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ok, we've got different ideas about outrageous. :)
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Okay, so this isn't a foreign word, but a pet peeve of mine none the less, sort of on the same lines as "with au jus" and "please respond with your RSVP". I used to work in a bank, and customers were always asking for help because they couldn't remember their PIN number.
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Oops. The only reason I know you can't be talking about me is that at least I never forgot mine. I'm allergic to acronyms.
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<i>ATM machine</i> is equally redundant.
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OH MY! I just read the one above about the GESTAPO soup!!!
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About that post above about the waitrress who said the soup was "gestapo" (for gazpacho)--Maybe she was a high school student who'd just learned about the gestapo in history class, and then in her after-school job for the first time heard about this strange soup, and it was too confusing being exposed to these two strange items of knowledge all at once. When I started first grade I came home and told my parents that a girl in my class had a very unusual name that I'd never heard before in my whole life. It was "Liverwurst." (I had also just that week tasted a most unusual squishy soft and smelly lunch meat called "constance.")
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Oh cmt, toooo funny!!! Thanks for sharing that!
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Not exactly foreign or a misunderstanding, but in Australia a particularly prized sort of meat is sold as 'Aged Rump'.
Sometimes I know how it feels.. |
Regarding plurals, does anyone remember the old Wayne and Shuster sketch, "Wipe the Blood Off My Toga"?
A Roman (Wayne) goes into a bar and says "Give me a dry martinus". Bartender (Shuster) replies, "Don't you mean a martini?" Roman replies "If I want two I'll ask for them!" |
Nothing to do with an incorrect pronunciation but..I was in an Italian restaurant in Denver a couple of years ago, big family-style place. The had paper place maps on the table with a map of Italy on it. They showed Napoli in the upper north west part of the country....almost in France.
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that should be place mats, not maps.
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Precious plurals:
"Lingue franche"? I think not. I would probably re-construct my sentence to avoid having to pluralize: "Swahili, like pidgen English, was an African lingua franca." Where a foreign word has been absorbed into our language (e.g. forum) it should be pluralized with an S. (TG epigram: "People who write fora have their heads up their recta") Sloppy misspellings, esp. of foreign foods: Fettuccine (it's a feminine plural, in Italian) Linguine (ditto) I reckon that any NA restaurant unable to spell these basic terms (Fetuccini; fettucine; linguini) probably can't cook the authentic dish either. Odious mispronunciation: Like a fingernail scratching a blackboard, to my ears, is the mispronunciation of "croissant". CROSS-awt? CWOSS-ont? I will not attempt the phonetics of the correct pronunication. But neither of the above comes close. Might not people say simply "crescent roll", when at home in an English-speaking country, if they cannot manage a passable French pronunciation? |
oh no, when I hear "crescent roll" I automatically think of the Pillsbury doughy things that come in a can.
They are NOT croissants.:) Have some pity on those who can't pronounce the French R properly, it's not easy to master, for many English speakers. |
I'm with elaine on "croissant" and other French words. If you never studied French, it's VERY difficult to even come close to a decent pronunciation. (I have enough trouble, and I took many years of French in high school and college.)
Italian, in contrast, seems relatively easy to pronounce once you know the basic rules. (But maybe I'm just blissfully ignorant, since I never studied Italian.) |
Tedgale: Add to that food spelling list a note pointing out how critically important it is to type a double "n" in "penne"! :D
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I can excuse, as can the French I suspect, the mispronounced R. It's the mispronunciation of the rest of the word that grates most.
I forgot to list the worst version: Crah-SAUNT (rhymes with daunt). The T is NOT pronounced in croissant; and the N is just barely whispered. I agree that Italian is much easier than French to pronounce because it has only 7 vowel sounds; only 21 letters overall; and pronunciation is unvarying. I was told that spelling bees are unknown, indeed spelling is not even taught in schools. However I still find the French R easier to produce accurately than either the single or double Italian R |
In response to someone who may still not understand what I mean:
<<Author: Nimrod Date: 05/22/2005, 08:25 pm An English speaker adding an "s" to pluralize a noun of another language is snobbish? How's that? Sounds more like a matter of familiarity than snobbery.>> No, adding an "s" to a genuine singular foreign word to form the plural is not snobbish. It is just Americanizing the plural of a foreign word that is so commonly used in English that it has become part of English. Example: pizza, pizzas. But trying to use a foreign word (e.g., biscotto) when an English one would do, BUT mangling it by using the plural as a singular (e.g., "one biscotti"), and then adding an "s" to the plural when you mean it to be plural (e.g., "two biscottis")is 1. a little pretentious or pseudo-sophisticated, for using the foreign word unnecesarily in the first place, instead of an English word (e.g. biscuit or cookie), and 2. NOT Americanizing, NOT snobbish, NOT sophisticated, and certainly NOT correct, but just plain wrong and odd and illiterate-looking. |
Where I live, if you asked for a "cookie" or a "biscuit" your waiter or the deli counter clerk would ask which one. I'm afraid you'd have to say the actual word "biscotti" if that's what you wanted, regardless of the number. I also think if I wanted just one and asked for a "biscotto" I'd get an "Excuse me?" So like it or not, some things become part of the language, and not always in the correct form.
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Is that bis coat o or bis cot o?
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I think that one should not be too hard on people who mispronounce foreign words. After all, how is one to know how they are pronounced if one never hears them properly pronounced.
Harry Truman, when he came to Washington, had a large vocabulary that he had gained from reading books. However, his pronunciation left much to be desired, since he had not heard many of these words spoken in rural Missouri. ((I)) |
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