Bolero

[millymollyminging]

I listen to audio books and bizarrely the last two both had the word bolero in them. As an item of clothing. In both cases they were pronounced Bol-aero, like the composition by Ravel that won Torvill and Dean their gold medal.

It’s Bol-er-o if it’s a bloody jacket!!

Rant over.

Shrugs came much later. Also shrugs are generally made of soft or knitted fabric but a bolero is a structured tailored garment.

I'm with OP. It's pronounced boll uh ro. Ravel's music is Boll air ro.

Ditto.

I agree with you OP

oh but are the ballet tops not called ballet wraps?

Agree with you @millymollyminging , in my hearing the jacket has only ever been boler-o

I thought this was going to allow me to moan about how Torville and Dean destroyed one of my defining childhood memories by teaching random celebs with 12 weeks ice skating experience to butcher Bolero every year. Now Ive got it off my chest, ill leave you to it.

In the US (I'm American), they are both pronounced the same (as in the dance) and always have been. It's odd to me to think they might be pronounce differently since the garment name derives from the dance.

It may well have been but a bolero is an open jacket.

That's what I thought but I didn't do ballet. Ballet wraps were fashionable once but I can't remember when.

Speaking of wraps, there's a fast food restaurant near me that advertises 'DONER WARPS'.

BOLL-ero and bol-air-o. My mum insists the jacket is a BOLLero but it just makes me enraged, sounds so pompous.

They were just called Ballet cardigans at my dance school. We knew that meant a pink wrap around cardigan. We also had to have a tap cardigan, which was the same but in white.

It's not pompous, your mum is absolutely right.

But why in the world would the dance and the garment named for the dance be pronounced differently? Certainly in Spanish they are pronounced the same.

Pompous is a matter of opinion surely?

But we're not in Spain, and many of us, in the UK, were brought up to pronounce the two words differently, and there's nothing pompous about that.
It's just the way it is.

@upinaballoon , it's not pompous, but I'd accept that somehow the pronunciation was anglicised then but isn't now.

'Correcting' someone when they are using a correct pronunciation does seem pompous.

I have never, in all my bolero wearing years, heard it pronounced boll-er-o.

I've never worn one but I've never heard of the BOLL-er-o either.

bo-leh-roh

im Scottish

No idea why, presumably the evolution of language, but just to check I wasn't going mad I have now looked at my physical paper Concise Oxford English Dictionary which has the pronunciations shown using the International Phonetic Alphabet.

This dictionary confirms what I thought, there are two pronunciations for the word. The first two meanings i.e. the dance and the music for that dance are pronounced in the way that no one is disputing, with the middle syllable sounding like "air".

The third meaning, which is the short jacket, has a different pronunciation, which the dictionary states is the usual pronunciation, with the middle syllable shown as an upside down e, which using the IPA has the same sound as the beginning of the word "ago" ie an uh sound. So pronouncing it boll uh ro is perfectly correct.

All these years of my mum calling it a BOLL-uh-ro and me just assuming she was wrong 😂
Personally I solve it by never wearing one.

I did some further research as well. This difference in pronunciation appears to be mainly a feature of British English (RP).

So, @millymollyminging are the books you were listening to written by an American or by a British author and/or were the characters American or British? In American English there is definitely no difference in pronunciation.

OED:
How is the noun bolero pronounced?

British English
/bəˈlɛːrəʊ/
buh-LAIR-oh
/ˈbɒlərəʊ/
BOL-uh-roh

U.S. English
/bəˈlɛroʊ/
buh-LAIR-oh