To ask how to pronounce croissant without sounding like a twat?

[Hoppinggreen]

So how do you do it?
I know how to say it properly as I speak reasonable French but I wonder if I sound like a pretentious twat. With close friends and family I get round it by doing it in an over exaggerated ironic way but how would I order one when out or how would I offer one to a casual acquaintance?
And as for Pain au Chocolat - I daren't even go there!!

Isn't it Mwet rather than Moay as he was Dutch?

I say cruh-sont.
Panoshockola.
Choritso.
Pie-Ella.
Never had to ask for Mille feuille or Moët, don't know for the first, but Mwet for the second?

The first time I ordered a croissant, I said it as crow-iss-ant. I wasn't the best at English, nevermind French, and had only recently moved over, so I was concentrating too hard on the pronunciation to realise it wasn't an English word at all!

I lived in Paris with my mum for a year from 2.5 to 3.5, and when we there I refused to speak English and corrected my mum's grammar, so I probably learned to speak French more fluently, more words etc than at 2.5 I would have known in English. As soon as we went home (Leeds) I wouldn't speak it though, although my mum did try to teach me a bit at home before I started lessons at middle school at 9.

My mum's partner when we came home for a while was Egyptian but had been educated at a French speaking school in Cairo, so he tended to mix English and French words in the same sentence, or pronounce things in a more French way.

More than 40 years later, I still pronounce things in what I think is a French way (though I'm probably mangling the words horribly) - it's not a conscious thing, it would feel odd to try and pronounce words in a different way to how I learned them.

In pain au chocolat I never really heard the au, I think it was all run together so more like "pain chocolat" or if the au is there it's all really quick (maybe a Parisian thing?)

I usually pronounce it "cwass-on". But there's no call for me to say it in non-urban Australia.
I did buy some GF pains au chocolat the other week but they weren't called that; can't remember what they were called though!

I'd like to throw crêpe into the mix. I remember being in a French restaurant in the UK once with family, and my brother loudly pronouncing that it was pronounced "crap". My dad (a linguistics lecturer), wasn't with us at the time or he'd have squashed my brother's pomposity - so I told him how it should be pronounced. His gf at the time then whinged that it shouldn't be written in French anyway, the place was in England and we were all English.
This is one of the reasons I don't bother to talk to him now (bigoted ignorance) - and she's long gone so not my concern any more.

Pan-er-Choc works well or, as DS says, Chocolate Bread.

You should hear him count in French une, der, twat...

crwasson I think.

I always try to pronounce words correctly, as well as people's names!

Sauvingnon Blanc and Soave regularly have me cringing (perhaps I should drink less wine )

I find if you say 'please' afterwards you can kind of rush through it, while still saying it properly, and avoid looking like a twat: "cwassontplease"

Is Soave pronounced Swaaahvay ? I'm never sure.

paella is something I really like but won't ask for because I'm too embarrassed to pronounce it. I wanted the new chorizo sub yesterday but thought "better not" thinking about it there's a lot of food I avoid because I don't want to say the word either for fear of saying it wrong or for the fear of sounding like a pretentious twat

In case anyone's interested... the oi in pretty much any word in French (apart from oignon) makes a wa sound, and the t at the end is silent. Both standard French pronunciation rules I teach my 7 year olds in French class :-)
That's why it's crwass on with a soft n, but of course the majority of English people can't do a French r so either miss it out or use an English one. English children who have learnt French orally from a young age eg 4,5,6 like the ones in my classes do a beautiful French r on the other hand.

I think it does sound a bit pretentious to say it in a really French way with a bit of an accent, if you aren't speaking French. Cwasson would be fine or cwassont as long as you say it in an English accent (but not a strong cockney accent like Del Boy).

As far as I know from my training in linguistics (now who sounds pretentious!) French pronounce 'oi' as 'a' so it's 'kwa-so' (making the French nasal sound at the end of 'o'. No idea about chipotle although I heard someone recently serving in a grill restaurant call it 'chi-pot-lay'. My DH who speaks Spanish insists on chorizo being 'cho-ree-tho' but that does sound a bit faffy.

The other one I struggle with is pizza / Prezzo / piazza / Zizzi. Everone says 'peet-sa' for pizza and 'pee-at-sa' for piazzo so why do people pronounce Prezzo and Zizzi as 'pre-zo' and 'zi-zi' instead of 'pret-zo' and 'zit-zi'???

You say "croissant". Isn't that obvious ?

I tried to order a baguette in the bakery, I asked several times. Each time l was met with a blank stare. Finally l pointed at them. "oh..." said the lady "you mean a FRENCH STICK?"

aga that is hilarious. I had to look at lots of them whilst on the page. I like this one

chargus

I do say Pret - so for Prezzo.

I say "cross ont" and "pan o chocolar"

But also who cares how you say it, I'm sure no one thinks you sound like a twat IRL!

My MIL once told us she was serving manjee towts (mange touts) with the roast.
She mis-heard me saying 'drinks and canapes' and said 'can o peas? - why on earth would they give you that?' So of course in our house now they're called 'can-o-peas'.

Should have explained - the 'manjee' rhymed with 'man'.

Love the manjee towts :)

I smiled when I overheard an older couple admiring the GILLETS on sale in Lidl.

Crosson for me, trying to sound as unpretentious as I can, but probably incorrect!

I was offered a taster of a wine from the 'Cog-nack' region in the liquor store the other day...

...before i knew it, I'd spat out at the chap the normal pronunciation and then spent 5 mins chatting to him coz I felt bad.

In my defence DH (who speaks not a word of French) did ask as we left "did he say COG-nack just then ?"