Re: How do you pronounce Michel ?

Craig Richardson wrote:
> On 17 Aug 2005 11:07:47 -0700, "Dr. Dave" <dtate@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >Christopher J. Henrich wrote:
> >> In article <170820050025010992%jack@xxxxxxxx>, yukon jack
> >> <jack@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >> > OK, It's definitely OT but I figure that lurkers and posters alike
> >> > hereabouts are pretty intelligent and love to play with words, and can
> >> > help me out.
> >> >
> >> > So how do you pronounce Michel ?
> >> In the manner of a speaker of English trying to pronounce French well
> >> enouh to get partial credit.
> >
> >Why French? Why not (say) Swedish or Swahili?
>
> The top google hits for "Michel" include Jean Michel Jarre, Michel
> Gondry, and Michel Foucault, none of whom are Swedish. And I'm not
> even sure it's legal Swahili, so I'm not sure where you're going
> there.

The point is that the OP was asking a question about the proper name
'Michelob', which was clear within a couple of lines after he asked how
to pronounce 'Michel'. In that context, French is irrelevant. Really.

> In short, most people would assume that it's a French word because,
> while it might be a proper word in other languages, most of the time
> when it is seen it /is/ a French word.
>
> That does open up the whole "How should a USan pronounce 'Tour de
> France'?" can-o-worms, but that's different than what you're saying,
> also.

"Turdy France", if you're Bob Roll.

> >> It is understood that Michelob is of German origin
> >
> >Understood by whom? That's an interesting thing to understand, given
> >that it's probably false. (Czech or Slovak is much more likely for the
> >origin of the name; the beer is pure American.)
>
> Or it could be made up entirely, in which case it has no origin. You
> aren't incorrect here.

There's a cloud of related place- and surnames related to the slavic
Mikhailov. The ones most likely to use 'ch' in the middle and 'b' at
the end are farther west, AIUI. There's a town in Slovakia that is
today called Michalovce, known for good beer, that might have been
Busch's inspiration for the name of his beer.

> >> So we approximate the German pronunciation.
> >
> >I thought you said French.
>
> /This/ is beneath you. I'm disappointed.
>
> >> > Thanks. There's a story in this.
> >> Yup. It's the story of the spelling of English
> >
> >But you said it was German (or French)... I think you are very very
> >confused about this.
>
> As is this. Bait-and-switch is a cheap rhetorical tactic,

I'm clearly missing something here. I'm not trying to bait-and-switch
anything; I'm pointing out that the OP asked a perfectly
straightforward (if poorly worded) question, to which Christopher J.
Henrich gave 3 incorrect and inconsistent answers (or answer pointers)
without appearing to notice that any of them were incorrect or that
they were inconsistent.

If you're going to point to the pronunciation rules of any language,
French is the wrong language to point to. So is German (unless you
want to argue that the answer has to do with how Augie Busch would have
pronounced the name of a town in Slovakia). So is English, which does
not have any canonical way of pronouncing an impossible loan-word like
'michelob'.

David Tate

.

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