I agree with Kerouac - saying "the D'Orsay" just sounds daft to my ears.

I think it must be something that's more common in the US, as I've never heard anyone in the UK referring to the museum in that way.

Incidentally, in French it's never shortened - people always refer to it as the Musée d'Orsay. If you referred to "Orsay" in French, people would assume you were talking about the town in the Ile de France region.

That's OK, Kerouac..or should it have been <b>de</b>Kerouac????

being pedantic can make you temporarily lose site of things...even ones as large as a museum.

I am sorry to have offended anyone. Please feel free to visit Montemate, St. Germanne and the Champ Eliyse all you want.

Intrepid...

Being called a pedant, or pedantic, is considered insulting. ...Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another...

Respect of others, respect of other languages and respect for oneself precludes insults. You obviously can benefit from additional educational refinements. Why does a core group in the U.S. keep up with the push to remain mediocre, regaling in their ignominy, when they have an entire world to investigate and treasure?

Inferiority complexes about certain languages and countries does not give one the added benefit of insult.

kerouac...a pleasure reading your clarifications, in spite of the ever present cowboy mentality that hovers always about these threads, virtually intent on nailing down their unfortunate insecurities.

I'll admit to several things, although being ignorant is not one of them. Being born and raised in the US and not having had a formal class in the French language I had no idea that I was pronouncing it incorrectly. People mispronounce words of foreign origins all the time. I think if the intentions are good, it should be overlooked. I personally said d'Orsay several times in Paris and was never laughed at. I try my best to use the native language of the country I am in and always assume that grammatical errors are being made constantly.

Oh well, at least I tried.

Kerouac:
What about Valerie Giscard d'Estaing (sp?) would they have called him &quot;Estaing&quot; - actually i believe they called with Giscard in the headlines? Or maybe Giscard d'Estaing was his last name?

kerouac, the &quot;Bon&quot; no longer exists! C'est La vie!

et je pense, est-ce qu'il y a les noms De La en place de Du - comme de la Villepin or are all such names masqueline - forming the Du from de + le?

PalQ, Giscard d'Estaing is a special case for other reasons. First of all, Giscard d'Estaing is indeed the complete official last name. But he (the former president) has been called Giscard by the newspapers and everybody else right from the start, because Giscard all by itself is the real family name. Giscard's father &quot;purchased&quot; the &quot;d'Estaing&quot; at some time in the past (I don't know how this is/was done) to have an aura of imaginary nobility. Since everybody knows this, they have been laughing at the family ever since. It probably takes at least 150 years for everybody to forget and to think that the name is authentic.

thanks - guess i had heard that and forgot it - funny he acted like a blueblood as well i think, or had the reputation of being aloof - de Gaulle, did he justifiably use the De or was it Ersatz like Giscard?

&quot;De la&quot; is also in a lot of names :
Jean de la Fontaine is called &quot;La Fontaine&quot;. Georges de la Tour is listed in the dictionary at &quot;La Tour&quot; and the chemist Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier is &quot;Lavoisier&quot;.

Unless one is well schooled in all languages and never misspeaks or misuses prepositions when referring to names or places in India, China, Nigeria, Indonesia, etc., or even just Hungary, Portugal,and Finland, perhaps it would be prudent not to get overly upset about the ignorance of those persons not conversant with the intricacies of any given language.

In the grand schemes of things, the use of D'Orsay is not relevant, but just a pimple on the a$$ of the world. I appreciate that the use was inappropriate but who cares.

Thanks kerouac, always a pleasure to learn these things, wanting to pronounce site names properly seems something to aspire to, if the opportunity presents itself.

Michel, d'Ontario

As the great French philosopher Homer Simpson puts it, &quot;d'Oh!&quot;

The Brits have been mispronouncing French for centuries (i.e. &quot;Fill-it&quot;, &quot;Clare-it&quot;, enunciating the silent &quot;h&quot; or &quot;t&quot; in French words as in the composer &quot;Beez-it&quot;, &quot;au Juice&quot;, etc.). I love listening to books on tape with British narrators. They take cruel delight in murdering the French language.

If calling it &quot;the D'Orsy&quot; ticks off the Frenchies, I'm all for it.

Good to know. I don't know that I've ever said or written d'Orsay (or D'Orsay). But, it's good to know that no one butches any other language. ;) English is particularly well guarded here in Chicago.

thanks everyone for making me laugh.