Thursday, July 30, 2009

Tomato

Fed up with croissant, entendre, je ne sais quoi, etc. I kill myself trying to pronounce them correctly. I'm not being a stupid, uneducated American devoid of extra-language skills. I've semi-silently listened to all of you mispronounce harakiri (Harry Cary), kamikaze (Comma Cause-ie), and karate (KUH-RAW-TEE) for many years. But if the French pronunciations are required, then all languages should be. Nuff sed.

Not nearly enough it turns out...just kidding. I just feel really silly saying croissant. I say it 'crescent' and feel good about it. No need to get silly and demand all the strange diphthongs and fancy endings foreign to English. Unfortunately, Japanese is easier to pronounce since they don't even use all of the sounds English uses. When using a subset of sounds, it seems like there would be an easier road to pronunciation perfection.

No comments: