How do you pronounce 'melee?'

[dogoftheunderworld]

Well, there goes two of my three snarky answers. I guess that just leaves...

"Rhymes with cow."

I think you mean "Rhymes with bow."



I mostly say mee-lee, because I started pronouncing it that way when I was 10 (not nowing any better), and is one of my long-lasting bad-habits (in addition to playing D&D )

If I were to take care and try to pronounce it correctly, I generally say may-lay.

I let my son know the more-correct way of pronouncing it, but with full disclosure that I will often "mis-pronounce" it.

 

[jmucchiello]

Jethro Tull pronounces it meh-LAY in Thick as a Brick, and if Ian Anderson isn't an authoritative source for gamer pronounciation, then I don't know what is.

Spend the XP I gave you wisely.

 

[jmucchiello]

My question is: why would anyone ever start pronouncing it MAY-lay as we don't usually pronounce a single e as 'ay' unless we put an accent on it, in fact older sources may put a circumflex on that first e which really doesn't mean 'pronounce like ay' -- so where did it come from, for it to (appear to) become the standard American pronunciation. I'm not sure I've ever heard it from a British-English speaker - here it's pretty much always 'meh-lay'.

The simple answer is that those pronunciations also move the accent to the first syllable. It's very hard to accent meh and it naturally "elongates" to may. Why the accent moved is because in English you should "alWAYS acCENT the seCOND sylLABle." IOW, first syllable accenting is preferred in English.

 

[Tewligan]

"WHAT?! Damn it, who keeps calling my name?"

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Heh, now I feel fortunate to play in Spanish, where melé is unambiguously pronounced meh-LEH

Also, since the letter "I" is always pronounced like the "ee" in English, then Lich rhymes with "ditch"

Also, everyone I know pronounces "drow" as in "row", with a "D" at the beggining (I know this is "officially" wrong, but bear with me)

And finally, "coup de grâce" is pronounced "tiro de gracia", no controversy here either!

We did it! Lo hicimos! Yay!

 

[lutecius]

I wonder where melee = may-lay came from. The dictionaries I've seen show an alternative spelling of mêlée which clearly indicates why the second syllable has an 'ay' vowel, but the circonflex on the first e suggests that it should have a different pronunciation from the second e. If it were mélée they 'may-lay' would be sensible, but Wikipedia suggests that "ê → /ɛ/ (open e; equivalent of è or e followed by two consonants) — prêt vs. pré" (in original French pronunciation).

So why would the word start being pronounced may-lay in the first place?

Wikipedia is correct and meh-lay is close enough but many french people actually pronounce it "mélée" so may-lay is not that bad.

There is no equivalent to the 'é' sound in english anyway ('ay' is just one approximation)

In the original French, you'd stress the second syllable (making it "meh-LAY"). But in English accentuating either is acceptable.

There is no word stress in French, only sentence stress.
English speakers often stress the last syllable to make a word sound more French but yes, whatever comes naturally is correct.

 

[Asmor]

whatever comes naturally is correct.

Protip: This defense doesn't work in court.

On a related note, I'm legally obligated to inform you all that...

Never mind.

 

[vagabundo]

The word is still used in Dublin quite a bit and it is pronounced: Meh-Lee (in a Dublin accent)...

 

[Desdichado]

This is pretty much the only accepted pronunciation. English spelling is odd, isn't it?

Doesn't have anything to do with English spelling really; it's a French word.

Is the question supposed to be "how do you pronounce melee?" or "how does one pronounce melee?"

Because there's really only one correct pronunciation.

 

[pedr]

Because there's really only one correct pronunciation.

People keep saying this - without being explicit about which pronunciation they mean and why they think it is correct. Wikipedia gives two, as I've mentioned above, and American and British English seem to disagree on the primary appropriate pronunciation.

As I've gone into at length, I can't see how may-lay is a 'valid' pronunciation, but I'm not going to say it's wrong seeing it is how Webster lists the pronunciation. It's certainly not the way I'd think it should be pronounced!