When I was a little kid, I used to see the word inflammable on the back of gasoline tanker trucks.

Yes, it’s still proper usage according to the dictionary entry, but a darn dangerous use when you consider that the prefix in means “not”, e.g. inconclusive, inaccurate, etc.

Taking a foreign language course made me appreciate the difficulty in learning English as a second language.

Yeah, IF WE WERE SPEAKING LATIN. But we speak American and we say data by GOD! Do we say ‘Agendum’. Thanks for letting me vent.

bailiwick

mikeyboss on August 19, 2008 at 8:20 PM

My deeper interest in language stems from my academic research into formalism and logic. Your linked article resonates with me.

LimeyGeek on August 19, 2008 at 8:11 PM

I’m glad to see someone took me up on it. If you like that, you might want to check out some more of Wallace’s work.

mikeyboss on August 19, 2008 at 7:53 PM

I am alarmed at how engrossed I am in that article…..

That got me thinking… could there be another [rational] reason to pronounce forte “fortay”? If everyone pronounced it as “fort”, wouldn’t that make it indistinguishable from the real word “fort”, and thus be confusing?

Good point. Disambiguation is a wonderful thing.

As quoted above, if the english wished to approximate the french version, the choice of spelling seems inconsistent. I have also seen an acute accent over the “e”…..but again, as noted, the english have a horrifying knack for bastardising language to facilitate pronunciation.

Why the hell are we borrowing words from the frogs and wops anyway? Bah humbug…..

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html

To make a long story short:

1. Italians have been saying “Non è il mio forte” (This is not my strong suit) for at least 400 years. There was an international romantic hit song of 1990 called “Il pianoforte non è il mio forte” (Piano-playing is not my strong suit). The French have been saying “Ce n’est pas mon fort” for at least as long. Both languages have used the word in naval construction (the wide part of a ship), building construction (the more solid part of the edifice) and fencing (the strong part of a blade) for roughly the same time. Both expressions were used in card-playing for God knows how long. This noun turned abstract in the XVIIIth century in both languages and rougly at the same time (that we can tell).

2. The English word “forte” is not spelled like the French word “fort”.

3. The English word “forte” does not sound – whichever way you pronounce it – like the French (masculine, no “e”) word “fort” (whose “t” is silent).

4. The English word “forte” happens to be spelled like the Italian word “forte”.

5. It therefore follows that the English word “forte” should sound like the Italian word “forte”.

http://lexitist.tribe.net/

I’d like to weigh in as a Francophone and professional translator and terminologist. The English “Italian” pronunciation of forte is probably the correct and original one. The use of “fort” as a noun or more properly “point fort” (strong suit) in French to mean “strong point or aspect” only dates back to the early XVIIIth century (Voltaire among others) and its origin is confusing. But we also know that in a card-playing context, the English expression “strong suit”, the Italian expression “forte” and the French expression “fort” all precede the French literary use of “fort” as an abstract noun meaning “strong point or aspect”. It is therefore probable that continent-touring Englishmen imported the Italian card-playing forte rather than the equivalent French expression, if only because it is easier to pronounce. It cannot be proven whether the Italians borrowed the expression from the French, but as the French borrowed almost all civilized pursuits, except ballet, from the Italians, this is highly doubtful.

The spelling is another clue. Although many atrocities have been committed in borrowing French expressions to incorporate them into English, it is probable that no Englishman in his right mind would have thought that the “forte” spelling was be an acceptable approximation of the French pronunciation of “fort”. As in the word repartee, whose English spelling was concocted to reproduce the French sound of “repartie” (rhymes with settee), spelling alterations usually have as a goal to facilitate the pronunciation of the original word. The fact that some half-cultured English Yahoo decided to add an acute accent to the next-to-last letter of the word repartee (repartée) to create an unconscionable abomination that has survived to this day is neither here nor there and deserves another discussion.

In my experience, most people who use the word “forte” need to be punched in the face.

(BTW, I’m 19, and I now say “fort” because it’s, like, correct. There’s no accent on the “e”, people!)

Damian G. on August 19, 2008 at 6:41 PM

That got me thinking… could there be another [rational] reason to pronounce forte “fortay”? If everyone pronounced it as “fort”, wouldn’t that make it indistinguishable from the real word “fort”, and thus be confusing?

In that eventuality, every time someone talked about a person’s “fort”, we’d have wonder if they meant the person’s main strength or their military building!

I have an old Cassel’s French-English dictionary in front of me that, admittedly, uses British English for the English wording rather than Americanisms but it gives the following for the English word being translated into the French equivalent…

Forte (1) n. Fort, m. It is not my forte, ça n’est pas mon fort.
Forte (2) adv. (Mus.) Fortet.

I can’t reproduce the funny, pronunciation characters, but it gives “fort” as the first’s pronunciation; and “fortay” as the Italian-inspired musical term’s pronunciation.

So the British English usage is “fort”, using the word in its French sense. But, and here Ed is correct, the irony is that the expression said in French uses the masculine form and should therefore be pronounced “for” and not “fort”. And, I’d point out, that in Italian forte is also used in the phrase “not his strong point” so supporting the Italian-inspired “fortay” by English speakers seems supportable to me, even if the English mispronouncing the French version is the basis of the expressiion as used in (Britsh) English.

BTW, my ethnic roots include Italian, so I’ve always used the Italian pronunciation.

All part of the Hotair.com buffet. Pick out what ya like and move down the line, you’re blocking the soup.

Meric1837 on August 19, 2008 at 2:14 PM

Nazi.

(BTW, I’m 19, and I now say “fort” because it’s, like, correct. There’s no accent on the “e”, people!)

From the UK perspective, I have never heard it pronounced “fort”, always “for-tay”. I happened to major in english language and literature, and was completely oblivious to this alternate pronuciation until I moved across the pond.

I happen to like the italian variant for its cadence, regardless of its semantic validity. I doubt I could break this habit if I tried.

I take a pragmatic view of language – that its purpose is to be a spoken and written medium for communication – and accept that ‘evolution’ takes place over generations. This is an emergent phenomenon and is interesting to observe in its own right.

There will always be arseheads that make a point of stepping on people just to try and show off how clever they believe themselves to be. Contentious pronunciations can usefully serve to reveal these pillocks.

There are two words of the same spelling, one borrowed from French and the other from Italian. It used to be the case that the one from French that means a person’s strong point was pronounced as one syllable (/fɒːt/ ).

But the influence of the other word, which retained a stronger link to its original Italian pronunciation, is too strong and is winning. It is now thought acceptable in Britain to say the two words the same way (/fɒːtɪ/), and the new edition of Chambers and the New Oxford English Dictionary both say so. This has reached the point where I have seen the word, in the sense of “strong point”, mistakenly spelled forté, presumably in imitation of café. The older pronunciation is still heard, however, and some people would consider the version in two syllables for the word meaning “strong point” to be wrong.

There was a discussion on alt.usage.english about this some time ago, from which I gather American usage is more conservative. But the Random House Webster’s unabridged dictionary says: “A two-syllable pronunciation is increasingly heard, especially from younger educated speakers, perhaps owing to confusion with the musical term forte. Both the one- and two-syllable pronunciations of FORTE are now considered standard”. So though there appears to be a transatlantic distinction on this one, it is slight, and decreasing.

From Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words web site. It’s a great site, browse it if you have time.

jaime on August 19, 2008 at 2:56 PM

Good entry, Jaime. The OED has:

(”fɒːti, “fɒːteI, formerly fɒːt) [a. F. fort, absolute use of fort strong: see fort a. As in many other adoptions of Fr. adjs. used as ns., the fem. form has been ignorantly substituted for the masc.; cf. locale, morale (of an army), etc.]

Call me old fashioned, but I’m going with “formerly” here (as also in, ex. gr., asp’ect and per’sever).