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by iiv 2559 days ago
Interesting. I found one problem, though. (Or is it a feature?)

All examples I listened to of "coup de grâce" pronounced it /ku də ɡrɑː/, while the "correct" way (if there is such a thing)is /ku də ɡrɑs/.

This kind of thing must come up in more examples. I'm not usually on the prescriptive side of things, but I think it's important to know the "right" way to do things, at least when you're learning a language. On the other hand, hypercorrection will probably never disappear, so why not embrace it?

4 comments

> coup de grâce

"Funny" that they have a french word and a french statement as the second and third example. But maybe not and it is intentionally, 'whois' says Registrant Country is FR. In any case, very cool and works impressively AFAICS. Wonder how long it will stay up until our Google overlords sends a cease and desist

“Coup de grace” caught my attention as well. It showed a speaker with a very notable RP pronouncing this phase with a very fake sounding French ‘r’ and no ‘s’ in the end, when the s sound is clearly present in the French and modern English pronunciation. Some might say that he butchered it.
I agree with embracing hypercorrection (or at least, not getting upset about it), but it's also worth accepting that mispronounced loanwords can never really 'win' while the original language still exists, so there will always be a tension. 75m native French speakers will always win any argument about how to pronounce "grâce".
Off-topic, but looking up "/ku də ɡrɑː/" on Google now brings up this thread as one of the top results due to your comment. This comment of mine will only make it worse.