• s_s@lemmy.one
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      8 months ago

      French ppl be like “you’re saying the silent letters wrong”

    • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Funny thing is, and someone French please correct me if I’m wrong, a French person learning that expression from a book would be able to just pronounce it correctly. The problem outlined by OP is mainly with the English language

      • gaael@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I can confirm. But most of us are enable to pronounce correctly the many words that come from English like hamburger, youtube or even New York. Imo the problem is a fairly classic one of lacking the oral reference frame for other languages.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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      8 months ago

      Don’t think I ever heard a non-French person pronounce this even remotely close to the real thing, same goes for croissant.

      • aidan@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Because croissant is an English word, a loan word yes, but still an English word. Are you going to say a Japanese person is wrong for pronouncing computer コンピューター?

        • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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          8 months ago

          Are culinary exports really “loan words”? Like the whole world calls a fajita a fajita (with various pronunciations), does that make it a loan word and part of the language or are we just using the original name for it? You see what I mean? I’m genuinely asking I have no idea.

          I don’t know for computer in Japanese but in french it’s got it’s own word (ordinateur), a good example of this would be “weekend” which is integral part of french vocabulary, that I would call a loan word, not sure about the food stuff though.

          • aidan@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Are culinary exports really “loan words”?

            Why not?

            does that make it a loan word and part of the language or are we just using the original name for it?

            I mean, computer like I wrote, is just computer in Japanese. Similarly Tsunami and Honcho are japanese words, loan words, they still refer to their original meaning

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      While we are being pedantic, it’s «hors d’œuvres». But it’s ok, since most people wouldn’t even know where to begin to type such a character.

      It also reminds me the many creative ways English speaking journalists have mangled the name of Denis Villeneuve.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      8 months ago

      They actually use the transliteration of that in Japanese with a similar meaning, but as you might expect the French sounds change a lot when they end up in Japanese pronunciation. Imagine my surprise when I found out that oh-dohburu wasn’t actually a Japanese word originally.

      • aidan@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        To understand certain English words in katakana sometimes you just have to put yourself in the mindset of a racist 💀