I'm always amused by some mispronunciations that stray farther away from the original than necessary.

My favorite is probably crepe, which Americans pronounce like an almost diphthong-y craype (or crape like grape I guess) when crep (like step) would do just fine and be closer to the original.

But as a native French and basically-native American speaker, I also couldn't really care less about it, or about things like Americans pronouncing the t in croissant, or French people being unable to say the.

The plural is what gets me though crepes (just sounds weird as krehps vs krayps).

I kinda get it, but you can say step and stehps, not stayps, so why not krehps?

I say it the American way when I speak English anyway because that's just how it is. :)

I notice the variance in british and american pronunciation of especially romance + greek words, correct or otherwise and I'm willing to give credit where it's due, I'm also happy to celebrate the differences rather than mock or correct them, I just won't accept the slander!

>America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift.

See also: Cairo, IL or Versailles, KY...

Is the Illinois one the same pronunciation as "KAY-ro", Georgia?

Notre Dame, IN

Or Wilkes-Barre, PA

Or Montpelier, VT!

Birmingham, AL

Delhi, Ca -> Del-High

Fontainebleau State Park -> Fountain Blue State Park

These were two off the ones that really stood out from my travels.

Or Pueblo, Salida and Buena Vista CO

Calais, ME

Detroit, MI

Not just Americans! I will add the small town of L'Ardoise, NS, pronounced "Lordways".

Apparently, workers on the Gemini space program pronounced it "Jeh-mih-nee" back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gemini#Pronunciation

the soft g is triggering, I can hear my classics tutor yelling even 20+ years later, don't get me started on the american pronunciation of hegemony!

I’ve always said that one key difference between British English and American English is that a British speaker will intentionally mispronounce a foreign word, while an American will attempt to pronounce it correctly but get it wrong anyway.

It's much deeper than that probably because the kludge of english is in large part french.

But I also completely disagree, I don't think americans are attempting to pronounce croissant correctly for example, whereas brits will be much closer with no attempt at intentional mispronunciation, it just happens that brits are much closer on some and further on others, and vice versa re americans.

and I don't think there is any malice, in fact it became common among the british aspirational middle-class in the 70s to adopt french words in an attempt to appear cultured and upper, ironically now a clear marker of non-u.

> it became common among the british aspirational middle-class in the 70s to adopt french words in an attempt to appear cultured

Mon dieu Rodney!