Yeah, I laugh at how we slaughter foreign word pronunciation as well. For example, I speak French, and there are a lot of place names around Idaho that came from the French explorers of the old west who also named several of the native American tribes that were in the area. I just simply cannot pronounce some of them the way the locals do! For example, one of the native American tribes is the “Nez Perce” which they will pronounce like “nez pierce”, when it should actually be pronounced “nay pear say”. But for things like that I also understand that our pronunciation rules are so far different from French that most Americans simply could not know how to pronounce it like the French do without being told, so it’s at least an understandable mispronunciation.

I also have a hard time when someone tries to create a French phrase and screws it all up. For example, nouns have a gender in French, and adjectives are modified to agree with the gender of the noun. Many adjectives will have an ‘e’ added to the end to make it feminine. For example, small or little is “petit” when masculine and “petite” when feminine. So, when I see a handbag that has “Le Petite Sac” printed on the side of it, naturally my eyes go all screwy on me, because “sac” is a masculine noun…

One last tidbit. It’s not just foreign words that cause problems. I had a fun little conversation with my 11 year old daughter the other day. I mentioned something about a roof, and she didn’t know what I was talking about. After a bit of pointing and clarification, she was like “That’s not a roof” (rhymes with foot), “it’s a roof!” (rhymes with boot). She insisted vehemently that I was saying the word wrong. We even pulled out the dictionary so I could prove that both were correct. Nope, she wouldn’t accept it — for her, the the word is “roof” like “boot”. Language is fun. :)