to pronounce the champagne Moet mow-ett as opposed to Mow-ay and have a ridiculously stupid mini-row about it?

[GetOrf]

Disclaimer - I am not a poncetastic twat. Get that in before you lot accuse me.

At MILs last night, couple of SILs there. My MIL loves champagne, it was a distinct luxury when she was younger and I don't think she bought a bottle until she was in her 40s. Now she is making up for lost time and I always buy her a decent bottle for her birthdays, mothers day etc.

We were talking about different brands, and she was remembering the different ones she has tried, I said that a cheapish one which I had bought from Sainsbos (Charles something) was rated in the Sunday Times as being better than the more recognised brands such as Moet etc.

At which point my SIL laughed scoffingly and said 'I would have thought you would have known that the French don't5 pronounce the t on the end of the word, it is pronounce Mow-AY' (said in full on condescending terms).

I said fuck off dicksplash 'no it is pronounced Mo-ETT, theword is Dutch anyway'

She carried on 'no it's not, champagne is French not dutch, next you will be saying Edam comes from Wales'

She really got on my tits.

I disagree cogito, I hear the consonant (sounds more like a d in a pseudo-American pop song sort of way) and see his lips move to make the consonant too.

Lieins, I think FM is actually saying 'Moet DE Chandon'... surely not. Can I be hearing things..?

in which FM defintely goes for 'Moway ay (et) Chandon'..... hmm.... interesting.

agree Cogito. Hmmm....

'uber' in English just annoys me. What does it add to our cherished language?

indeed. What is the alternative, I wonder....super? (Latin)...meh. Is English just a made up cobbled together melange...?

Perhaps someone told Freddie he had got it wrong. Don't know which version came first. Or perhaps he just pronounced it as the whim took him.

but uber isn't an english word, ie it hasn't been assimilated into the English language like Super- has.
think about it - it's got an umlaut in German, and yo ucan't pronounce it oober without that.
it would be ubber or something.

but yes, we do have lots of English words that would work.
super, over, excessively,

Cogito - I didn't even know YouTube worked in my office! I'll probably get the sack now!

Yes, it's a big old continuum of assimilation. Lots of people do spell it uber though without the umlaut, so maybe it is becoming more assimilated? Over wouldn't though, would it. Hey, this YouTube link is over cool!! But agree, excessively would....

requesting permission to shoot the idiot that introduced 'uber' into English

I wonder who the guilty party is. Is Nietzsche suspect number one? Cos he's brown bread.....

I'm still in the Ee-kay-ah camp and have nearly won the battle with DH to say the same.

My favourites (both heard abroad) are quiche pronounced kwitch-ee and someone in china who had watched some monty python and didn't realise that the reason it's funny in the holy grail when the french guy yells "you eeenglish knnniiggitts" is because knight is pronounced "nite".

The issue of what to call other countries' cities is another can of worms. I know an absolute ponce who says "I'm going to Firenze for the weekend" and always think to myself, in English we say Florence, you're just being a twat. But when Chris Patten tried to make it a political issue by refusing to refer to Beijing and only saying Peking, claiming Peking was the correct pronunciation in English and Beijing was the equivalent of saying ParEE or BartheLOna or FirENze or ROma, everyone including the Chinese were very angry.

Presumably because of the colonial links between us and that pronunciation which they wanted to get away from....? ooh this is all so interesting
Must do some work...

hmm, quite - Germans (or the ones who care) are quite careful about pronouncing Strasbourg the French way, despite the fact that Strassburg (with an Eszett, obviously) is on all the road signs etc. The political considerations are (to some, at least) more important. However, I have no problem with e.g. me saying Paris and the French saying Londres - no worries about anyone marching on either city, or getting all colonial on my arse...

Anyone know about Douwe Egberts?

oncle - "Hey, this YouTube link is over cool!!"
I would go for extra, ultra or mega.

all Latinate though. No nice Germanic words.....I like mega best I think.

Rrrrrrachel234:
I was most perturbed at your correcting me so I looked it up on wiki en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R
and you (being a German, and a French speaker) are right about the guttural R being present in both French and German, and various other languages including Glaswegian, but there is some variation, including regional, and other phonemes of 'R' are also present in both countries. As slf implies, some educated Germans may have pretensions towards saying things in a French way, anyway.

I also looked up 'pizza' because no-one obliged and my Mum wasn't crazy:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza but now I'm hungry.

ooh wow re the short /i/ in pizza, that's very good to know. I too want one now. One of those nice spinach ones with a fried egg in the middle that they have in Pizza Express

Ooh - is that the Florentine or is it the Fiorentino or someone correct me?

LadyClarice - I wouldn't even go there!

We could import the German "geil" for saying something is really cool, if we're over uber. Hey, this YouTube link is horny. Might give people the wrong idea, maybe.

It is that one...what you said skyatnight only last time I had it I rolled the Italian pronunication round in my mouth nicely then when the lady came to take the order I mumbled 'pizzaflorenteenoh' into my menu in a useless way....
Geil....I like it....Freud would definitely approve....

Affengeil