Stop the insanity!

[trinker]

steak fritésIt wasn't an article I was editing, but I read this and stopped in my tracks. If it hadn't been in an online forum, I would have wanted to take out my markup pen o' doom and nixed that unnecessary accent-aigu. The way it's written, it would be pronounced "steak free-tays", not "steak freets", the way it's supposed to be. Sheesh

Comments

[thatwordgrrl]

Fried steak? Is that how it would translate?

[trinker]

No, it's a French bistro staple: steak and fries. (frites = french fried potatoes.)

[trinker]

I knew a Kimée, who'd gotten the idea from Aimée.

Needless to say, the South Park episode featuring Tim-may made me howl with hysterical laughter, years later.

[marswalker]

je ne parle-pas bien la francais, je parle un petit peu. And that about exhausts my french. Save a few insults...
I can understand though - in english, we have very few written accent marks (if any); in french, about a third of the language seems to be made up of accent marks. I nearly failed french (in 7th grade) because I couldn't ever get the accents correct.

[ckd]

I usually phrase it "spelled incorrectly" instead.

As for accents, my pet peeve is résumé; either use both accents, or neither...but never just one.

[trinker]

I see it a lot with just the final aigu, too.

(And yes, "spelled incorrectly" jumps all the hurdles neatly. I just like using the word WRONG! in relation to those sorts of errors. -grin- )

[thomasyan]

please try to transliterate from other languages more accurantely

Good rant, but I am also amused that it fell prey to the dreaded ObTypo that spelling corrections are prone to. Hee.

...unless the joke is on me because I am unfamiliar with the etymology of 'accurate'. That would be funny, too.

[trinker]

Ah, dammit...someone was talking to me during that bit. I should have checked more carefully. I'm leaving it in for humor value.