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how does one say "penchant" and "homage"?

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NinaJenson

Definitely the 'faux-french' way, according to the pronounciation guide following the words in my Oxford dictionary, that's how they should be pronounced too. And, as a matter of interest, DO most other people say noo-gar, or 'nuggit'? I say the former but most of my friends are convinced it's the latter :|

You might as well have asked whether we say 'house' or 'toilet', for how ambiguous that was.

'Nougat' is pronounced 'noo-gaa'; 'nugget' is pronounced 'nuh-gut'. Conflating the two would be imbecilic: they're not even homophones, let alone homonyms.

Reply 61

halátnost

Profesh

what he said. but it bothers me to a lesser extent.

how do you pronounce 'pretentious' by the way? My friends say pre-ten-shis, but I say Pro-fesh.

:wink:

Reply 62

Profesh

halátnost

what he said. but it bothers me to a lesser extent.

how do you pronounce 'pretentious' by the way? My friends say pre-ten-shis, but I say Pro-fesh.

:wink:

'Ek-sen-trik'. Or 'oss-ten-tay-shus'. Or 'ped-an-tik'.

Reply 63

Seanisonfire

'pern-sheeearrrrrrnt'

'hooooom-raaaaaaaaaarge'

:cool:

Reply 64

halátnost

Profesh

'Ek-sen-trik'. Or 'oss-ten-tay-shus'. Or 'ped-an-tik'.

You are all of these things of course, but they are apart from pretension a mon avis. Except ostentation (I say pedantically). Eccentric yes, but one can be eccentric without pretentiousness. You, for instance, are both eccentric and pretentious. And ostentatious and pedantic. An eccentric, pretensious, ostentatious pedant.

Still, I do like you and everything. Although I much preferred the Profesh-in-the-pub picture. Sigh.

Reply 65

Profesh

halátnost

Still, I do like you and everything. Although I much preferred the Profesh-in-the-pub picture. Sigh.

If I can find a picture of myself in similar circumstances taken more recently than two years ago, I'll be sure to upload it.

Reply 66

halátnost

Profesh

If I can find a picture of myself in similar circumstances taken more recently than two years ago, I'll be sure to upload it.

Wonderful.

If not, then for me, you could orchestrate a similar Profesh-in-the-pub scenario, I guess it wouldn't be so difficult to re-enact. Although I do understand that it is difficult for you to lead a normal life now, what with the paparazzi so consistently ravenous and all. This is what happens you see. People occasionally wrongly believe that genius is contagious. Batter them down with a sharpened hyphen and fire full stops at them from a colon-barrelled gun! I'll keep a look out for the usurping picture. :smile:

Reply 67

undercover agent

i say pen-chont and hom-age (rhymes with fromage but does not omit the sound of the 'h' as it would in faux-french)

BUT IM JUST WEIRD

Reply 68

Segat1

ponchon
oh-mage
noo-gar

I also say double-entendre as dooble-ontondre not dubble entondrah.

This reminds me of laughing at the idiots on the train in Germany when they announced they were about an hour out of "Munchin" i.e. München. Brill

i also recall trying to understand what a furniture sales man meant by a chase lounge. I figured out he mean chaise longue - utter ********.

I also nearly bought perfume with my mum from a girl in a shop calling Christian Dior "Christian Dwar". It's now a family joke.

So yeah, I'm of the opinion that you should pronouce the word properly. Otherwise I'm just gonna laugh at you. Do some research, people!

Reply 69

fuglyduckling

Homage - always pronounce it in its anglicised form; we have plenty of words ending in -age so it is quite natural to do so.

Penchant - would tend to avoid this in spoken language because I feel it'd be wrong to treat the word as an English one and faux French pronunciation sounds awful, especially sandwiched between two English words. There are PLENTY of ways to paraphrase.

Reply 70

xxxchrisxxx

Joanna May

I have honestly never heard anyone say "pen-shent" and would probably mock someone forever if they did.

It's not faux French, it's real French.

you'd mock someone who says "pen-shent" just because you've never heard of it? you sound like a upperclass wannabe hillbilly snob. an ignorant one at that as well.

edit: i may have touched some major posh-wannabe-knowitall-17yrolds nerves with this post. brilliant.

Reply 71

miss_world

I'd say hom-ij and pen-shant rather than om-aje or ponshon. Pronouncing it the latter way just smacks of pretention. We've borrowed many words from french and for the most part we don't pronounce them in the french way (with the exception of niche, cliché etc) so it's perfectly natural to anglicise them.

Reply 72

xxxchrisxxx

Segat1

what kind of research have you done then?

Reply 73

halátnost

Segat1

Snobby much?

I agree with xxchrisxx on this, I do usually pronounce them in the French way but ffs, how sad is your family if they're wetting themselves like the girl from the Exorcist just over the fact a girl in a shop pronounced something wrong.

Bloody hell.

Reply 74

Segat1

Well, I spend a lot of time presenting to large groups of people in a corporate environment, and I think it's worth finding out how to pronounce words correctly, especially considering the audience. If I say a word in an American way e.g. router which they tend to say as "rowter" rather than "rooter" which is preferred in the UK, to a UK audience, then it tends to get people's backs up, and alienates you from the audience.

There's pronounciation guides in the OED, on websites (careful - as someone pointed out, they're often American based e.g. neutron - nootrawn) and just asking someone. Additionally, where we borrow from a language where there isn't a equivalent in English then it makes sense to say that word in its original language where possible. E.g. Schadenfreude is a brilliant word, and if someone said to me "shaddenfrood" then I'd be wondering what the hell you were talking about.

Reply 75

Segat1

halátnost

Well no not really. I don't think I'm snobby, I just enjoy language and knowling how to pronounce things correctly. Come on, Dwar is LOL.

Reply 76

Jangrafess

Penchant - "po-tay-toe farm"

Homage - "Boo-ka-rest."

Reply 77

halátnost

Segat1

Well no not really. I don't think I'm snobby, I just enjoy language and knowling how to pronounce things correctly. Come on, Dwar is LOL.

As do I like to pronounce things correctly...and yeah that is pretty funny...(tbh, I can't see how she got the Dwar sound from those combination of letters!)...just your initial post was a little irate. Besides, some pronunciations are ambiguous, and X, Y and Z won't pronounce them all exactly the same. This doesn't bother me, as long as you can understand what they are saying. Although I appreciate the effort you go to.

Reply 78

</gibberish>

Like that:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?pencha01.wav=penchant
I'd feel pretentious saying 'ponchon'.

Reply 79

Segat1

ChrisRH

Like that:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?pencha01.wav=penchant
I'd really feel quite pretentious saying 'ponchon'.

If you don't feel comfy then say "I'm really into trains" or "I'm really interested in trains" or "He has a fetish for fatties". Also, say "I'm paying tribute to..." instead of homage.