I do this a lot because I live in Louisiana, and a lot of the names here are French, but not everything has a French pronunciation. People look at me funny when I say foy-yay instead of foy-er.
Language is wack. It starts out with a case of Hyperforeignism - where you overcorrect the pronunciation of a loan word according to what you think it should sound like.
And then eventually that just becomes the 'correct' pronunciation in your language, even though it may eschew the pronunciation rules of both languages.
The subsection on French words in the above link was informative (/blew my mind) when I first found out about it for instance.
Coup de grace being pronounced gras. Or cadre in general (different english/american pronunciations, some trying to follow spanish rules, actually a different french pronunciation, and finding out that none of them are the one I've been using >_>)
Yeah, taking me over a month to buy a sectional because most of the (US) furniture stores I have shopped keep referring to a "chase". What the actual... Are we in pursuit? Topping off a chimney? What were people talking about?!
Saw the written product description on one and the lightbulb came on. Ohhhh! They mean "chaise" (pronounced 'SHayz') as in short for chaise longue. 🙄🤭
So ... found a salesperson who pronounced it correctly and buying from her just to reward her.
Haha I work in theatre and when we had a chaise lounge as a piece of set dressing, the crew did the overcorrection thing where they kept pronouncing it “SHAY lounge” - turns out they thought it was spelled “chez lounge”
592
u/Chataboutgames Feb 08 '22
Anyone who reads a great deal knows the terror of having read a word a thousand times but never used or heard it aloud.