French Pronunciation and the 27th letter of the alphabet.

William the Conqueror. 

Further to a post about France I'm exploring something about the pronunciation here in the UK and how it seems to be changing with the American influence and may be just another Americanism.

You see there's a very strange thing that happens here in the UK; it used to happen when we lived in America, but here there's a generation of people who take words that we have used all our lives, and used them correctly in the most part, and tell us that we are saying them wrongly.

In America we were always told to pronounce taco as tarko – as with everything else American it had to be the long 'A' – the Mexicans, of course pronounced it the same as us and how it is spelt – taco. The T A C rhyming with back.

Why would the Americans purposely mispronounce a word they hear the Spanish speaking inhabitants say every day? 

To annoy them?

In America, for example, they are, after only 250 years of existence, still progressing with their language. They have their own dictionary with American spelling which is okay for them but a bit of a pain in the arse for us with most of our computers having American spell checks and we have to ask ourselves, a lot of the time, why we have a red line under some of the words. 

If I look at my page now I can see them – but you won't. Back there arse has a red line underneath.

So best of luck to them but stop making computers with American default as the spell check.

I love spell checks – they are a boost to anyone who has to write. At school I would use the words I could spell instead of the better words I couldn't because marks would be docked for each spelling mistake. What would Shakespeare have done if he had to spell correctly as his spelling was reputed to be erratic?

The American language is taken from English and being turned slowly but surely into American. The difference between their kind of English and the English spoken in the UK is that English here is established. It is made up of words from other languages and English is a terrible whore; it will get in to bed with any language and Anglicises the new words.

The American language doesn't – in the UK Maurice, e.g. is pronounced Morris, in America it's MaurEEEse. 

Because the name came from France. 

But you look it up on dictionary.com the verbal pronunciation, even in a slight America accent, is pronounced as Maurise – same as the UK.

If you can find The Bee Gees on YouTube making an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, Maurice Gibb introduces himself to 'Big Ed' with the UK pronunciation and Big Ed says it both ways in confusion - as if the old fascist was translating for the good people of America.

The one thing the Americans have Americanised is the pronunciation of Boulevard – they say Bullavard and not the French way.

An example of the American confusion is seen in Starbucks – they just couldn't think of which language to use so for the sizes you have small in English, medium in Spanish and large in Italian: it's tall, grandé and venti. They can't use the word 'small' as it is an American company and nothing is small to the Americans so they use 'tall;' then to Spanish for the medium 'grandé' which actually means big or large; and then venti for the large size and what does venti mean? Twenty as it's a twenty ounce drink. They could have used 'pint' but a pint in America is only 16 ounces.

But why do the English refuse to pronounce French words?

Maybe the same reason the Spanish refuse to pronounce Portuguese Spanish words the Portuguese way. The Portuguese use the 'J' in José for example, and the Spanish don't; why? Because it is a Spanish name.

England was invaded once (unless you count William of Orange who sneaked in by marrying the King's daughter) by France.

1066 the Battle of Hastings by William the Conquerer who brought the French language with him – well a kind of Normandy language.

The language of kings, French, prevailed in England right up to Henry V – he was the first king to write in English, his father was the first King to actually speak English. By the end of the 15^th century French became a second language or a language of the elite and slowly but surely from the bottom up English took over and any French pronunciation went out the door.

But what's happening now? The American influence in language has spread to Britain. Instead of going in to a shop and saying 'could I have' or 'may I have ' the American phrase is used 'can I get' – I mean the obvious answer is 'yes; get out.' - but I jest.

But what does that have to do with the price of fish?

The British are being influenced by American phrases and pronunciation and that goes for the way they (the Americans) pronounce all their foreign words too.

In America they do not pronounce the 'T' in fillet or valet but they do in billet. Neither of us pronounce it in ballet but the Americans say ballay and the English say bally; just not to use that tiny bit of a French accent.

But the Americans are progressing – Boulevard and Billet look promising!

So we will have to be told off by the young for not attempting to sound as if we are about to cough when we say 'humus' and have our fingers wrapped when we ask for duck confit and pronounce the final 't' – but you know something we don't pronounce it if we ask for confit de canard because that is French and we don't want to offend the pedants.

And by the way – the 27^th letter of the alphabet used to be & - yes the ampersand; it was abandoned maybe before America was even writing.

This from Wikipedia

It was also common practice to add the "&" sign at the end of the alphabet as if it were the 27th letter, pronounced as the Latin et or later in English as and. As a result, the recitation of the alphabet would end in "X, Y, Z, and per se and"

and this from Dictionary.com 

n.

1837, contraction of and per se and, meaning "(the character) '&' by itself is 'and' " (a hybrid phrase, partly in Latin, partly in English). The symbol is based on the Latin word et "and," and comes from an old Roman system of shorthand signs ( ligatures), attested in Pompeiian graffiti, but not (as sometimes stated) from the Tironian Notes, which was a different form of shorthand, probably invented by Cicero's companion Marcus Tullius Tiro, which used a different symbol, something like a reversed capital gamma, to indicate et.

This Tironian symbol was maintained by some medieval scribes, includingAnglo-Saxon chroniclers, who sprinkled their works with a symbol like anumeral 7 to indicate the word and. In old schoolbooks the ampersand wasprinted at the end of the alphabet and thus by 1880s had acquired a slangsense of "posterior, rear end, hindquarters."

I hope that is quite clear!!!

Me in my French jacket

At Trinity College, Dublin.

Because the comment doesn't hyper text I'll leave my comment here; because I can.

Here's a little bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nAnT3PASak