Words I Don't Know How To Pronounce..

Ennui - for a very long time I pronounced it en-you-eye. A friend of mine who teaches modern foreign languages hooted with delight once she realised I was actually meaning on-we.

nidifugous. I wanted to say it about 2 tiny balls of fluff following momma partridge today. Fluffed it.

Not a mispronounced word but an ex-colleague would say "a blessing in the skies" and used the expression fairly regularly. No one had the heart to tell her it's "a blessing in disguise".

Quinoa : aways called ir kwin-o-ah then found it should be keenwa. But then someone said the second was pretentious so now i dont know what to say!

Also never know whether charade is shar-aad or shar-aid

Pronunciation depends very much on which part of the UK you come from- and whether influenced more by Norman or Danish, etc. And of course creeping americanisms via t'internet, etc.

And of course the pronunciation of French words can seem a bit strange to those of us who are native French speakers. Like 'ennui' 'ménage à trois' laisser-faire attitude' 'cul-de-sac' 'genre' 'Lieutenant' and many more.

image.slidesharecdn.com/pronunciationpoem-090823153655-phpapp02/95/pronunciation-poem-1-728.jpg?cb=1251041824

great practise, especially for us furiners

Is it lefftenant or liewtenant, granjura?

Good dictionaries give pronunciations as well as spellings. End of problem. Except that there's often a choice.

Left-tenant in English English, lyoo-tenant in American English.

I don't know- you tell me- English is not my language. Apparently it is leftenant if British and Lieutenant if American.

Or, more probably , Loo-tenant.

Posts crossed-

and schedule or skedule

herb or (h)erb

tomatoe or tomaitoe

Yes, definitely Loo-tenant. And Aloo-mimum rather than aluminium, as we pronounce it (but I think there's a reason for that if anyone wants to google it!)

Gettingonabit, I believe the second one is American.
i think if we only read about things and don't hear about them we are likely to mentally pronounce them how our brain sees them. For many years I thought the shrub cotoneaster was cotton easter, until I heard a gardener on television talking about it. I would have thought the words you cite, GJ, were ones most people would get right. I think you brought up the genre example before. With those examples you give I think we actually hear them fairly often so I'm surprised to hear that our pronunciation of them would sound strange to French speakers. It is, of course, possible we don't go out of our way to use a gutteral 'R' but that would sound very forced.

Aren't lew tenant and sharade both from the USA?
I thought halcyon was halycon for years ... More a reading error!
Also unsure about segue and Segway.
I always thought aspar tame ee but it seems to be as par tame.
As for the 7th planet from the sun, who changed the pronunciation and when? I just gradually became aware that it was no longer 'rude'.
I tried out kee-wa in Holland and Barratt, felt pretentious but the assistant seemed OK with that! They didn't have what I wanted so I'm back to couscous anyway.
Pet annoyance: lingerie pronounced with 'o' instead of the correct 'a' .

'Erb (herb) is an American pronunciation too isn't it?

I was brought up to say assume, but more and more these days people seem to pronounce it ashume. I don't think this can be right otherwise it would be conshume. Wouldn't it?

Apologies for repeating what other posters have already said. Previous post took ages. My iPad won't let me spell things as I want to, it frustrates my efforts to get a lot of people's board names right too.?

I believe Segway (which is, I think, those wheelie things) and segue (does that mean to slid / sidle into?) are both pronounced segway.

Segue= 3rd person singular of verb to follow in Italian, but we use it as a noun. Pronounced as Segway.

So how do you say cotoneaster if not cotton Easter then.?

Quinoa is a funny one-if you say "kinowah" you're an unsophisticated pleb, and if you say "keenwah" you're a pretentious k..b.

I remember thinking myself very sophisticated once in London looking for Bowshom (Beachamp) Place. Apparently it's Beecham. .

And, yes, those gutteral French 'r's sound a bit..try hard??

No sorry. Wrong. We use as a verb as well as a noun . Time for bed.

Cot oney aster

belladonna I'm still not getting segue. So: Segway-a wheelie thing. Segue: he/she follows? What's the noun? A..following?