>[quoteback diet]
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>>>>>>Never mind "colonel"; In Britain we pronounce "lieutenant" as "lefttenant". Go figure.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Whan te Normans invaded one of their barons/lords (whatever) took an estate that he probably thought was a "fine place" and called it "beau lieu" -> Beaulieu, but its pronounced "BYOO-lee"
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Americans are just as much at fault: "Notre Dame" (Notr Dam) becomes Noterdaim.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>I think that one is just ignorance. I would bet 99% of those who cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame have no idea what a corruption their pronunciation is of the correct one.
>>>>
>>>>And how about "masseuse" -> Massoose, "En route" (ahn root) -> EN root? I guess it's mainly the french words :-)
>>>
>>>
>>>An Englishman chiding others for bastardizing French words? Say it ain't so!
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>>We only bastardized them back in yore, as I honestly pointed out above. I think the anglo-saxon peasants were too unsophisticated to get their tongues round the french pronunciation. For instance, the reason why a Henry is nicknamed Harry is cos the saxons couldn't pronounce teh french Henri. Thus Henry V calls himself Harry in his soliloquies, the younger prince of Chaz and Di was Xened Henry but immediately dubbed Harry, how he's been known ever since. But generally, nowadays, we do tend to pronounce those french idioms in the language as best we can, eg "ahn root", "espree de core", "zhe nuh seh kwa", etc.
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>>Incidentally, I saw SWAT for the 1st time last week and was surprised to hear one of them (Sam Jackson?) say into his walkie-talkie "ahn root to ..."
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>Is someone walking into an English steakhouse today and ordering a filet likely to pronounce it fill-LAY or FILL-it? Your witness....

Erm, we'd say "fill-ett" but a filet mignon would be "feelay meenyahn". Yeah, I've heard you lot say "feeLAY" but I've always heard the stress on the wrong syllable, as opposed to "FEEL-ay". For instance, I've only ever heard an American pronounce croisant as
"crwa-SAHNt" whereas it's "CRWA-sahn"