16 December 2010

Pronunciation Rant

Right you lot, I'm fed up with you misusing and mispronouncing words and some of them really really annoy me. Let's start with this one: 'masseuse'. The word comes from the French 'masser' - to massage.

Firstly, please stop referring to a 'male masseuse'. A 'masseuse' has to be, by definition, a woman. The male version of the word is 'masseur'. Got that?

Now, can you pronounce the word 'masseur'? It's a bit like 'mass' and 'err', put together. Try it. I bet you knew that already.

OK, so let's try the other one, 'masseuse'. No, it's not 'mass - oose', that's an American term for 'I can't speak French so I'll make something up'), it's pronounced 'mass -errs', or in the IPA: ma-sœz.If you insist on using French words in your speech, at least make the effort to learn the correct pronunciation so you don't sound like a tit.