Feb 082010
There are some funny things that go on with the pronunciation of some French words in British-‘merican. Over here, I park my car in a garAGE and watch balLET and we eat fish filLET. It all sounds a touch poncey and affected to my British ear – though perfectly fine in ‘merican, of course. For more see here.
The recent snow storms meant flights to the US were cancelled to so at 3 am US time I called home to tell my husband that British Airways would be putting me up at the Renaissance Hotel in London. The poor guy dutifully did searches for a hotel called the René Sans.
Hhhhhaaa ha,
I loved this post – at the moment am deep in prep phase for something I’m doing in Spring and reading all about the French influences (at various stages) on the dynamic, changing English language.
Rene SANS.
:-)…ta, for the giggle.
Oh this is great. Love the link to many other instances of French pronounced differently in BR and US English too. Different sounds, different lives to words : renaissance indeed!
It was amazing for me to learn that my pronunciation of garage – GARRidge – was perceived as somewhat high-falutin’ by my US listeners, whereas I of course thought the same of their guh-RAJ.
I never did work out why all two syllable “French” words in English had the stress on the second syllable in the US. cruh-SONT being a particular favourite of mine. (Though my all time most amusing “US-ised-French” pronunciation is of George Ber-NARD Shaw)