couturier

[Douglas G. Wilson]

On 4/19/2011 7:00 AM, Damien Hall wrote:
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> Poster:       Damien Hall<D.Hall at KENT.AC.UK>
> Subject:      couturier
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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.)
>   ....
--

MW3 shows pronunciations like:

"couturier": /kutUri at r/, /kutUrie/, /kutUrje/

"couturiere": /kutUri at r/, /kutUriEr/, /kutUrjEr/

(primary stress 2nd syllable in the 1st choice, either 2nd or last
syllable in the 2nd and 3rd choices, for each word)

I'm an English speaker of sorts, but I don't speak or hear these words
routinely, so I'm not 100% sure how I'd pronounce them ... but FWLIW
probably /kutUrie/, /kutUriEr/ with last-syllable stress if the context
called for a [semi-]naturalized English word, /kutyrje/, /kutyrjEr/ if I
was taking it as a foreign ("italicized") word (still I might use
English /r/ if speaking English).

-- Doug Wilson

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