I don’t think Americans think about the French at all when they’re pronouncing “filet.”
It’s a friendly jab. The British OP basically comes down to “Why do Americans pronounce X funny?” My point is that the fine folks of Great Britain pronounce things “funny”, too. Very much correct and proper, mind you – but nevertheless “funny” from an American point of view.
I agree with you … hence the 
:shrug:
For me, “fileting” rhymes with “slaying”. I’m comfortable with the fact that this pronunciation sounds ridiculous to plenty of English speakers. Pull back the lens enough, and we can see it’s a yoke all humans wear.
Yes, indeed. This is the crux of it all.
(warning below – I don’t feel like invoking IPA symbols here )
Virtually all Americans would pronounce both the same – you’ll Americans say either “NO-truh DAME” or the somewhat less frequent variant “NOTE-er DAME”.
Pronouncing the name of the French cathedral as in French may very occaisionally be heard from Americans, but in almost all contexts it will be an affectation (i.e. something is meant to be conveyed besides merely the name of the cathedral).
Well, bordelond did say:
Maybe I’m misreading his post, but it seems to me that he believes the American pronounciation to be more “Gallic”.
Check that same dictionary for the one-L spelling variant “filet”.
The Oxford dictionary is online now … here’s a link to the “filet” entry. Note that the “World English” option is selected at top right (as opposed to “U.S. English”). Nevertheless, the pronunciations are given as such:
ummmmm… they’re appetizers. What do you plan to start with, dessert?
The American pronunciation of one-L “filet” IS more Gallic than the British pronounciation of two-L “fillet”. At least IMHO. But remember, it’s a degree comparison – I am very much aware that French “filet” is pronounced differently from American “filet”.
It’s not just common words that get this treatment. “Renault” and “Peugeot” are pronounced with a second-syllable accent in the US and a first-syllable accent in the UK. Both are probably very un-French. Note that the advertising for both reflects local pronunciations.
(And don’t get me started on “Adidas”…)
Only when getting a blowjob.
Whilst we’re doing cars, lets not forget Citroën. I don’t know about Americans, but Brits seem to forget about the ¨over the ‘e’ and say “Citron”. Not that it is actually a French word, but it is still a complete disregard for the “proper” pronunciation of a rather common word/name.
Americans generally have very little opportunity to pronounce “Citroen,” but when they do, it’s three syllables.
Not so much as “foregt about” the diacritic, more “don’t know what to do with it”. We’re vaguely aware that German uses those funny little dots over the letter to signify umlaut, which involves modifying the vowel in some mysterious way… so I guess we kind of gloss over that “oë” with a vaguely French-sounding vowel. In everyday speech it just gets reduced to a schwa, since it’s unstressed. Of course, the diacritic means something different in French.
Anyway, we’re getting into the question again of how people should pronounce foreign words. It would sound silly if Brits went around trying to pronounce Renault and Citroen the way Frnech people do. Some of the sounds involved do not exist in English, like the R in Renault.
A Frenchman started the Adidas brand name. His name was pronounced A-di-da’, but the shoes have always been pronounced A-di’-das, at least here in the USA.
But Brits deal just fine with diaeresis at other times. I’ve never heard someone pronounce Chloë is “klow” yet. Just for this one people seem to have noticed, which I find weird.
Quite a few people still write naïve as well.
- The founder was German
- He didn’t pronounce it with a silent S
Right, his name was actually Adi Dassler, so Adidas is almost like a portmanteau word. It’s probably true, however, that he didn’t intend it to be pronounced with stress on the middle syllable, à la Run-DMC. (I do think Brits - or some of them - pronounce it with stress on the first syllable, btw).
A few years back there was a guru who went by the name Adi Da. He kept changing names, but I think that was the name he kept the longest. I think it rhymes with “la-dee-dah.”
The potential for wordplay there is remarkable.
Yep - in the UK it’s pronounced AH-dee-dass, as opposed to the American uh-DEE-duss.
I think a fair few Brits pronounce it like me, with no real stress on any syllable. ah-dee-dass. Same stress everywhere.
How do the Brits pronounce Häagen Dazs then?
Actually, the serious and interesting point there (as someone alluded to upstream) is that I could pronounce the orthographic bundle “filet” as “gnordilyglop”–in my take of the orthography. If I were a master fish gnordiglopalist, the word – sonically – would spread as the correct pronunciation of my special way of what benighted people used to call filleting or fileting as discussed above.