How do you pronounce "Bullette"

languagegeek · January 03, 2014, 08:30:03 PM

Quote from: Opaopajr;719963... "boo-lay." I knew that it was not correct to French pronunciation, but it's fantasy, so I went with it. Imagine if I got all anal linguistics major on all those aggrieved long vowel dashes and glottal stop apostophes?

Man, /buˈlej/ "boo-LAY" isn't English pronunciation either. It is kind of obnoxious to invent a fantasy name and deliberately spell it *not* according to English principles (or whatever the book's language is) – unless you pull a Tolkien or Barker and put in a pronunciation guide, but those guys knew what they were doing.

Variation for "drow" makes sense because < ow > is ambiguous in English, as is stress for "bü-LET" or "BUL-let", but < -ette > is AFAIK invariably /ɛt/ "-ĕt".

I don't know of an example of a long-vowel dash but those apostrophes gotta go.

Black Vulmea · January 04, 2014, 03:28:54 AM

Quote from: Fiasco;719973Kask is an idiot . . .

Non, mais il est un illettré.

snooggums · January 05, 2014, 09:41:58 PM

Quote from: Sacrosanct;719615So to the larger point of this thread, what other words did you mispronounce for ages before hearing the right way?

Melee

Me: Mee-Lee!
Friend: It is pronounced "May-Lay"
Me five minutes later: Mee-Lee!

Yeah, I came up with the wrong pronunciation back when playing TMNT and didn't hear it elsewhere for about three years. Hard to break the habit.

languagegeek · January 05, 2014, 10:21:18 PM

There are two guys at our table who pronounce 'paladin' with stress on the penult: /pə'lædɪn/ puh-LA-din.

Bill · January 06, 2014, 12:07:18 PM

Quote from: languagegeek;721079There are two guys at our table who pronounce 'paladin' with stress on the penult: /pə'lædɪn/ puh-LA-din.

I have a lifelong bad habit of intuitively stressing the first syllable of a word.

As a result, when I was a kid reading comic books, it was The AVengers, and GAlactus.

Benoist · January 06, 2014, 12:28:34 PM

Quote from: Opaopajr;720294Now what would you make into a ball by accident that means you fucked up big time?
:confused:

A cake?

A chair?

A land shark?

HA! I actually checked out the origins of this French locution and NO! This might not mean "make a little ball" because the origins could be different, i.e. boulette as in "a little ball" comes from the latin "bulla", a ball, whereas the expression "faire une boulette" as in, screwing up, might actually come from English, and from "bull", as in, idiocy, non-sense, stupid thing, bull-head, specifically!

That is VERY interesting.

As for WHEN the expression appeared in French for the first time, the jury's still out.

languagegeek · January 06, 2014, 04:31:38 PM

Quote from: Bill;721267I have a lifelong bad habit of intuitively stressing the first syllable of a word.

How very Anglo-Saxon of you

Bill · January 08, 2014, 10:19:39 AM

Quote from: languagegeek;721362How very Anglo-Saxon of you

Well, its good to know I am not the only one!

J Arcane · January 08, 2014, 11:11:44 AM

As a former French student, count me in with Benoist of all people in saying that 'boo-lay' is stupid and wrong and makes no sense.

I would guess it is indeed owing to the tendency of Midwesterners to absolutely refuse to pronounce foreign words correctly, but even intuitively going on strictly American spelling that pronunciation doesn't make sense unless you're just being deliberately obnoxious.

FaerieGodfather · January 08, 2014, 11:20:10 AM

Quote from: J Arcane;721800I would guess it is indeed owing to the tendency of Midwesterners to absolutely refuse to pronounce foreign words correctly, but even intuitively going on strictly American spelling that pronunciation doesn't make sense unless you're just being deliberately obnoxious.

Spoken like a man who doesn't know the joy of ordering Taco Bell at three in the morning, asking for "one of them kweeez-a-dillo things with the whack-a-mole sauce." (The G is silent.)

J Arcane · January 08, 2014, 01:08:03 PM

Quote from: FaerieGodfather;721803Spoken like a man who doesn't know the joy of ordering Taco Bell at three in the morning, asking for "one of them kweeez-a-dillo things with the whack-a-mole sauce." (The G is silent.)

No, I'm including those people in 'deliberately obnoxious.'

Because I've known some, and I think they do it on purpose.

Opaopajr · January 08, 2014, 08:05:03 PM

Meh, living in metro West Coast -- slathered in a polyglot heaven with a loving dollop of self-invention (where the rules of English phonetic pronunciation for even familiar seeming names is out the window) -- I wholly surrender to the professed pronunciation of the creator/holder.

It's just easier to let go on that and embrace someone's own point of view of their identity's (or creation's) name.

/insert Key & Peele skit here

RPGPundit · January 12, 2014, 02:29:47 AM

Like "Rockette".