That phony-French pronunciation of “lingerie” makes me wince. Similarly, “ingenue” as “ON-je-nu.” If you want to anglicize a word, that’s fine with me. If you want to pronounce it approximately as it is pronounced in the original language, that’s fine, too. But attempting the latter and getting the vowel sounds howlingly wrong is both ignorant and pretentious. It’s a fox paw, that’s what it is.
Ah. Should have previewed. Great minds think alike…
A borderline case of this sort of thing concerns Alex Trebek on Jeopardy. I don’t have my normal WTF attitude toward his efforts to say foreign words properly, even if it is a little hoity-toity. I accept that his Canadian background gives him a little more license to French words as well as his interest in the National Geographic Geography Quiz where proper pronunciations are more in order. So I cut Alex more slack than I do other broadcast types when they lean hard on that affected accent or overly-precise pronunciation.
It’s usually more comedy than horror when that sort of thing happens anyway.
I’m reminded of a local 6 O’clock News show from many years ago, where the lead anchor was from Clarksville, TN, near the Fort Campbell army base on the Kentucky border. There was reasonable news-related activity at Fort Campbell from time to time, but hardly enough to justify the intro to the news show which featured your basic clattering teletype sounds and a super-serious voice-over that went “His beat is the world. Rome, Paris, Cairo, London, New York, Clarksville…” It was hubris to the max and always worth a good snicker.
Ter-rist as in the “Terrists have won”. Then again maybe Bush is talking about people of Earth vs. the aliens.
‘Terrah’ I can forgive, as it just seems to be an accent thing. But I’ve always noticed Bush seems to say just “tear”. “The war on tear”. Maybe that’s just an accent thing too; I’ve run into a few people who pronounce the word error almost like “air”.
- Irish people who pronounce ‘column’ as ‘koll-yume’. Like nails down a blackboard.
- The British non-rhotic intrusive r: ‘drawing’ pronounced ‘dro-ring’ and ‘America-r-is a big country’. Like a clown dancing on my granny’s grave.
Many folks in Oklahoma and Texas pronounce “terror” as “tear” and “mirror” as “mere.”
I have almost gotten used to Ahnuld’s Cal-ee-for-ne-a but for a while that was hard to take.
Mer-kuh still gets me whether it’s Shrub or somebody else.
But one place that probably has as many pronunciations as there are people trying to say it, and over 75% of them are hard to take, is New Orleans. My least favorite is “New Or-leens” followed closely by “New Or-li-uhns” while I’m perfectly happy with “Naw-luns” or “New Aw-luns” but what I hear most locals with some measure of education saying is close to “New Aw-lins.”
If anybody calls the Alabama city “MO-beel” or “Mo-buhl” I know they have nothing to say of interest to me. It’s “Mo-BEEL” if you want to know. And I can even tolerate “MO-BEEL” if there’s equal stress on both syllables. Just not the first by itself.
Oddly enough, I must say, I tend to prefer “Gum-mint” over the obviously better “Guv-er-ment” or even “Guv-urn-ment.” I attribute this to Pogo Possum who had a way with words. 
Oh, man! Mirror. How many ways can you say that word? The one I hate most is “meer-rah” the way Allen Dershowitz would say “joor-rah.”
Meer
Myrrh (Jesus’s birthday present)
Mir-rah
Mir-row
Meer-er (pencil me in for this one).
Just don’t give me any Bone Mirror. I will reject it.
Some asshole where I worked spelled it Night-Mirror. He was a salesman and represented our company to some well-educated people. He had a good stock of jokes, though, and was good with his money in terms of springing for meals and such.
How do *you * pronounce it?
I have no idea what you’re on about. That is the French pronunciation (but with the ‘n’ more intoned than sounded’.
However it is most emphatically not ‘wa la’ or ‘wah lah’ , it is VWA la and it is not
foYER it’s FOY eigh (like weigh). And I hate KEW pon for coupon.
I pronounce it “LAN-zheree”.
Innovative pronunciations of place names doesn’t bother me. I’d feel pretentious if I said “Naw-luns” instead of New Orleans. I’ve never been there, I shouldn’t try to sound like I have.
My hairdresser married an Aussie, and she loves correcting people who ask her about Melbourne. “It’s Melbin.” Okay.
One that bugs me is jew-la-ree, especially in TV ads for jewelry.
No, it’s not. First, “in” in French is a nasalized [E], not [o]. Second, the “ie” ending would be pronounced *, not [e]. Usram’s pronunciation is pretty close, although the middle syllable ought to be more or less dropped.
Some British English can be so genteel:
I don’t like “garaaaahdj” and prefer plain old “garridge”. “Agayne” instead of “aggen” for again also irritates. “Plaaahstic” for plastic is just plain ridiculous, and “sue-per” for super is overdoing it.
Actually ‘on-velope’ used to be the accepted pronunciation in the UK. It seems to be hanging on, especially in older-generation Scots.
The same group always have (to my ears) odd ways of saying apparent/transparent (Ah-pay-rent where I’d say Ah-pah-rent) and apricot (App-ricot where I’d say Ape-ricot). My aunt and her peers use the former version while I and my peers use the latter.
And ‘Wedensday’. Just don’t get me started on wedensday. Every week I go past two whiteboards where that “word” is written up. It drives me nuts although a good friend *has * promised me a whiteboard marker for my birthday. 
PS: I have never heard the guy say it but he appears to be using the British pron. for Wednesday. Cept we are more ‘Wednzday’ without drawing out that middle bit too much.
:: is baffled :: What other way is there to pronounce “super”?
I feel bad saying this, because I realize that no regional dialect is inherently superior or inferior to other regional dialects and all that, but “meer” for “mirror” and “Warshington” for “Washington” both drive me batty.
I agree. My mother insists on pronouncing “suit” as “sYOOt”, and so on. There really is no call for that intrusive Y sound.
As for Wednesday, I almost pronounce the D. It’s almost a half glottal stop, just a kind of acknowledgement that the D is there. We’nz-day. Or We’nz-dee. I can never decide.
Heh - I forgot that most people here pronounce “sue” as “soo”. Come to think of it, so do I. Some English people do say “syooper” for super, and “syoo” for “sue” (in the legal sense, not the girl’s name).
Another one I dislike is “yesterdee”.