Patterns of Pronunciation
Pardon My French
Like words of any other sort, recent arrivals from France follow the rule that ‘all pronunciation reflects parochial preferences’. Thus, whether you leave your umbrella in the ‘foy-your’ or the ‘foy-ay’ will depend entirely upon the habits of your hostess. Nonetheless, when we follow the paths of pilfered Francophonemes, some patterns pop up.
The smaller the distance between a speaker and Windsor Castle, whether geographical or cultural, the better the odds of authentic articulation. Thus, we should not be surprised when historian Tom Holland, who was born and raised in the shadow (so to speak) of that famous palace, pronounces the ‘droit’ in maladroit as ‘dwah’.1
The longer the interval between the arrival of a word of French origin and the present, the greater the chances of complete domestication. When, in the age of Madame Pompadour, quay crossed the Channel, it rhymed with ‘bay’. However, during the dozen or so decades that followed, the sound had shifted to the point where Rudyard Kipling could write …
There was a row in Silver Street that's near to Dublin Quay,
Between an Irish regiment an' English cavalreeLong series of stolen syllables do a better job of retaining their original character than shorter strings. Thus, on the rare occasions when you hear pas d’ennemi à gaucheGT [‘no enemy to the left’] spoken out loud, the speaker will do his best to sound as French as possible.2 Indeed, the last time I heard that motto spoken, the Anglophone automaton reading the passages in which it appeared passed the task of enunciating it to a French-speaking robot.3 However, when Anna Phylaxis reminds M. Alice Aforethought that wearing white after Labor Day might make her appear ‘gauche’, she feels no need to work so hard.
Note on Links
YT marks a link to a video on YouTube.
GT indicates a link to an entry on Google Translate
Links to artists credited in the captions of paintings will take you to the Art Renewal Center (artrenewal.org).
Other links sans superscripts will take you to a page elsewhere on Substack.
The author of, among many other books, The Shadow of the Sword, Mr. Holland currently serves as the cohost of The Rest is History. (The links will take you to, respectively, thriftbooks.com, tom-holland.org, and https://linktr.ee/restishistory.)
Though some trace pas d’ennemi à gauche to the days of the French Revolution, it seems to have entered English in 1936, when it served as the motto of a short-lived coalition of left-wing parties called le Front Populaire.
James Burnham The Suicide of the West (New York: John Day, 1964) Chapter 11 (read by a machine)YT.