Sometimes I think American hubris knows no bounds (as an American, I can say that). Consider the matter of pronunciation. The British know that Americans don’t talk right, and so do the French. Like many Americans, I had four years of high-school French, and I still remember the basics of proper pronunciation. For example, I know that the final “nd” in a word is never fully articulated, giving way to a kind of nasal “n” and silent “d.” With its following “e,” le monde is not “le moaned,” it’s more like “le moandh” with a flattened “d” (and I would certainly like to – moan, that is – when I hear the way the average American mangles the language). I’ve heard people ask for a bottle of “Mer-LOT” at the liquor store, and even “Cah-JUNE” catfish at the fish market. The funniest one, even though it’s Italian and not French, has to be “Par-MEE-sian” cheese!
Take the situation with “Lenormand.” In person and on YouTube, I consistently hear it presented as “le-NOR-mand,” when even the least accomplished student of French knows (or should know, anyway) that a more accurate pronunciation would be “le-nor-mohn.” I have it on good authority – my native French-speaking friends on the tarot forums – that in French there is no accented syllable in Lenormand; each one is weighted equally. Just because the Americanization of Normandy accentuates the first syllable, that doesn’t mean it’s how the French pronounce it. I keep getting corrected by Americans who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Maybe they just feel too mannered and precious trying to sound like a Frenchman in an Anglophone cultural setting. In conversation, I kind of split the difference and sanitize the accent a bit, de-emphasizing the “NOR” syllable and subtly finessing the hard “d,” and I can get by without (much) criticism. (Now if I could just stop people from dodging the question by substituting “Lennie” for Lenormand. Arrrgh!)
I remember the correct pronunciation of ‘Lenormand’ was part of the flaming wars you talked about in another post. The debate around it really made me smile (I’m French by the way) at the time.
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