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The word ennui in another thread, with its French or pseudo-French pronunciation, reminds me of a favorite bete-noir of mine, the word envelope which many people insist on pronouncing in half-Franch fashion, with the first syllable sounded with a sort of nasal imitation of French, but the other syllables in English fashion. To me, ahnvelope (rhyming with cantaloupe) is worse than if you just pronounced the whole word in French (to rhyme with well up). I, of course, make the 1st syllable N. This dopey Frenchification is a favorite with the pretentious.
What other misdeeds have you all heard committed on the pure source of English, foreignizations or otherwise, by those who think the language needs a higher tone?
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Carpal Tunnel
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the pure source of English...Run that one by me again, Bob! Is this the same muddy confluence of Latinate, Saxon, Viking, French, Hindi and a thousand other tributatry streams in which I paddle daily? 
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I thought that was one of the glories of modern English is that we go out and find a word we like and make it our own. I didn't know we were polluting the "pure".
P.s. I say ahnvelope; thinking it's a regional thing and not a snotty thing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Bob: I call them Nvelopes. But when in Rome, one does as the Romans do. So I find myself copying what seems to be most wide usage. I used to get kidded a lot about Boston accent, but it has worn off quite a bit, though people here in California ask me after one sentence if I am from Boston. I'm not sure what they notice.wwh
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In reply to:
P.s. I say ahnvelope; thinking it's a regional thing and not a snotty thing.
I feel similarly. I find myself using ON-velope, and N-velope almost equally. As a child, I heard ON-velope more often, but now N-velope is probably more common here in The Shaky Isles, and I probably use it more often than ON-velope, which pronunciation (here at least) long ago lost any connotation of Franglais pretension it may once have had.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I go back and forth between the two pronunciations, too. As I do with route ("root" and "rowt"). Usually I say "root" but in this combination: paper "rowt." Y'all?
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For me route is always a homophone of root. Making it a homophone of rout (= put to flight) definitely sounds as if the speaker comes from the other side of the Atlantic.
Bingley
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Pooh-Bah
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Don't you find that those of us with English as our mother-tongue have a strong tendency to be lazy and/or unadventurous with unfamiliar foreign names?
I, for one, find it bordering on the insulting, that so many of us absolutely refuse to attempt personal names with (to our eyes) strange spellings.
A friend of mine in my student days (only fifteen years ago) was called "Ickie" by all of his contemporaries (he didn't like it, but put up with it) because they wouldn't attempt to say "Iftekhar". It is not a difficult word to pronounce - although when his family came to visit I realised that my own pronunciation of it had been less than perfect. But Iftekhar, himself, was always pleased that I at least made the attempt.
I have friends with Polish and Hungarian names, both of whom suffer in similar ways. "Jakomivcz" looks strange, sure, but it is actually very easy to say, and the person who bears it - proudly - is always very happy to explain how it should be pronounced.
Why does this rudeness continue, I wonder, in this age of increasing international contact?
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on/NYes, I tend to do the same, Max – though mostly it will come out as N-vel-ope. My exception of course, is when it is en-VEL-up, as in: The chocolate pudding I shared with friends on Sunday was enveloped not only in fudge sauce but also creamy custard.  wow
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old hand
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Don't you find that those of us with English as our mother-tongue have a strong tendency to be lazy and/or unadventurous with unfamiliar foreign names?
Yes and no.
I've been reading through my brother's lingustics textbook, and I came across discussions of importing words. Speakers of any language tend to subconsciously know the patterns which are "acceptable" in their language, and often adjust imported words to suit the "rules" of sound which are acceptable.
As an example I offer you "yogurt". This is originally a Turkish word, spelled identically but with a little line over the "g" (this is called "soft g"). This letter is not pronounced in Turkish, but just blurs the "O" and "U" sounds together so it sounds like "yo-oort" - similar to the French pronunciation of their version of the word. English speakers find this a difficult pattern to pronounce, and I guess since the "g" was there anyway (and we didn't know that the symbol above it softens it), we decided to pronounce the g and ended up with "yo-gurt".
This does happen in other languages. When we lived in Italy, my brother Daniel was generally referred to as "Daniele" (dan-ye-leh) because Italians prefer words to end in a vowel sound, and Daniele is the Italian version of his name. Also it seems the Italian word for "click" (as on a computer mouse) is "clic". It is not pronounced with the short "i" - this doesn't exist in Italian - but is prononouned "kleek" - since our letter "i" says "ee" in Italian.
In spite of all this, I like to try and pronounce my friends' ethnic names more or less accurately. I agree that it's annoying that most people don't really try, but I guess I can see why. Some names just don't follow the innate "patterns" which English-speaking people have grown up with. Still - I love having friends from other cultures - and I think we'd go farther at fostering some international understanding with a little effort!
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