Lingerie

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Lingerie: Women's underclothes, literally: Linen room.

As a kid, I always heard the word pronounced lon-jher-ay. I was amazed one day to hear Art Linkletter pronounce it lang-jayr-ee. How could he be so dumb? I later learned that that was correct for the French pronunciation. So, being flexible, I began to pronounce it that way, even to the nasal n and the swallowed r.

Now I hear tell that it is gauche to pronounce adopted words as if in their original language, and I suppose, droit to pronounce them in the standard way the uneducated English speaker would do. Well, I guess I’d rather be droit than gauche but it hurts.

I wish I could come up with a good moral for this story. When in Rome talk with your hands, when in America, talk like an idiot?
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