTE=mnemosyne]
FWIW, I’d pronounce “cachet” more like “cash-eh” than “cash-ay”, which just sounds very exaggerated to me. The latter is closer to my pronunciation of the past participle of “to hide”, caché, but even then the accented e isn’t nearly as stressed as the “ay” sound usually is by non-francophone speakers. Perhaps writing it as “cash-ei” would be better… the é is more like the sound in “weigh” than it is like the sound in “say”.
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It depends on the dialect. I guess I say “cachet” in a similar way to you ([kaʃɛ], basically, in the International Phonetic Alphabet), while I pronounce “caché” [kaʃe], but in some French dialects – I think it’s the case of Parisian dialects, for example – the last vowel in these two words tends to sound the same. In any case, you’re correct that the ‘é’ vowel doesn’t really sound like ‘ay’ anyway.
I think it’s pretty common in military usage. In fact I have never heard it mispronounced by anyone other than military. There is no point in trying to correct it, there’s a sense of mulish pride involved now.
I wonder if it is useful, because even though it is mispronounced, it is not similar to any other word in common usage in a military context? There are a couple other words like that, they escape me right at the moment. Damnit, now that is going to bug me.