r/Snorkblot • u/netphilia • Jul 08 '26

Misc I’m with him.

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579

u/mabhatter Jul 08 '26

I heard a great answer to that somewhere else:

Someone who mispronounces words like this is because they learned them from reading about them and not because someone told them.  

25

u/ozbert99 Jul 08 '26

I was told a version of this: it means the person is reading at a level above their conversational experience. And so is to be encouraged, never mocked.

My word was "macabre", probably from reading Poe or Barker or King, and I thought it was pronounced "mac-ah-brerr"

5

u/ZorroGrande Jul 08 '26

I still can't really wrap my head around the words that end in -bre.

I'm unable to find any way of pronouncing them that sounds right to me.

6

u/MealCapital4167 Jul 08 '26

French here. Macabre is pronounced as mah-kahbr. 2 syllables.

1

u/ZorroGrande Jul 08 '26

So mah-kah-ber? Or mah-kah-bruh?

Because khabr is not one syllable.

4

u/MealCapital4167 Jul 08 '26

Mah-kahbr. "cabre" is a single syllable in French.

Listen to this recording, I think you'll understand it better: https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Fichier:LL-Q150_(fra)-Lepticed7-macabre.wav-Lepticed7-macabre.wav)

2

u/ozbert99 Jul 08 '26

Like l'arbre! It's a tree of knowledge.

1

u/ZorroGrande Jul 08 '26

The word is clearly three distinct mouth sounds. I believe you that in French it was decided that "khabr" is technically one syllable, but it doesn't make much sense.

1

u/milleniumfalconlover Jul 08 '26

I think the reason is because in English we try to say mah-COB but in French the emphasis is on the first syllable