The things you learn: Cornish pasties

[pne]

I'd always been pronouncing them "pace-teas" in my head, like the pasties you stick over a nipple (or, more to the point, with the same vowel I have in "pastries"), but apparently, they're pronounced with a "short a" (as in "cat") in the first syllable. (I'd have written "pass-teas", but that would imply a "broad A" in my 'lect, as in "palm".)

Also relatedly, I'd pronounced pâté "PAT-ay", but apparently it's supposed to be "pa-TAY" or "pah-TAY". Ooh, all French and dignified.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I think the pâté thing might be more Brit/Am variation, cf. garage. French has no word stress, of course, so either choice is equally arbitrary. At least with final stress, the /t/ is not subject to flapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping), which produces a better result overall from an AmEng speaker. (This is also a case where American /ɑ/ is a better fit than British /æ/, because historically the first vowel was [ɑ] and not [a] in French; most contemporary speakers no longer make the distinction between pâté and patté "pawed".)

I assume you got the proper pasty pronunciation from Language Log. They're a local delicacy in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so quite a few Upper Midwesterners know to distinguish pasty from pastie.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I assume you got the proper pasty pronunciation from Language Log.

Yes, and confirmed on dictionary.com.