Re: OT: Worcestershire sauce

On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 05:39:11AM -0400, Tristan McLeay wrote:
> Are you any more amenable to /'g&ra:dZ/?
Nah.  That just sounds like you can't make up your mind between the
American and British pronunciations. ;-)

> I've never actually heard it, but
> <http://www.aussieinamerica.com/language/herbs.htm>, where I first
> discovered the American pronunciation of 'fillet', suggests that we would
> say something more Frenchy. I'd probably say something like
> /fI,lemI'njOn/, but I wouldn't be surprised if the normal pronunciation of
> the -e- was /&i/. The -n- is definitely in the same syllable as the -j-,
> though :)
Syllabification, schmillabification. :)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that if you walked into your friendly neighborhood
Outback steakhouse here in the US and ordered a "Victoria's ['fIl@t]",
your server would laugh at you.  Not to your face, of course; that would
be rude.  She would smile, take your order, and go back to the kitchen
to mock you, probably simply by repeating your order verbatim when placing
it with the cook.

Then again, perhaps their extensive employee training in all things
Australian includes such things as the proper native pronunciation of
such words . . . :)

-Mark

Reply