[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale

I always pronounce it à la Française.


But then I enunciate . . . the "d" in "Wednesday

I wasn't aware that anyone pronounced it that way. The Oxford Dictionaries onine give what is said to be the British pronunciation without the "d" being sounded.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

I wasn't aware that anyone pronounced it that way. The Oxford Dictionaries onine give what is said to be the British pronunciation without the "d" being sounded.

Ah, but that's clearly an unreliable source, Roger. I'm told they give "online" without the "l" even being written.

[John Whitworth]

mundy, choosdy, wensdy ... satdy...

What DOES macabre rhyme with? Nothing is not an acceptable answer. Everything rhymes with something or you're just not trying.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

As for "the french way": in my experience of the language, the ending - re - is there, but one swallows it. In this case, when I just read it out, I found myself eliding the r into the w of 'will.' So the scansion works. But I'm odd.

I read it the same way. I guess that makes us even.

[Ann Drysdale]

Never mind (I've always wanted to do that!)

[Catherine Chandler]

I would instinctively pronounce it as Roger explains in Post #7.

[Bill Carpenter]

The funny, silly movie There's Something About Mary has a running joke about how to pronounce the name of the great Packer quarterback, Brett Favre (who appears in the movie). The common pronunciation is Farv, but throughout the movie people say Fav-ruh.

[Julie Steiner]

Would this be a bad time to mention that "danse" has two syllables, according to the rules of French poetry? So "DAN-se ma-CA-bre" has five.

(Fortunately, this isn't French poetry, and substitution is not only allowed, it makes an elegant little flourish.)

[Ann Drysdale]

As in... (round about 4.57)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-ZI28nbSDQ

[Skip Dewahl]

Man-in-the-street-French: macabe. Everybody else with a camera pointed at them, or in poetry: macabre. The fact is, French pronunciation is being propped up (unlike Italian and Spanish who don't need any of that) by binding laws and finger-wagging from its "Academie" (oo ahh). Had these snobs let French evolve naturally, most of the ugly consonant clusters that they delight in would have happily vanished. And don't get me started on that hocking uvular R, which, at the time of their revolution, was in the minority, but which as soon as the elites got a hold of the educational system, became mandatory, thus abandoning that lovely old Italian-like rolled R, still heard here in La., but quickly being ousted from Quebec, however.