Re: CHAT French unde's (was: French undies (was: Re: Linguistic Terminology))

At 3:05 pm +0800 7/1/99, Douglas Koller wrote:
>Raymond A. Brown wrote:
.....
>
>I hadn't considered this. Beyond employee and referee, though, for me,
>the ending -ee pronounced stressed /i/ is normally used in contrast to
>-er; i.e. -er is the one who does, -ee is the one who is done to.
>Probably starting from familiar distinctions like employer - employee,
>this usage has extended to almost any ol' transitive verb: kisser -
>kissee; caller - callee; groper - gropee
The same usage is common this side of the pond also.  In educational
circles we now have 'tutee' (yuk), being those students for whom a tutor is
responsible!

But here the ending -ee is uniformally [i] in all words including
'divorcee' (even tho 'divorser' is rare) and 'referee'.

.....
>you were dumped against your will. Fiancee /fiansi/ just doesn't work
>for me (as what is a fiancer?).
Ah, that's different.  'Fiancee' is the feminine of 'fiance' which, in
French, has an acute on the final -e.  Both words are used here and both
pronounced more or less /fi'a~sei/ or /fi'Onsei/ butgenerally stressed, be
it noted, on the penultimate, though pronunciations close to genuine French
are not uncommon.

.......
>/lan(d)Z@rej/ - /la~Z@rej/ already discussed). I have a hard time
>imagining most Americans really trying hard for the French "r".
I'm imagining it right now ;-)

Ray.