Bon appetit, quoth Julia Child

[W Brewer]

Julia Child's 100th birthday was in my face the other day. My kids got a
kick out of JC's unique presentation style and Aykroyd's SNL bit. What
caught my ear was JC's pronunciation of _bon_appe<accent aigu>tit_. Now
that I see the French spelling, I can see she had the final <t> properly
silent. But, I had been rendering it all these decades as
[bOn-ah-bay-deet]. Obviously, I had been misled--nay, waylaid--by the
English spelling _appetite_. Now, after a cursory search in my emaciated
home library (i.e. hard copies), I cannot find the borrowed expression
_bon_appetit_ listed in my English dictionaries, circa 1960s-1970s. JC's TV
[TEE-VEE] shows were 1963-2000, so she probably brainwashed us with the
correct pronunciation; the force was strong, but my brain never got
thoroughly washed.

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