"Illiterate Boyfriend" tests
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Alaina Demopoulos, "Women are giving their partners the ‘Illiterate Boyfriend’ test: ‘Do your best to pronounce these words’", The Guardian 9/3/2026:
There are common non-negotiables we look for in a prospective partner. They should be kind, caring and thoughtful. Having a shared interest helps. So does remembering important dates and anniversaries. But how much does it matter if they know how to pronounce the word “gnocchi”?
Turns out that’s a potential dealbreaker, at least according to a (rather judgy) cohort on TikTok. See: the “Illiterate Boyfriend” trend, which is testing some couples on the app. Users have compiled a list of what are essentially SAT words for women to ask their male partners to read. Many of these men – this is an overwhelmingly heterosexual activity – fail to finish the list unscathed. They trip over entries such as “hyperbole”, “cynicism”, “diaphragmatic” and the oft-butchered French term, “hors d’oeuvres”.
“I want you to do your best to pronounce these words,” one woman asks her boyfriend in a clip viewed more than 8.8m times. He gamely nails his first attempt, reading off the herb “thyme”. But he’s less successful with “epitome”, “challah” and “fuchsia”. (“Foo-chia?” he guesses). “Conscientious” and “faux pas” also prove tricky. He ends up with a score of five out of 17, or 29% – very much a failing grade.
Another (of many) Illiterate Boyfriend TikToks:
@saronthings I’m not laughing with you, I’m laughing at you. #literacymatters #couplestiktok ♬ Chopin "Funeral March" Dark and heavy piano solo(1009738) – SoLaTiDo
The Guardian article cites some serious studies about current gender differences in reading skills, reading habits, and educational attainments. But I still suspect that some of these TikToks are staged…
Robot Therapist said,
September 4, 2026 @ 8:16 am
"But I still suspect that some of these TikToks are staged…" Whaaat? Say it ain't so!
J.W. Brewer said,
September 4, 2026 @ 9:25 am
The most interesting bit of the story, I thought, was the critic who scoffed at a particular boyfriend's ability to correctly pronounce "colonel" and "regime," not because they are easy to guess the pronunciations of (from the orthography) in the abstract, but because they are lexemes relating to a stereotyped-as-male subject matter domain rather than a stereotyped-as-female one. As far as that goes, surely the ability to pronounce "fuchsia" is a less rigorous marker of not-stereotypically-male "cultural literacy" than the ability to distinguish between "fuchsia" and "magenta" when shown two near-identical paint chips?
J.W. Brewer said,
September 4, 2026 @ 9:42 am
I looked up an online Merriam-Webster list of commonly-mispronounced words in search of more that you might stereotypically expect males to be more familiar than with females because of current cultural sex differences in subject-matter interests. The best candidates I saw were (imho) "solder" and "boatswain." If those aren't being used in boyfriend-testing that might be further evidence of what's really going on. Perhaps they could be used to turn the tables on the testers?
Jerry Packard said,
September 4, 2026 @ 11:44 am
As to turning the tables on the testers, try tout suite, tmesis or talisman.
Klaus W said,
September 4, 2026 @ 12:09 pm
One thing that really bothers me about this is that it's not a literacy issue as such. Knowing the meaning of a word and getting the pronunciation correct are two separate things. Somebody who picks them up via reading as opposed to listening to audiobooks or watching TV would be at a distinct disadvantage.
I'd be curious how commonly people check the pronunciation when looking a word up in a dictionary, combined with sufficient phonetic alphabet skills to get the details right.
David Marjanović said,
September 4, 2026 @ 12:51 pm
If she needs to introduce him to basic food, she's got a lot of work ahead of her. That might be useful to know as early as possible.
Tout de suite in the original; pronounced, of course, tou' d' suit', i.e. [tut͡sᶣit].
Olaf Zimmermann said,
September 4, 2026 @ 1:53 pm
Let's face it: when it comes to spelling v. pronunciation, English isn't exactly consumer-friendly.
(I once had a student protesting – trying to teach the basics of the IPA – "I don't speak phone'ick, I speak English". I'll spare you my thoughts.)
KeithB said,
September 4, 2026 @ 2:30 pm
Would these be considered Shibboleths? Without the dire consequences, of course.
I know how to pronounce "Gnocchi" because that was the name of the kitten on the Curious George cartoon.
Aleximus said,
September 4, 2026 @ 2:48 pm
The question of pronunciation is tricky, particularly if one liked to read a lot when growing up. The word "lingerie" comes to mind.
This also feeds into a broader concern about younger (American?) generations being unable to read at all. YouTube has endless videos of teachers bemoaning the fact.
Viseguy said,
September 4, 2026 @ 4:20 pm
She mispronounced impossible in French. Bzzzt.
David Morris said,
September 4, 2026 @ 4:42 pm
The internet also shows results for 'illiterate girlfriend', with no indication of the comparative ratio of 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend'.
It could be argued that mispronouncing words is often a sign that one reads widely.
Tom said,
September 4, 2026 @ 8:43 pm
Another TikTok trend is "alpine divorce", in which women complain that men took them hiking and then abandoned them. I suspect there may a causal relationship between the trends.
Mark said,
September 4, 2026 @ 9:00 pm
I read a lot and have encountered many words that I have only read and not heard. I guess I’m a autodidact, but is that dyedact or deedact? On the other hand, a friend’s mom introduced me to gnocchi long before I had any idea of how to spell it; we called them potato pierogi at my house.
C Baker said,
September 4, 2026 @ 9:31 pm
People weirdly think of gnocchi as a fancy food rather than a potato dumpling, which is what it is.
As for testing boyfriends on their ability to pronounce common words, listen, all I care about is that they are not totally useless. They competently do their fair share of the housework, including management (50%!) and they know how to find the clitoris. It's not hidden. It's right there. If you can't manage to find it, go gay and find a dude to date.
wgj said,
September 4, 2026 @ 11:54 pm
I must point out that the inability to pronounce (some) words doesn't make one illiterate, but the inability to understand the meaning of words does. Thus, whoever coined the term "illiterate boyfriend" has simply demonstrated their own illiteracy.
Peter Cyrus said,
September 5, 2026 @ 5:57 am
There may be some small points to be made here about crazy English spelling, or the decline of reading/education/literacy, but for me this phenomenon is evidence of a widening gap between what people look for and choose in partners, and what actually works in relationships. These girls know some very smart guys – they just wouldn't date them because they're not handsome/muscular/romantic/attentive enough.
Michael Watts said,
September 5, 2026 @ 7:26 am
It could, but only for words that the person in question spontaneously produces. If you prompt him with the words, that doesn't apply.
Tom said,
September 5, 2026 @ 8:37 am
It's sad to say, but I don't think this blog will survive the death of Victor Mair…..
Jerry Packard said,
September 5, 2026 @ 9:51 am
@Tom
That is my fear as well. But hey, I think myl is doing a stand-up job, and in fact I’m totally impressed by the multiplicity and quality of posts, responses and interchanges. Maybe it will just change a bit in character, that’s all.
Scott P. said,
September 5, 2026 @ 10:15 am
On the other hand, a friend’s mom introduced me to gnocchi long before I had any idea of how to spell it; we called them potato pierogi at my house.
Wait, pierogies are stuffed, while gnocchi are not, no?
Kate Bunting said,
September 5, 2026 @ 1:14 pm
I don't know why the Guardian journalist thinks that you have to be male and/or have a special interest in military history to know how to pronounce 'colonel'.
However, I didn't even know what challah was, let alone how to say it (well, I guessed it might be Hebrew, but there isn't a Jewish community near where I live).
Steve Morrison said,
September 5, 2026 @ 2:22 pm
I’m too busy thinking about the Roman Empire to learn how to pronounce these words.
Viseguy said,
September 5, 2026 @ 5:32 pm
@Jerry Packard:
I agree. The blog is still top-drawer, but would benefit from an infusion of regular contributors and guest posters. To be candid, that was true even when Victor Mair was with us, just more so now. Be that as it may, may LL long continue to flourish!
Barbara Phillips Long said,
September 5, 2026 @ 6:39 pm
Count me among those who miss Victor Mair. I also miss Geoff Pullum and several other former participants. It would be nice to have others posting on Language Log, and I'd be interested in hearing from someone who would take up Victor's work on Asian languages, but I would also be interested in more posts about Indian languages and African languages. Language Log has always been more interesting when there are more contributors, but I imagine recruiting new bloggers is a challenge when competing with Substack in an environment where universities have fewer tenured positions.
For those who don't know, let me remind folks of this:
Language Log was started on July 28, 2003, by [Mark] Liberman and [Geoffrey] Pullum, a linguist then at the University of California, Santa Cruz (now at the University of Edinburgh).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Log
Jonathan Smith said,
September 5, 2026 @ 10:24 pm
"Elicit male answer" is (I guess obviously) a young-women-for-young-women TikTok comedy genre: "could you land a plane in an emergency?", "I saw a bird today….", of course "Roman Empire", etc., etc. The most provocative I mean best content rises to the top in time-honored social media style. Re: these words, yes "shibboleths" of a sort as the items are learned / shared / trialed over time within the TikTok community in question; it goes without saying that the genders are equally (in)capable of (mis)pronouncing the words above including incidentally "clitoris."
Michael Carasik said,
September 6, 2026 @ 5:01 am
The original "illiterate boyfriend" test was Mike Nichols' "announcer audition" for WFMT in Chicago. https://insidethearts.com/scanningthedial/revisiting-the-mike-nichols-test/
Philip Taylor said,
September 6, 2026 @ 9:43 am
"but I don't think this blog will survive the death of Victor Mair…" — I respectfully disagree, Tom. I think that it will survive, but not with the breadth of interest that Victor brought. Which is also sad to say.
Miles Archer said,
September 6, 2026 @ 12:03 pm
I sometimes ironically pronounce silent letters (subtle) and would definitely intentionally mispronounce epitome. Then I again, I not only know how to pronounce Challah, I know how to make it.
Andrew Usher said,
September 6, 2026 @ 9:24 pm
The only thing I have to add is that some of these words have more than one pronunciation that could be considered acceptable and using a different one would not be in any sense illiterate – probably an honest test of this form would try to use only words with a single pronunciation used by standard speakers that know it. For example, 'fuchsia' would meet that test, but not 'clitoris', to use two clear-cut cases.
Perhaps a better 'literacy' standard would be not using perfect pronunciations, but simply fluent ones that aren't wildly wrong. That's probably the point of the Mike Nichols test, where no one would exactly match a list of 'correct' pronunciations of all the foreign names, but one should be able to produce understandable ones without stumbling (I could very nearly do so).
I did not and will not attempt to watch any of the content referred to as I find this type of concept repulsive, not funny – it is indeed a female thing.
Pedro said,
September 7, 2026 @ 4:17 am
The example of niçoise is interesting because in England where I live, most people pronounce it [ni'swɑː] (as if it were the masculine niçois), which to my mind is incorrect; I prefer to say [ni'swɑːz].
The problem with judging other people's pronunciation is that you're often wrong yourself. I might say [ni'swɑːz] because that best approximates the correct French feminine [niswaz], and my girlfriend might think me an ignoramus for not knowing what she thinks is the right pronunciation. (Or vice versa, because [ni'swɑː] is so common that many boyfriends might consider [ni'swɑːz] a pretentious Frenchification.)
The same applies to many of these words; some boyfriends are presumably genuinely unfamiliar with the words, while others just prefer a different pronunciation from their girlfriends.
Tarnina said,
September 7, 2026 @ 6:52 am
Wait, pierogies are stuffed, while gnocchi are not, no?
Actually, in Poland we sometimes call them "leniwe pierogi" (lazy pierogies – because making them is less work). But the usual word is "kopytka" ("little hooves"). And "gnocchi" is simply the Italian name, used by people who want to be fancy (or appear as professional cooks), possibly because Italian cooking has been considered elegant (and yummy) ever since queen Bona. (I wonder whether actual modern Italians would know what łazanki are… those dishes of Italian origin have probably evolved a lot since her time). Anyway. As a female and non-native speaker of English:
* I have loads of words I only read and never heard, and quite some that I have heard but have trouble pronouncing properly. Conscientious, for instance. Terrible, terrible word. So… what? Is mispronouncing words what makes me stupid?
* I also have no idea what these women are trying to achieve. As long as you can communicate with the guy, whether he pronounces words juuust right is somewhere at the bottom of the list of desirable traits (below "cute voice" and well below whether he says sensible things in the first place). I have generally observed that people like humiliating and belittling others more and more lately. Why?
* Not being on TikTok, I have no idea how they do things there, but the hypothesis of these being staged sounds good.
Athel Cornish-Bowden said,
September 7, 2026 @ 8:27 am
I found the clip almost impossible to decipher, both the sound and the image, so I don't know what was considered to be the correct pronunciation of "fuchsia", but I wondered. The Shorter OED gives only /'fju̟ːʃə/, which is the only pronunciation I ever heard when I first came across it 75 years ago, when I lived in a place (South Devon) where the plant was common in gardens. Since then I've lived in places (Birmingham, Marseilles …) where it's less common and there is little occasion to say it. I was only reminded of its existence when I saw it growing wild in the Región de los Lagos of Chile.
However, I imagine there must be pedants who insist that it should have a more
German sound (/'fuksɪa/? or /'fuxsɪa/?), and these would seem natural who'd never come across the word before. But if I'd said /'fuksɪa/ to one of the adults I knew 75 years ago they probably wouldn't have understood or would have thought I was crazy.
This must surely apply to some of the other words in the test. Is the correct
pronunciation the one that everyone who uses the word uses, or is one that etymology pedants prefer?
Chris Button said,
September 7, 2026 @ 8:30 am
There's always a part of me somehow hoping to see a new Victor Mair post whenever I visit this site.
Personally I would absolutely love to see Marc Miyake become a guest contributor here. It's a shame he no longer seems to post to his blog at amritas.com.
KevinM said,
September 7, 2026 @ 11:45 am
I know Strunk & White is in bad odor around here, and rightfully so, but as a young man I did like Prof S's perhaps unoriginal advice: "If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud." That, and not submission to "literacy" shaming, is the way to educate yourself.
Andreas Johansson said,
September 8, 2026 @ 8:38 am
Youngish women these days seem to have a great need of excuses for dumping their boyfriends.
Chas Belov said,
September 8, 2026 @ 5:34 pm
I've definitely considered the pronunciation of challah as a shibboleth. (soft h versus the Yiddish fricative – I hope I never hear it pronounced like the ch in church). When I was a kid, I encountered the phrase "chiefly seeds" (as parakeet food) and guessed that CHEE-fly was a variety of seed.
I like to say BAAHS-ul for the herb – even though I'm aware of the preferred American pronunciation – and got "corrected" by a bystander at the farmers market to BAY-sl
I like to think I'm intelligent and I'm sure some of my pronunciations are off:
gnocchi – NYOH-kee
hyperbole – high-PURR-boh-lee
cynicism – SIN-ih-siz-m
diaphragmatic – DIE-uh-frag-mat-ic
hors d’oeuvres – or-DURVS
thyme – tīm
epitome – eh-pit-oh-me (but used to say ep-ih-tōm)
challah – XAH-luh (where X is the fricative found in German ich)
fuchsia – FYU-shuh
prix fixe – PRE fix (but used to say PRE fees) (that's a soft s not a z)
tout suite – TOO SWEET
tmesis – t'ME-sis
talisman – tal-is-mun
Not sure how a discussion of Victor Mair got into this thread. I do miss his posts as well as several other past contributors and continue to enjoy Mark's posts.
Chris Button said,
September 8, 2026 @ 7:34 pm
There's a bakery near me called "Tout de sweet".
Philip Taylor said,
September 9, 2026 @ 2:52 am
Whilst most of your pronunciations seem reasonable to me, Chas, would you not sound a second (or even a later) "r" in hors d’oeuvres – or-DURVR and omit the final "s" ?
J.W. Brewer said,
September 9, 2026 @ 6:43 am
Isn't the trick with "prix fixe" that it's not homophonous with "prefix" because the former has final-syllable stress while the latter has initial-syllable stress? Or maybe it's possible that there is variation in the stress pattern among seemingly fluent Anglophones …
Andrew Usher said,
September 9, 2026 @ 7:47 am
To clarify –
– "prix fixe" has second-syllable (or level) stress and doesn't sound like "prefix".
– "hors d'oeuvres" is always /orˈdɝvz/ in American English. This is somewhat irregular, but established, and the /z/ is the normal English plural mark.
– "tout de suite" is pronounced "toot sweet" (and has often been spelled that way), not "too sweet".
Chas Belov's ad hoc transciptions, as with most of those things, and not very careful and leave room for ambiguity – he probably doesn't really differ on the first two.
The reason for including "hors d'oeuvres" on such a test is that, while all Americans have heard/orˈdɝvz/, the less literate may not associate it with that written form.
Rodger C said,
September 9, 2026 @ 9:52 am
I think we were taught at one time to pronounce "tmesis" as if it were "mesis."
J.W. Brewer said,
September 9, 2026 @ 11:05 am
The "silent t" pronunciation of "tmesis" could have qualified it for inclusion in the wonderful children's book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_Is_for_Pterodactyl. Instead that book goes with T is for Tsunami, which may imply thinking of /suːˈnɑːmi/ rather than /tsuːˈnɑːmi/ as the standard pronunciation. Wiktionary goes with /(t)suːˈnɑːmi/, which I take it acknowledges that both of those are in respectable use. Which would mean it wouldn't be a good diagnostic for a careful boyfriend-screener but I suspect many engaged in such screening may be careless about such matters.
Philip Taylor said,
September 9, 2026 @ 11:47 am
"– "hors d'oeuvres" is always /orˈdɝvz/ in American English. This is somewhat irregular, but established, and the /z/ is the normal English plural mark" — even amongst those who speak fluent French, Andrew ? I can't imagine a French-speaking Briton producing anything like /orˈdɝvz/ — /ɔʁ dœːvʁ/ is what I would expect to hear …
Matt A said,
September 9, 2026 @ 12:53 pm
Philip Taylor – do you pronounce English 'restaurant' as /ʁɛstɔʁɑ̃/?
Not sure about the UK, but, speaking as an American, pronouncing 'hors d'oeuvre' in English as /ɔʁdœvʁ/ instead of /ɔɹdɝv/ would, to me, be exactly comparable to pronouncing 'restaurant' as /ʁɛstɔʁɑ̃/.
Also, if you're pronuncing it /ɔʁdœvʁ/, shouldn't you spell it 'hors-d'œuvre' instead of 'hors d'oeuvre'?
Matt A said,
September 9, 2026 @ 1:12 pm
Philip Taylor – do you pronounce English 'restaurant' as /ʁɛstɔʁɑ̃/?
Not sure about the UK, but, speaking as an American, pronouncing 'hors d'oeuvre' in English as /ɔʁdœvʁ/ instead of /ɔɹdɝv/ would, to me, be exactly comparable to pronouncing 'restaurant' as /ʁɛstɔʁɑ̃/.
Also, if you're pronouncing it /ɔʁdœvʁ/, shouldn't you spell it 'hors-d'œuvre' instead of 'hors d'oeuvre'?
Peter Grubtal said,
September 9, 2026 @ 9:35 pm
I pronounce "hors-d'œuvre" as "amuse bouche" , just to be contrarian.
As refractory teens we would otherwise say "horses doovers".
Philip Taylor said,
September 10, 2026 @ 2:51 am
Matt — "do ]I] pronounce English 'restaurant' as /ʁɛstɔʁɑ̃/ ?". Yes. "f you're pronuncing it /ɔʁdœvʁ/, shouldn't you spell it 'hors-d'œuvre' instead of 'hors d'oeuvre' ?". I (almost) do — (I usually omit the hyphen). But in the case to which I think you were referring, I was quoting Andrew, who had spelled it without the ligature digraph.
The importance of the œ ligature-digraph was drummed into me by the late Professor Malcolm Smith (professor of French and HOD of the French department at my college), who regularly bemoaned the lack thereof in the native character set of the DEC operating system we were using at that time. Once we moved on to typesetting with TeX, however, œ ligature-digraphs were invariably used whenever required. And indeed, I used two just yesterday when applying to join the NHS app review panel, spelling both œsophagus and seborrhœic therewith.
Matt A said,
September 10, 2026 @ 12:10 pm
Philip Taylor – If you pronounce English 'restaurant' as /ʁɛstɔʁɑ̃/, then fair enough! I can't imagine hearing that pronunciation from anyone speaking English in the US (unless they were joking or something, which I certainly have heard). To me it would stand out as much as /ɛ̃pɔsibl/ for "impossible", though I know the history of the words isn't similar. I guess it's different over there!
Philip Taylor said,
September 10, 2026 @ 12:39 pm
Well, many (tho' by no means all) speak of "restaurateur" rather than the (arguably) non-existent "restauranteur", so in the main I think we try to honour French pronunciations where they are not too different from the Anglicised form (i.e., we don't speak of "Paree") and certainly many of us try to pronounce "Rheims" correctly (tho' I doubt that most achieve it). But then we are physically far closer to France than you are, so that may well be a factor …
Chas Belov said,
September 11, 2026 @ 12:29 am
@Philip Taylor: One r per syllable for me, sorry.
@Andrew Usher: Oops, yes, hors d’oeuvres – or-DURVZ
Chris Button said,
September 12, 2026 @ 8:58 am
@ Philip Taylor
I've heard the nasalized pronunciation of "restaurant" in the UK too.
John Wells has its usage at 18% of folks in his Longman Pronunciation Dictionary.
Jason M said,
September 12, 2026 @ 11:23 am
Has anyone else ever tried to uncover the “correct” way to say “forte”, as in a specific strength someone has? It would depend on whether the usage in English derived from French or Italian. As I remember, the derivation isn’t entirely clear but far more likely to be French, as in “strength”, though it would be an adjective (feminine) and not a noun. Most people seem to say “fortAY” because of the Italian version in music scores (or because Americans also think putting an “AY” on the end of a word makes it French, like shopping at TarZHaY), but in a score it means “loud”, which is not the English sense. I think there is even more confusion, but I remember thinking best to make it kind of French-American and say “fort”.
Jason M said,
September 12, 2026 @ 11:35 am
And I am happy LL is going strong. I have always gravitated more to ML posts anyway, given the sorry state of my Mandarin and non-existent Nepalese. But just today I was reading (in NYT I think) about the darkness, sarcasm, and black humor that has taken over Chinese media (a viral video, eg, on how best to live homelessly) and suddenly missed VM et al.’s take here in LL.
Andrew Usher said,
September 12, 2026 @ 9:28 pm
Philip Taylor et al.:
Yes, the Britons do use pronunciations closer to the French than Americans do (at least in general), including for many the incorporation of French nasal vowels as phonemes (though normally, and wrongly, merging 'an' and 'on'), which one does not hear in America. But I hardly think the average goes nearly as far as Philip claims for himself: he may, indeed, be able to use perfectly correct French pronunciations embedded in English, but the's not the norm anywhere: the tendency to accommodate words used in one's language to one's phonology in that language is universal and probably inherent, in that even those trying for authentic foreign pronunciations normally do it.
Certainly the uvular r (unless the person habitually uses uvulars in English), French stress patterns, or endings such as the /vr/ in hors d'oeuvre(s) are so foreign to English phonology that the majority, I have little doubt in asserting, could not produce them without excessive effort within an English sentence.
As for the word that began this discussion, Wiktionary gives the only British version of hors d'oeuvre (singular) as the non-rhotic equivalent of the American pronunciation I gave. British sources I could quickly find agree. The term is probably more commonly used in the plural, though, and whether the English plural ending /z/ is added may be in question for French loanwords used in both singular and plural; in America it's usually used if there's an -s or -x in the spelling, at least. And certainly we both do it with 'corps', even though there's no change in spelling.
Chris Button said,
September 13, 2026 @ 10:35 am
Only if you ignore stress/accent placement, where British English tends to assign native placement but American English often assigns a more French-esque placement.
For example, the most common American English pronunciation of "croissant" is so far removed from any French pronunciation that it sounds like an entirely different word! But the stress/accent placement is still closer to French in American English than it is in British English.
Andrew Usher said,
September 13, 2026 @ 8:48 pm
That is really not accurate. Yes, French once had regular stress on the final (non-schwa) syllable of every word and that's undoubtedly the origin of the practice in American English (and some other languages) of assigning final stress to French loans. But standard French long ago lost this stress – surely before the group of modern borrowings on which American and British English have the characteristic difference in stress placement. (It's likely that word stress lasted longer in North American dialects of French, though it seems gone in Quebec also.)
Instead French words have level stress by default, which normally sounds to English speakers like initial stress. So the Brits really do have more French-sounding pronunciations here, as well. As you imply, a native French speaker (assuming ignorance of English otherwise) would more likely recognise a British croissant than an American one – conversely, the American version sounds more like an English word than the British with its lack of nasalisation and its reduction of the unstressed vowel. And this could repeat for many words.
Chris Button said,
September 13, 2026 @ 9:34 pm
@ Andrew Usher
I suspect (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that you don't speak French.
Otherwise, regardless of your linguistic training, I'm quite sure you would be able to hear the correlation (or not) with French intonation.
French is often treated as having "fixed stress" and may even be presented as a "language without stress". That treatment is really referring to how stress, or more accurately "accent" (since in English a stressed syllable is not always an accented syllable), falls on the final syllable of an intonation unit.
Hence, when spoken in isolation as a single intonation unit, the intonation of "ballet" in French coincides quite well with baLLET in American English . Meanwhile, British English takes the otherwise more standard/expected BALLet.
Rodger C said,
September 14, 2026 @ 9:46 am
I think it should be pointed out that stress isn't a phoneme in French, so the French can't normally hear it. That's why they often say their language is pronounced in a monotone, a statement that tends to bewilder foreigners whose language has phonemic stress, and who can therefore hear the (usually phrase-final) phonetic stress perfectly well.
Chris Button said,
September 14, 2026 @ 3:20 pm
@ Rodger C
I think we're saying the same thing.
Might I suggest using "lexical stress" (along the lines of "lexical tone" in "tone languages", where I'm using just "stress") and "phrasal stress" (based on the intonation phrase, where I'm using "accent") rather than using "phonemic" vs "phonetic" labels though?
Chris Button said,
September 14, 2026 @ 3:41 pm
I suppose you can perhaps get away with it in French. But in English, you can only apply your "phonetic stress" to where there is a preexisting "phonemic stress"–which then begs the question, "Which is it? Phonemic or phonetic stress?"
Philip Taylor said,
September 14, 2026 @ 4:22 pm
(To Andrew) — in re "the uvular 'r'". Yes, I overstated the case when I said that I replied to Matt saying that I pronounce "restaurant" as /ʁɛstɔʁɑ̃/. When speaking English, I pronounce it /rɛstɔrɑ̃/ — I would definitely use the uvular 'r' when, for example, attempting to sing Rien de rien", or when speaking of Rheims, but then in both cases I am attempting as near as possible a pure French pronunciation; with "restaurant", I am speaking an English word while doing my best to respect its French phonology. For me, it no more has a (sounded) final "t" than hors-d’œuvres has a (sounded) final "s".
Andrew Usher said,
September 14, 2026 @ 9:56 pm
Philip Taylor: Acknowledged. In the interest of brevity, I won't go into the pronunciation of "restaurant" in general here.
Chris Button: I'll grant that a French word pronounced in isolation should have final stress. But words are not said in isolation, and French words taken into English do not normally involve getting a French person to say the word in isolation before deciding on a pronunciation.
Yes, I don't 'speak French', but that's no disadvantage here: I can know facts about it, read what others have written about it, and even listen to it for the intonation. I find nothing to dispute, as you admitted to Rodger C, that one does not hear lexical stress within words – that is, my statement that words have by default level stress (meaning no particular syllable is consistently accented) is essentially right.
I hear this predominantly as if initial stress, and I have no reason to suspect Brits don't, also, and say the words accordingly. It's difficult to explain why the practice of front-stressing arose, otherwise, and I've actually heard this as a defence of the British stress pattern. They are not purposely mispronouncing, and England has always had more contact with French and more people that learn French. The most parsimonious explanation is that the pronunciations initially assigned to French loans in England are in fact the closest approximations to the French that fit in the users' phonology.
And Americans don't do that – the pronunciations we assign generally follow certain conventions instead, including final stress, a fixed (and sometimes wrong) mapping of French vowels from the spelling, transforming nasal vowels to vowel + nasal consonant, and most importantly reducing many unstressed vowels from the start, which the Brits do not do. I am not saying this is better or worse – but it is definitely more English.
Chris Button said,
September 14, 2026 @ 11:33 pm
@ Andrew Usher
I should have been more specific regarding Rodger C's comment. I was agreeing with Rodger C–and respectfully disagreeing with you–about his analysis of stressed (lexically stressed) vs accented (phrasally stressed) syllables.
However, I have no comment on what native speakers may or may not claim to be able to distinguish or not in their own speech.
Unfortunately, I'm not completely following the rest of your comment.
It might help to bear in mind that the so-called distinction between "primary stress" and "secondary stress" in English does not really exist.
For example, "information" has two equally stressed syllables as INforMATion in English. But "mat" bears an intonational contour tone as the last stressed syllable, and people then mistake this contour tone on the accented syllable as a more primary kind of stress (which it isn't).
Meanwhile, in French, "information" bears its contour tone on TION as informaTION since it is quite simply the last syllable. The crucial difference here is that, unlike in English, the ability to bear the contour tone on the accented syllable has no association with what syllable is being stressed. Hence the argument that French in some ways is "a language without stress".
So, returning to "ballet", French baLLET gets a contour tone on its final syllable, and American English emulates that contour tone placement. But British English nativizes the word by assigning stress to the first syllable (as regularly expected for a bisyllabic noun) and then regularly accents the last stressed syllable (which in this case is the first syllable) as BALLet.
Andrew Usher said,
September 15, 2026 @ 7:33 pm
I was not claiming that Rodger was in disagreement with you, but that I understood his post and it completely agreed with what I was saying. I am less sure what you are saying.
I honestly don't know what you mean by "contour tone" (though I know the term) or whether it is supposed to be audible; I have not found any explicit claim that word-final stress is regularly audible in today's standard French, and do not think it is.
The analysis of English as having really only one level of stress is possible but not, I think, unquestionably true – the level of prominence on the first and third syllables of information is not generally identical.
In any case I think it's highly dubious to claim – if you are claiming it – the American final stress in words like ballet reflects anything heard in actual French rather than simply a long-standing convention about how French borrowings are treated. Nor is it clear (though it is _possible_) that the British stress pattern reflects ignoring the French and assigning a native one.
Chris Button said,
September 15, 2026 @ 9:03 pm
Surely Jacqueline Vaissière and others experts have addressed this in detail? It sounds like you might want to look at some basics of English intonation too though.
My expertise lies elsewhere, so I had better defer to the experts and leave it here.
Rodger C said,
September 16, 2026 @ 9:39 am
I admit I wasn't thinking at all about the distinction between stress and intonation. I was only a bit puzzled that what I considered a relevant and explanatory distinction between phonemic and phonetic levels of realization hadn't been mentioned.
Mark P said,
September 18, 2026 @ 11:35 am
Coming in late here, but my father liked to tell of the party he attended as a young Army officer in WW2, and the laugh he got when he (jokingly) referred to “horse dovers.”
Peter CS said,
September 25, 2026 @ 11:51 am
The pronunciation of French words in UK English has changed markedly in my lifetime (b 1947), probably influenced by holiday travel to France which took off in the 1960s. This is especially true with place names – Calais was regularly pronounces as Calase, Marseilles as Marsales, and when Renault started selling cars in the UK they were pronounced as Rennolt (and don't get me started on Volkswagen). Culinary terms are another kettle of fish, but with TV chefs often having trained in France or under French chefs, I hear a tendency here too towards closer to native French pronunciation. (I am a Scot living in England and married to an American.)
Jim said,
September 30, 2026 @ 5:16 pm
In a High School Bowl competition, I got asked to spell…
wait for it…
"horse duvwars"
(The school teacher judge didn't know what the word was, apparently, and didn't ask.)
I deciphered *and* spelled it correctly.