anise

Charles Doyle cdoyle at UGA.EDU
Sun Aug 17 14:06:56 UTC 2008


A couple of days ago on the Food Network, Rachael Ray, more than once, pronounced "anise" as [@ 'nis], a pronunciation registered in none of the several English dictionaries at hand.

At first I supposed it was just a pretentious faux-French affection, as I used to assume "endive" as ['an div] is--though that one is in the dictionaries, and it does mimic the actual French pronunciation.  But maybe [@ 'nis] exemplifies the "Uranus" ['jUr @ n at s] syndrome--an attempt to keep low-minded liteners from thinking about anuses?

--Charlie
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