Vinegar-ette?

Perhaps I am feeling a bit testy today.

I just finished watching some chef bio show ( the name escapes me) on channel 20, and this chef kept saying "vinegar-ette" instead of "vinaigrette". And this is not the only time I have heard it pronounced that way. It's happening a lot lately. I notice these things, don't ask me why.

So I am thinking, maybe this is something new that I haven't been clued into? Maybe there is a difference between vinaigrette & vinegarette?

Or is it the same kind of difference as nuclear & nucular?

I figure if anyone knows, it will be the LTH people

Liz in Norwood Park wrote:Or is it the same kind of difference as nuclear & nucular?

Ding ding ding!

Sheesh! You would think a highly reknown chef would use the correct pronunciation!

Liz,

I feel this way whenever I see Bobby Flay say "chi-po-te-lay" or "horsh radish". I honestly think it's just a choice of pronunciation that they refuse to change (or no one had the heart to tell them).

Sharona

Not to mention everyone saying "habanYero" on the food network and elsewhere.

gleam wrote:Not to mention everyone saying "habanYero" on the food network and elsewhere.

Yeah, that one particularly irks me (and I used to do it myself), but, in the end, who cares as long as it tastes good. English is a rich language with many pronunciation/dialectical variations that it really doesn't matter.

Binko wrote:

gleam wrote:Not to mention everyone saying "habanYero" on the food network and elsewhere.

English is a rich language with many pronunciation/dialectical variations that it really doesn't matter.

I think Webster's would disagree.

Liz in Norwood Park wrote:

Binko wrote:

gleam wrote:Not to mention everyone saying "habanYero" on the food network and elsewhere.

English is a rich language with many pronunciation/dialectical variations that it really doesn't matter.

I think Webster's would disagree.

Until enough people say it incorrectly, at which point Webster's adopts it!

I've listned to Emeril pronounce food terms and especially Cajun ones in his Brockton/New England accent and often thought "ouch!'

But as for the jalapeno pronunciation, doesn't it have an "enyay" over the "n" - that little squiggle thing - that denotes an "n-yo" sort of sound?

I KNOW, Emerial says halaPEEno, but I'm not sure he's an authority on Spanish pronunciation, either.

I'm not, either, but...

Mike

Liz in Norwood Park wrote: a highly reknown chef

Actually, probably renowned.

I think we expect too much of these chefs. They aren't university professors. Most of them came up through the ranks. And since news commentators, who did actually get degrees in communications, fail almost universally to use the language correctly, I don't know why we'd expect some guy who just happens to cook well to use the language better than most of the professionals on TV (and don't even get me started on newspapers). Words are misused by commentators and journalists so often that I now look up everything before I write it down, because I figure there is a good chance I've never heard the word used correctly.

Cynthia wrote:

Liz in Norwood Park wrote: a highly reknown chef

Actually, probably renowned.

quote]
HAH! You got me! Me no can typo no mo!

MikeLM wrote:But as for the jalapeno pronunciation, doesn't it have an "enyay" over the "n" - that little squiggle thing - that denotes an "n-yo" sort of sound?

Yes to jalapeño, no to habanero.

Liz in Norwood Park wrote:

Cynthia wrote:

Liz in Norwood Park wrote: a highly reknown chef

Actually, probably renowned.

HAH! You got me! Me no can typo no mo!

It's probably because it's used so often incorrectly. I can't tell you how often I've seen reknown (not a word) or even renown (which is fine if you're speaking of fame, but not if you mean "famed"). It's everywhere. It's hard to know who is using it correctly and easy to pick up errors from all those professionals out there who we should be able to trust. There is an entire organization (Save Our Tongue Society, or SOTS) focused on trying to get the media to be more accurate in their language usage. They (and I) easily forgive those who are not pros who pick up infelicities from the pros, but the media holds itself to be an authority, so should be doing better.

So you type just fine. You've probably just been reading the newspaper.

Liz in Norwood Park wrote:Maybe there is a difference between vinaigrette & vinegarette?

Pedantic answer: A vinaigrette is a salad dressing. A vinegarette is a small, decorative vinegar bottle or perforated box meant to hold a vinegar-soaked sponge, used as an alternative to smelling salts in the days when tightly corseted ladies were prone to fainting fits. (However, the latter is also sometimes called a vinaigrette.)


Victorian vinagerette

Cynthia wrote:

Liz in Norwood Park wrote:

Cynthia wrote:

Liz in Norwood Park wrote: a highly reknown chef

Actually, probably renowned.

HAH! You got me! Me no can typo no mo!

It's probably because it's used so often incorrectly. I can't tell you how often I've seen reknown (not a word) or even renown (which is fine if you're speaking of fame, but not if you mean "famed"). It's everywhere.

Obviously I struck a nerve here. No offense was intended to you. Lighten up.

LAZ wrote:

Liz in Norwood Park wrote:Maybe there is a difference between vinaigrette & vinegarette?

Pedantic answer: A vinaigrette is a salad dressing. A vinegarette is a small, decorative vinegar bottle or perforated box meant to hold a vinegar-soaked sponge, used as an alternative to smelling salts in the days when tightly corseted ladies were prone to fainting fits. (However, the latter is also sometimes called a vinaigrette.)


Victorian vinagerette

Interesting!

Perhaps we do expect too much of chefs. (I find myself laughing after writing that sentence in this context, so will not edit.) However, the issue is that once a putative authority mispronounces a term, that mistaken pronunciation is validated. I've even heard fairly recently that "new-kew-lar" is an acceptable alternative pronunciation for "nuclear". (Is Cheney now in charge of Orthography, too?) Alternatively, mistakes that become widespread also gain official acceptance, as Dom pointed out above. In my case, though I am a francophone, I never knew that the term "restauranteur" was incorrect since I had never heard the correct pronunciation, "restaurateur" until an astute LTH-er pointed it out in another thread as follows:

Rene G wrote:

Josephine wrote:Of course, my friend and I got to Googling, but turned up only one reference, to the 1965 new wave-esque film noir, Mickey One with Warren Beatty in which Mike Fish played, what else? an Italian restauranteur.

I don't make a habit of pointing out spelling errors but can't resist making an exception here.

In the October 17, 1954 Tribune, Will Leonard wrote:For several generations, it has occurred to Mike, thousands of good, sincere citizens and typesetters have been experiencing difficulty with the word "restaurateur," making it "restauranteur." This week Mike decided to take action about the situation. In the first constructive move of its kind within this column's experience with the oft-misspelled word, Mike announced: "As a courtesy to these good sincere people, I am consenting to be known officially as a 'restauranteur'—the first, I believe, in Chicago."

So, you see, it's really not an error after all.

Or is it?

Liz in Norwood Park wrote:

Cynthia wrote:

Liz in Norwood Park wrote:

Cynthia wrote:

Liz in Norwood Park wrote: a highly reknown chef

Actually, probably renowned.

HAH! You got me! Me no can typo no mo!

It's probably because it's used so often incorrectly. I can't tell you how often I've seen reknown (not a word) or even renown (which is fine if you're speaking of fame, but not if you mean "famed"). It's everywhere.

Obviously I struck a nerve here. No offense was intended to you. Lighten up.

See the further explanation added to the original comment. Yes, as an educator, errors propagated by the media do strike a nerve, but my comment was intended to make it clear that I did not consider you the source of the error and did not, as your "me no can type" response suggested, think it was because you couldn't type or were ignorant.

LAZ wrote:Pedantic answer: A vinaigrette is a salad dressing. A vinegarette is a small, decorative vinegar bottle or perforated box meant to hold a vinegar-soaked sponge, used as an alternative to smelling salts in the days when tightly corseted ladies were prone to fainting fits. (However, the latter is also sometimes called a vinaigrette.)

The things I learn on this site!

Thanks, LAZ.

Josephine wrote:In my case, though I am a francophone, I never knew that the term "restauranteur" was incorrect since I had never heard the correct pronunciation, "restaurateur"

I'm sure you've heard it correctly pronounced without noticing, just as you've certainly seen it spelled correctly without noticing. Even if people think there's an N in there it gets swallowed. It is one of those words that commonly shows up on spelling tests.

Lots of literate people have problems with pronouncing words that they've learned through reading rather than through conversation. This has been a particular problem for me lately with some podcasts I've been part of -- they're very much off the cuff and I don't know in advance what will come up.

Even when you know, it doesn't always help. Last year, I was preparing to give some readings of a story of mine, when I realized it was full of Latin binomials and other terms that I didn't really know how to say aloud and, although I looked them up, I ultimately decided to edit the reading to be less tongue-twisty. (I still had to practice saying vomeronasal and nepetalactone, among others.)

I came across the same problem with some Hanukkah talks and the name Antiochus. Should I give its Hebrew pronunciation ("ante-YO-kus"), its Greek pronunciation ("an-TEE-ock-os") or its English one ("an-TYE-okkus")? Or just give up and say "the Syrian king"? (Ultimately, I decided to take my cue from Antioch, Ill.)

As a writer, I tend to get more hung up on how people use words in print, rather than how they pronounce them.

So much pronunciation is regional, after all. I grew pronouncing coupon as "kyewpon," and it was only after I got to Chicago that I heard it said as "koopon" and after a couple of decades here I now say it either way.

And I recall being schooled that native Chicagoans say "Chicawgo," not "Chicahgo," which remains something I notice.

I think everyone has triggers. For most educated people, "newcular" is one of them. It used to make me crazy when my mother said "alblum" for album (a personal quirk of hers) and I still grit my teeth when another family member says "mahnk" for monk.

But no mispronunciation makes me so nuts as when, as happened recently, an editor changed "healthful" into "healthy."

Dmnkly wrote:

Liz in Norwood Park wrote:

Binko wrote:

gleam wrote:Not to mention everyone saying "habanYero" on the food network and elsewhere.

English is a rich language with many pronunciation/dialectical variations that it really doesn't matter.

I think Webster's would disagree.

Until enough people say it incorrectly, at which point Webster's adopts it!

Bingo. Dictionaries are descriptivist, not prescriptivist. They mostly reflect language as it is spoken, not as it's "supposed" to be spoken. That's one reason why many modern dictionaries have the "nucular" pronunciation in addition to the standard pronunciation of "nuclear." "Nucular" is a dialectal variation, and, while we like to make fun of certain people for using that pronunciation, plenty of educated people do use that pronunciation (Eisenhower, as an obvious example, and perhaps Carter even, although he seemed to have an even different pronunciation, some like "nukier." Heck, Carter did post-graduate work in nuclear physics and worked on the nuclear submarine program, but still he doesn't use the "correct" pronunciation of "nuclear.")

While not all dialectal variations get recorded in dictionaries, this one is common enough that it does. Perhaps you'd be surprised to find that Merriam-Webster also lists the "liberry" pronunciation under "library," and for "February," the r-less pronunciation is the first listed. "Vinegarette" is not yet common enough (at least for Merriam-Webster) to record in their dictionary. And that pronunciation also grates on my nerves a little bit. But you can bet that if it becomes pervasive, Merriam-Webster will certainly list it.



Anyhow, all I'm saying is one's pronunciation of a word does not necessarily have any bearing on that person's intelligence or skills.

Binko wrote:Anyhow, all I'm saying is one's pronunciation of a word does not necessarily have any bearing on that person's intelligence or skills.

Have to say, as a former English major, this is one of my personal pet peeves about my family...who will not only correct your pronunciation and usage in English, but also in French, Spanish and on a particularly snooty day, German.

And they wonder why I cringe when they offer to take me out to dinner...