A weird pet peeve I have

[disykat]

I have a friend named Nguyen. He has always preferred to have it spoken as "Noon" in English. He dislikes having people pronounce it all sorts of wacky ways trying to get it right.

A lot of words we have kind of "Americanized" here and personally I think that's probably better than butchering the original pronunciation. My sister (who also speaks some French) criticizes the way I say croissant, but I'm saying it the standard Americanized way IMO. (rough approximations here but basically saying I'm cruh-sant vs trying to correctly say kwah-sah.) I've even googled and played the American pronunciation for her, so I know I'm in the ballpark. To me, she's putting it out there that she speaks French and she can sort of get away with that, because she does, but IMO it's weird for me to do it because I don't!

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

This post reminded me of an old SNL skit

I remember seeing this skit when it was new.... this many years later that was the first thing that came to mind when I saw that first post.

 

[georgina]

I remember seeing this skit when it was new.... this many years later that was the first thing that came to mind when I saw that first post.

Clearly it made an impression on me as I still remembered it. Bob KOST-AS!

 

[SirDuff]

I have this issue saying Buenos Aires. I cannot say it without it coming out like I'm trying to put on a Spanish accent. Don't know why. I annoy myself with this.

 

[Moliphino]

I have a friend named Nguyen. He has always preferred to have it spoken as "Noon" in English. He dislikes having people pronounce it all sorts of wacky ways trying to get it right.

I thought it was pronounced like "win" (or at least, that's about as close as most Americans can get).