anise

[Wilson Gray]

Personally, I say "IN dive," "ANNis-seed," but "a-NEEZE." And, since
you ask, yes. Yes, I did use a-NEEZE-seed, at one time. FWIW, anise
seed is the *only* one that I've ever heard pronounced, perhaps by The
French Chef. Don't none of these be used at all in ordinary
soul-cooking.

BTW, y'all remember Yan of Yan Can Cook? He's a fellow California
Aggie from UC Davis.

-Wilson

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: anise
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 10:06 AM -0400 8/17/08, Charles Doyle wrote:
>>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
>>_____________________________________________________________
>>
> I'm not persuaded.  The only pronunciation I've ever heard, ['ae
> n at s], sounds nothing like the Great-Vowel-Shifted ['ey n at s].  I think
> it's just faux-French, not necessarily an affectation but reflecting
> the belief that ceteris paribus food words that can be French must
> be.  (And maybe R.R. is an imbiber of anisette.)  I doubt she'd refer
> to "uh-LEES" in Wonderland.
>
> So [@ 'nis] isn't necessary for taboo avoidance--and, as I'm sure
> we've discussed, ['jUr @ n at s] isn't sufficient.
>
> LH
>
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