couturier

[Damien Hall]

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I wonder how _couturier_ is pronounced by people who don't speak French?  (The OED only gives the native French pronunciation, which includes a vowel (a vowel phoneme, anyway) that English doesn't have.)

I ask because this reminds me of another case where the French masculine noun (where there is a distinction) is generalised to women too:  specifically, _fiancé_ for an engaged woman.  Of course, that case is different in that the masculine  _fiancé_ and the feminine  _fiancée_ are pronounced identically even in French.   _Fiancé_ for a woman could therefore be a simple spelling mistake by people who don't know there is a distinction at all, though the mistake is quite widespread as far as I can see.

In the case of _couturier_ for a woman:  OED gives the pronunciations /kutyrje/ for _couturier_ and /kutyrjEr/ for _couturière_.  It seems to me English-speakers would make the following modifications to these:

/y/ > [uw] (I'd think all English-speakers would do this)
Final orthographic <r> pronounced (I'd think this might be restricted to people who didn't speak French or have any awareness that French often doesn't pronounce final orthographic consonants)

With both those changes made in _couturier_, you might end up with something like [kuwtuwriEr] - and this would also be the result for _couturière_, since French pronounces final <r> in this case already.

We therefore end up with both _couturier_ and _couturière_ being pronounced [kutuwriEr] by a naïve Engilsh-speaker - that is, they make no pronunciation difference between the original French masculine and the original French feminine.  Could this be a possible path towards _couturier_ also coming to denote the feminine?

Damien

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Damien Hall

University of Kent (UK / Royaume-Uni)
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, 'Towards a New Linguistic Atlas of France'
Projet de recherche: 'Vers un Nouvel Atlas Linguistique de la France'

English Language and Linguistics, School of European Culture and Languages
Section de Langue et Linguistique Anglaises, Faculté de la Culture et des Langues Européennes

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