I was watching a movie last night and it included some (fictional) modern day French royalty. The guy introduced himself as a viscount and I had to rewind it 3 times to make sure I was hearing it right. I then immediately scoffed at how he couldn’t pronounce his own title...but soon after consulted with google sensei and realized that I was the one in the wrong. From there I began to wonder if I was the only one. I read so much historical fiction/fantasy that I can’t believe I’ve been reading it wrong for almost 2 decades(I’m 25 this year). That led me to wonder if I was the only one. This issue is clearly so important to me that it sparked my first time posting in the forum after years of lurking(even before I officially made a profile). So I need to know. How do YOU pronounce viscount. Do you pronounce it VIZ-Count, similar to the word vision; or the (apparently) correct way, VY-Count, similar to the word vitamin?
I’m sorry. It sounds like you want spelling and pronunciation to make ‘sense’. Error. Error. Error. Does not compute.
Yeah, looked it up on wikipedia. That "s" is just something thrown in there when converting the title from the French vicomte.
That's the beauty(curse) of languages like English. Pronunciation is anarchy, so you don't need to feel bad.
I always thought it was Viz-count, but now that I know I really like the sound of Vy-count. Given how often Viscounts show up in fantasy novels, a large number of my favorite stories just became a tiny bit cooler. Thanks for that.
Wow, I see what you mean now. I'm in the exact same boat as you. If the video's way of pronunciation is correct, then I did not realise I've been pronouncing it wrong all this time. RIP.
french isn't such a problem. the biggest of grammatical messes is the english language that appropriates words regardless of origin or initial meaning, then tries to incorporate them. to date its the result of at minimum 7 different languages being assimilated and clashed. many times the original meanings are lost because the people using it are ignorant of what they are saying, assume or decide it means something else and make the mistake so mainstream, dictionaries are forced to update to accept it as fact.
Yeah, that just gives me more reason to find French an annoying language. The language is super strict about adopting new words so from what I can tell they are made by just throwing in a bunch of random letters that are silent. I remember one time while I was in high school I was telling my friends how my parents had invited me to watch a lingerie show with them. (My family is pretty open about that type of stuff and I was super innocent at the time so they did stuff like that to tease me.) So I pronounced it like how one would read it linger-E instead of lawn-ger-ay, they had no clue what I was talking about, and I had to explain it to them, when they finally did they all busted up laughing.
Just remember the "vis" part of the word originally comes from the Latin word "vice" (meaning "deputy", like Vice President, Vice Principal), and it'll be straightforward.