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Emigre and her dear Pronunciation
Posted by dot_s in
10 Oct 2004 — 1:12pm
10 Oct 2004 — 1:12pm
As I am alone in this all, I seek any one's assistance...
I desperately need to get this right in my head--or what is left of it: how does one go about pronouncing 'Emigre'?
Would it be 'Emma-grey'?
Could it be 'E-me-gray'?
Perhaps 'A-me-gra'?
Possibly 'Emma-gra?
The Dictionary (Oh, how I love thee) offers us 'E-me-gra', but this may be incorrect when applied to an accustomed moniker.
Any help--or a push off a cliff--in this regard would be most appreciated. I feel lowly in my ignorance.
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10 Oct 2004 — 3:36pm
I believe it is Emi-grey, or maybe that'sjust my accent...
11 Oct 2004 — 5:19am
Em-ehh-grey? (just say it real fast)
11 Oct 2004 — 6:05am
Thank you, sincerely. As it seems that both of your pronunciations are so precisely similar, I shall now think of the foundry as such.
All my gratitude.
11 Oct 2004 — 6:55am
Emi-grey
Em-ehh-grey
Por-shez
Por-shay
Let's call the whole thing off
11 Oct 2004 — 9:10am
I've always heard Em-eh-gray, too.
Of course, I used to say Lee-co instead of Litch-co for Zuzana Licko, so who knows? And I'm still not sure about Paula Scher's last name.
11 Oct 2004 — 9:23am
Paula Share
(sorry I don't know how to do the fancy phonetic syllable break)
11 Oct 2004 — 9:44am
like Cher
12 Oct 2004 — 9:02am
Stress on the first syllable: EM-i-gray
[Although the -ez in French is usually pronounced -ay, Jean-Fran
12 Oct 2004 — 9:15am
But the source French word is stressed on the last vowel (although both "e"s have an acute accent). Of course the French word is also pronounced with a "gh" instead of a "r" sound, but that's admittedly getting a bit pedantic.
> the -ez in French is usually pronounced -ay
By North Americans. :-)
Don't even get me started on "d
12 Oct 2004 — 12:15pm
Americans usually use the English diphthong, saying 'ay' instead of the pure long 'a' without the y as is proper in French. And French usually say the English long 'a' among many other English vowels without their proper diphthong. And those with kindness and tolerance gently correct those who want to improve their French or English.
12 Oct 2004 — 12:28pm
> saying 'ay' instead of the pure long 'a' without the y as is proper in French.
Pure long "a"? It's just a short "eh" sound.
> those with kindness and tolerance gently correct those who want to improve their French
It's just there are increasingly fewer people wanting to improve. On this side of the Atlantic it's generally -and increasingly- believed that the other side is simply wrong. You know, Manifest Destiny, God's Country, all that stuff.
A moment firmly engraved into my memory is when I was waiting in line at an ice cream stand on Grand Cayman Island, and a large horde of tourists from a cruise ship converged; the guy who ended up behind me saw the Cayman paper money in my hand and asked: "Hey, what kind of money is that?" Obviously, they should just be using US dollars, silly non-Americans.
hhp
12 Oct 2004 — 1:06pm
>to improve their French
Ah, Hrant, I could count on you to be prejudiced. I said to improve their French *or English*. It's not the nationality, it's the individual.
12 Oct 2004 — 1:13pm
I did that edit to save myself from typing out which half of it is more of the problem.
And individuals don't exist outside of their contexts.
We are all conditioned, and just as much by TV (read: Fox News) as by our parents.
hhp
12 Oct 2004 — 2:20pm
Fox NEWS? Cmon Hrant, that is like depending on the National Enquirer for accurate reporting. You constantly trap yourself in self-fulfilling prophesies. There is just as much bias in French media or anywhere else in the world as there is in American media, you just choose to focus your attention on the media which fulfills your prophesy. Yes, there are vile repulsive Americans to be found, I readily admit that. There is an equal proportion of vile, repulsive people from any other country as well. You will find them easily if you look as hard as you do for Americans.
ChrisL
12 Oct 2004 — 2:25pm
> There is just as much bias in French media or anywhere else
I'm sorry, but that's hogwash. This relativism is an escape. Sure, there are countries where the media is even less objective than in the US. Like Syria. Let's bomb them!
hhp
12 Oct 2004 — 3:42pm
Hrant,
Your self-righteous absolutism is an escape from reality. The world according to Hrant is, "If I think it, it must be true!" It amazes me that you can stand to live here among us pathetic Americans. Surely it must be painful to see and meet nothing but self-centered, self-righteous, arrogant, opinionated slugs like us everywhere you turn (perhaps even in the mirror).
ChrisL
12 Oct 2004 — 3:52pm
My world is built out of observation and analysis, it's built out of having lived inside a mini world war, of having traveled -with a desire to understand- to 30+ countries, and having lived on both sides of the fence. And being hard to satisfy.
And you're not pathetic - just too young to have this much power. Even Johnny Depp said so.
hhp
12 Oct 2004 — 4:21pm
Tom-ay-to
Tom-ah-to
Po-tay-to
Po-tah-to
Lets call the whole thing off.
12 Oct 2004 — 4:35pm
Yeah, I'm getting an emigraine.
hhp
12 Oct 2004 — 8:04pm
> This relativism is an escape.
Hrant is correct. It annoys me, for example, when their media "fact check" political statements from a pseudorelatavistic perspective:
"Well, Dan, both sides exaggerated certain points. Bush said black was white and up was down, while Kerry said the Iraq war has cost $200 billion, but that counts some money allocated for next year! So there were errors on both sides."
12 Oct 2004 — 8:11pm
Guess it is better to just go ahead and make biggotted generalizations then.
13 Oct 2004 — 8:20am
Maybe we should emigrate to Canada and avoid the whole thing.
13 Oct 2004 — 8:56pm
while we're at it..is it milton glah-zur, glah-sir, glay-zur or what?
14 Oct 2004 — 11:14am
Maybe we should emigrate to Canada and avoid the whole thing.
I
14 Oct 2004 — 2:21pm
>while we're at it..is it milton glah-zur, glah-sir, glay-zur or what?<
The New York pronunciation would be "Gla-zah" :-)
15 Oct 2004 — 8:22pm
It's just there are increasingly fewer people wanting to improve.
isn't that how english began in the first place? just a germanized version of french. or is it a french-fried version of a germanic language? oh well, it's its own ball of wax now. and it just keeps on getting bigger whether we like it or not.