Today I learned...

[Knives122]

wait so I've been pronouncing super smash brother "may-lay" wrong, it's really mi-lay?

[gr3atfull]

Actually, here in Montréal, you pronounce it mi-li...

[drims]

I used the microsoft speech sam, and he says it "may-lay". I have too this whole time.

[Board of Command]

So you're saying ê sounds the same as é? It's been a while since I've taken French but I'm pretty sure they don't sound the same.

[complich8]

The way I see it, no matter what we say, if we're speaking ANY modern language we're horribly mutilating some other language for a substantial part of our vocabulary.

I have to admit, I think you're right about the whole circumflex thing ... but there's something to realize: in English, we don't HAVE that. At all. No circumflex. No accent grave. No accent aigu. No trema. Certainly no cedilla, and letters with tildes on top may just get you shot in some parts of the country (not really) .

Did we steal the French word? Yep, surely did, and brutalized it too. Did they steal it from latin and brutalize it in the process? Absolutely! Do I have to worry about it? Absolutely not!

As I said, I'm pretty sure there's two acceptable pronunciations in English. I should say in American English ... I don't know about the English they speak in Canada or Great Britain or anywhere else in the world. But in my part of the country, and in the company of gamers, if you say anything other than "may-lay" ... they'll either be confused or think your odd accent is hilarious

[KitKat]

Just to give you the linguistic view....

The minute a word enters common usage in a language, it becomes part of that language's vocabulary. No matter where they got it from, whether created, stolen, or modified from somewhere else, it is officially part of the language as soon as native speakers start using it regularly. Differences in pronunciation merely reflect dialect differences. One is not more correct than another. There can be one that is used by speakers who speak the accepted 'standard' variety of a language, but that doesn't mean that the other is less correct for being non-standard. Of course, people often don't recognize this because of social stigmas attached to speaking non-standard dialects.

So, the bottom line is, pronounce it whichever way you want. As long as there are a significant number of people in addition to yourself that pronounce it that way, you will be pronouncing it correctly according to your dialect.

[drims]

@KItKat nicely put.


T.I.L that while eating a spoonful of marshmellow form a jar do not drink ANY type of soda. Or it goes EVERYWERE. The two put together creates the same effect as shaking a can coke and opening it. I also learned that this can be pretty fun when it goes all over your friend.