Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy! is a bilingual Canadian-American. "Genre" is a French word, so he pronounces it the French way. This supercut schools you on how it should be done. (via Neatorama)
If you start saying it the way Trebek pronounces it, you will have countless people telling you you're pronouncing it incorrectly, no matter how much you try to educate them.
It's just like the word "karaoke", a Japanese word meaning "empty orchestra" in much the same way "karate" means "empty hand"; they even share the same root word kara. But you don't pronounce "karate" as "care-ee-AH-tee", do you? So why would you pronounce "karaoke" as "care-ee-OH-kee"? The correct, accurate pronunciation is "car-ROW-kee"
But we persist in mispronouncing it, and actually being PROUD about it, because we're 'Muricans and we do and say things howeverinthehell we want to. And everybody else can just go whistle.
How do Americans say it?
ReplyDeleteUsually with a straightforward soft G, and we aren't good with accents, so kind of like john-reh. But most Americans never use the word out loud.
ReplyDeleteHmm, fair enough. I think it's like the word foyer which is pronounced foy-eh up here. And I'm sure the list goes on.
ReplyDeleteIf you start saying it the way Trebek pronounces it, you will have countless people telling you you're pronouncing it incorrectly, no matter how much you try to educate them.
ReplyDeleteIt's just like the word "karaoke", a Japanese word meaning "empty orchestra" in much the same way "karate" means "empty hand"; they even share the same root word kara. But you don't pronounce "karate" as "care-ee-AH-tee", do you? So why would you pronounce "karaoke" as "care-ee-OH-kee"? The correct, accurate pronunciation is "car-ROW-kee"
But we persist in mispronouncing it, and actually being PROUD about it, because we're 'Muricans and we do and say things howeverinthehell we want to. And everybody else can just go whistle.
-"BB"-