The One-Upmanship of “Correct” Pronunciation

What is the correct pronunciation of “forte”—FOR-tay or fort? Are you quite certain?

What about niche? Sure of that one too, are you?

What if you're wrong?

Ah, the grownup humiliation of being “nailed” for mispronouncing a word that one has been certain about for one’s entire adult existence! Mispronunciation is the great flattener. Whatever one’s academic or professional achievements, this particular shame nevertheless has the capacity to diminish in an instant all the accomplishments of one’s life. 

But, oh, the glorious position of the corrector! In one victorious and supercilious moment, he can anoint himself as forever being more educated, more sophisticated—indeed, an altogether more-worthy human being than the corrected one!


Let’s talk about words you thought you knew how to pronounce—and see if the world agrees with you. 


A few weeks ago this blog had a post called “Words That Crossed the Pond,” about British and French words that have crept, albeit sometimes imperfectly, into American English. To continue that theme, we would like to discuss words that did not make the journey so well—shall we call them “Words That Drowned in the Pond”? Let’s see if your pronunciation of these words would always have been considered correct.

Sixty or seventy years ago, during the time when America was still the center of the universe, some foreign words were brought from England or the Continent (by such people as had made the Grand Tour*) and casually dropped into conversation as evidence of the speaker’s worldliness.

As New York, Boston, Philadephia, and various other American paradigms of urban culture began to develop their own home-grown versions of European nobility, however, a resistance to foreign pronunciation developed. The dictum of the day was that it was “bad taste” to use the French pronunciation when referring to one’s chauffeur or valet. The preferred pronunciation was SHOW-fer or VAL-it. 

In Emily Post’s 1922 book of etiquette, she addressed form and function in two sentences:

“The valet (pronounced val-et not vallay) is what Beau Brummel called a gentleman’s gentleman. His duties are exactly the same as those of the lady’s maid—except that he does not sew!” [The parentheses are Mrs. Post’s.]

Niche was another word about which a pronouncement was made (pardon the pun):

“French no longer,” said grammarian Alfred H. Holt, in 1937. “Rhyme it with ditch.”

But wait! Beginning in the 1960s, as ordinary people began to travel more, not with Louis Vuitton steamer trunks, on ocean liners, but with backpacks, on planes, the pendulum swung the other way once again. Americans learned how chauffeur, valet,** and niche were pronounced in their original language—and voilà!, it became ignorant to pronounce them in the American way (except for chauffeur, which somehow stayed American).

What about forte (one’s strong point or field of expertise), which we mentioned earlier? When it first arrived in the U.S., it was pronounced FOR-tay. A small but diligent group of protesters submitted that the word should properly be pronounced fort (as in the Alamo), since, in the French, there was no accent aigu over the e. Whoops. They were mostly ignored.

But were they right? Had America stolen the word from France? Or was forte an Italian import, since the word was also used as an Italian musical term? If it were Italian, FOR-tay would be correct. 

Today (at least as of this writing), the FOR-tay crowd seems to have won the day (if not held the fort), and, if you pronounce it fort, even though you are probably correct, you will be considered ignorant. Sigh.

(And how does Ms. Picky pronounce forte? Ms. Picky confesses that she does not have the intestinal fortitude to say FORT in a crowded room—even though she believes it’s correct.)

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*Beginning in the sixteenth century and lasting until the nineteenth, the obligatory tour by the “privileged classes” in America to the Continent, to see what were considered the only really important  cities in the world—Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome. (Most Americans were only vaguely aware of Asia until well into the 20th century, and South America and Africa were not much on their minds, even if on their maps.)


**By this time, the “gentleman’s gentleman” sort of “valet” had mostly become extinct, and the term valet was widely understood only to mean a hotel’s or restaurant’s car jockey. 

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Ms. Picky's Bulletin Board

For WHM:

Ms. Picky will take the bait and address the subject of those two homophones that are, more often than not, misused:

Bate and Bait

Bating is what one does with one’s breath, when one is in a state of suspenseful anticipation. (The word comes from a shortening of the verb abate, and means “to reduce,” or “to lessen in intensity.”)


Baiting is what one does to lure an animal into a trap. One puts some attractive morsel of food into it. The word is often also used metaphorically.
Examples:

The world waited with bated breath while teams of workers attempted to rescue the Chilean miners.


The fisherman retrieved his hook and line, but he had lost his bait.


For LN:

Ms. Picky is as aghast as you are that a certain New York senator with the initials C.S. actually said—on national television—that China was “flaunting safety at every turn.”

Shame on you, C.S. That’s not even one of these iffy pronunciation questions we discussed above; it’s an outright misuse. Didn’t they teach you that at Harvard? 

Flaunt and Flout

Flaunt means to show something off, sometimes even ostentatiously (as in “If you’ve got it, flaunt it”). Flout means to defy, or to show contempt for.

Examples:

She went to the luncheon for the sole purpose of flaunting her Hermès handbag.

He flouted Academy Award tradition by wearing jeans instead of black tie.