This thread has drifted into discussion over how the pronounce the name of this site. So let’s take a little vote: How do you say “Feministe”?
A. Feh-muh-neest
B. Feh-muh-neest-ay
C. Feh-muh-neest-uh
D. None of the above. Write in your pronounciation.
Tell us, folks — A,B,C, or D?
Polls close on Monday at 10pm EST. Don’t worry, we will be reporting the results.
Fem-ah-NEEST! It’s pronounced like Egoiste!, which is shouted by the lady in that pretentious perfume commercial.
I agree. I’m essentially an A. But I don’t shout it with pretentious perfume flair.
A, definitely.
As for the pretentious perfume commercial, Margaret Cho did a bit about how her mother used to scream her Korean name over the hills, and she imagined her mother in that commercial with a bunch of other Korean ladies opening the shutters and screaming her name.
I have other reasons for finding that very amusing — Margaret Cho’s Korean name, not the commercial thing — but I’ll be coy.
A. It actually never occurred to me that there might be another way of pronouncing it.
B. Same reason Sally gave; why have the “e” if it isn’t going to be pronounced?
A
People who pick C are probably thinking of the Clash album, Feminista!
;)
A!
This discussion is making me think of the blog fe-muh-nist, or however it’s written (I don’t read it, I just see it mentioned on here).
Screw you, ballgame. I’m going to have the refrain of “Washington Bullets”, but with feminista replacing Sandinista, in my head all night.
Do lurkers get a vote? If so, mine’s A
A.
Dragonsmilk, if’n you want to get an answer, you’ll have to stop being a lurker.
See how easy?
D. Feh-muh-nazi.
(I’m kidding, I’m kidding! My real answer’s C.)
D: Feh-m’-nihs-tə. Which is close to C, but the cued speech in me is rising up and rebelling against the side of me that wants to say, “eh, it’s phonetics. Close enough”.
Hmm … I wonder how many readers here have UTF-8 capable browsers/operating systems and can see that schwa? How ’bout IPA? Okay, I’ll shut up now.
I choose A. I’ve always thought of the final e as being silent.
This may be a dumb question, but does the name of this blog come from the french word féministe? I’ve always wondered about this.
A.
Other pronunciations hadn’t occurred to me, either.
B – as Hugo said, why have the ‘e’ there if you’re not going to pronounce it? Of course, that’s going w/ the spanish rather than the french pronounciation
I can see it! In Firefox.
But how did you make it?
My name is often mispronounced:
Mar coat
Mar cot eeee
At which point I have to buckle down and admit it. “FUCKING A, IT’S FRENCH, ALRIGHT? I’M A GODAMNED FROG, IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT ME TO SAY?”
Anyway, my point is that we should pronouce the word “féministe” properly, in order to pay tribute to one of my favorite feminists, the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, it rhymes with “far hot” as in “er than Wonkette and her frigging prison tattoos and her inability to grasp the genius that is Colbert, who is also strutting around with a froggy name.”
C.
and that schwa is very nifty.
A.
Pronounced, “It’s French. Bitch.”
Well, I’ve never said it aloud, but when I’m mentally reading it to myself, it’s either A or C depending.
I admit it, I cheated. Went to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa and copied & pasted. But OS X has a nice unicode-inserting keyboard that you can bring up onscreen, and in HTML, you can insert funky stuff like that as a character entity.
Actually, now that I think of it, I’m not positive that schwa is unicode – might be in ISO-whatever. But there’s a good chance of it. [GEEK OUT]
B, sort of. I’ve always thought of it as fem-in-east-eh (wow, that looks weird.)
fem-ih-nee-stay
A.
D
The first time I came here I saw an extra imaginary i in the name. It took me months to notice that it was not there. To this day, I still call it Femin-i-site. Even though I know that is not what it is.
Definitely A. Hadn’t thought of the others.
Wonder if A choosers have some connection with French or took in in school (I’m Canadian, and had to take 6 years of French) and C choosers have a connection to or took Spanish in school.
A
A, and I’ve been curious how to pronounce it, ty for the public service! :)
C, and that’s because Tapetum told me about this blog and that’s the way she says it, and I’m just a follower.
A, no question.
Definitely A. As for people asking “why the E if you’re not going to pronounce it?” Because if there were no “e” it would just be “feh-muh-nist,” not “feh-muh-neest.” It’s French, bee-yotch.
And Amanda, you’re hilarious. You’ve now got me imagining a cage match between you and Ana Marie Cox. (Go Amanda!)
A
A.
B’s how I say it.
A
Or it could be Italian, in which case it would be Feh-muh-nee-stay. Fucking francophiles. Why do you hate America?
A, except with an “ih” as in “spill” instead of a ə as in “həh?”
B. Sorta a French accent…
A, and what the hell is wrong with people that they would consider any other pronunciation in the first place? How about that Doo-say dot com, huh? I was talking to my friend Christeen-ay the other day about this arteest-ay we both know and–honestly, just embrace the silent “e” already and quit pronouncing everything like Pig Latin for morons.
D. Nosham Taws.
Kinda like A, but I never thought of that middle syllable to sound like “muh”. My first language is spanish, so I pronounce it “feh-me-neeest”.
And I also have trouble with people mispronouncing my last name. Spanish surname with 2 consonants and 4 vowels, two of them in a dipthong. I never thought it was “hard to pronounce” until I moved to the States. Go figure.
A?
A.
The e at the end is to indicate that it’s pronounced eest not ist.
A.
I’m for “C”
A!!
D.
“The-blog-where-Lauren-used-to-be-but-she-left-but-we-got-piny-and-
zuzu-and-that’s-cool-and-anyway-Jill-is-still-there-plus-its-got-that-
rocking-pic-of-the-kid-with-the-shotgun-and-thanks-to-my-sieve-like-
brain-I-can’t-remeber-the-name-of-anything-but-that’s-what-bookmarks-
are-for-damn-it!”
C. Took Spanish in high school and college.
Heh – I’ve been outed already. It’s C – though the ending vowel is closer to a schwa than an “uh”
A.
C – Since the female person is carrying a gun, I figured it was supposed to sound like Sandinista. You know, revolutionaries and everything.
And ballgame, I like the Clash album also. So, that’s as good a reason as any.
A. Never occurred to me that there might be a different common way to pronounce it.
A. I pronounce it like the Freedom way. B would be Spanish, and C would be Portuguese, non/no/não?
A. Most definitely.
B, although now that I think about it, I begin to doubt myself.
A, with the emphasis on the last syllable.
I pronounce it as described in A. French style.
E. None of the above. You don’t say it out loud! You read it on the computer!
Other than that, A.
A, For sure.
A, a la “artiste”.
A.
(Though my roommate goes with C, and a friend of mine, B.)
A , because it looks French
I’m going to vote B, although I really pronounce it more like the “fem-in-east-eh” and “fem-ih-nee-stay” that a couple of other posters came up with. I guess I’m leaning towards the Spanish angle.
PS. Pronounce ‘Pacian’ however the hell you want.
I’m a lurker, I vote A and I want to protest being called a lurker. Am I lurking when I read The New York Times? I understand the wonderful give and take possible on blogs, but those of us who stand in wonder at the incisive prose and the original thought and in-depth research are not the moral equivalent of people who stand behind trees and crouch in bushes. Just because I can’t think of anything to say at whatever hour I get a chance to visit, except “You go, girl!” doesn’t make me someone who wears a shady-brim hat and holds the newspaper in front of my face. Can’t I be a loyal and faithful reader? Who occasionally sends a heartfelt missive to some of the people who make her life less lonely, more informed and inspired? O.K., end of rant. And oh yeah, A.
I take the A Train. French-style.
A is probably the closest to how I pronounce it. I am notorious for pronouncing things wrong though.
Gordon: IPA? Great. It’s decent as a transcription system and great as a beer… but (speaking for others, I assume), I don’t have any lax vowels on my keyboard, so I don’t really know where that’s going to get us.
Well done on the schwa, though. “But OS X has a nice unicode-inserting keyboard that you can bring up onscreen” — yes, and SIL has a keyboard layout you can install that comes with a PDF showing what mod keys do what. It’s a real timesaver for any major data entry work.
Also, according to Wikipedia, all the IPA-ish stuff including schwa comes after U+0100 (schwa = U+018F), so it’s truly in the UTF realm.
….
And coming down of that dorky high-horse, um, it’s pronounced like C primarily because that’s how I say it. But also because I consistently vote for the loser in an election.
A.
A.
A
feh-min-ist-uh
I go Spanish and choose B.
A times a million. Any other answer is dumb and wrong.
Yo, chumps, if it was Spanish, it would be Feminista. All words that end in “ist” in English take an A in Spanish. Sandinista. Socialista. Zapatista.
In German, it would be pronounced more like C than any of the others. But then, feminist is “die Frauenrechtlerin” in German.
I’m throwing in with the francophones. A.
B!
A, of course
A, of course
A for absolument.
The French word would be Féministe (feh-mee-NIST), singular, same form for both masculine and feminine.
like Jill said, “Feministe” (without the ‘é’) looks more Italian: feh-mee-NEES-teh, feminine plural.
A is closest to how I say it.
I’m Canadian (and semi-French speaking), so A.
It’s A, isn’t it?
Definitely A.
D.
Fem-i-nist-ee
A
B
A.
A
C. Sounds like a revolutionary.
A!
D
A. I thought it was French.
A
Oh good, I’m not the only one who thought it was French. In my head it’s something like fay-mee-neest, for lack of a better representation of the phonemes (or IPA).
Oh good, I’m not the only one who thought it was French. In my head it’s something like fay-mee-neest, for lack of a better representation of the phonemes (or IPA).
A
A.
A
A
A
A
A
A.
Definitely A.
It’s been a while since I studied French (high school), but as far as I recall, they don’t put accents on capital letters, only on lowercase letters. So the lack of an accent on the “e” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not French, since the heading is in all caps.
And I’m only pointing this out because I hate America. Vive la France!
(Doesn’t the progenitor of this blog know the real answer?)
And apparently the modbot discriminates against frogs. Merde.
Ooops, I saw I forgot to place my pronounciation:
Fea-mee-nis-teh , where the “e” in “teh” sounds like a lenghtened “e” in “level”. But don’t mind anyway, I’m german. ;-)
raging red,
While optional, putting the accents on capital letters is quite possible, and sometimes recommended in French: for instance, you can write either ‘Emile’ or ‘Émile’. The French version of MS Word has a default “Majuscules accentuées” option.