How do you pronounce 'melee?'

[Dzyu]

It seems that nearly everyone pronounces this one incorrectly. In French, gras (pronounced "gra")means "fat." Mardi Gras is "Fat Tuesday." So you are making a "cut of fat."

Wow, I missed that one. Looked it up and it should be more like "Coo de grahs" Thanks for the correction! Our RPG-group will immediately start dealing death blows rather than fat blows to helpless enemies...

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Save yourself. He's correct. Coup-de-grace should be pronounced "Coo de grahs."

I'm confused, because it appears that you confirmed my 'proper' pronunciation in the post I responded to:

It seems that nearly everyone pronounces this one incorrectly. In French, gras (pronounced "gra")means "fat." Mardi Gras is "Fat Tuesday." So you are making a "cut of fat."

I now notice that you're spelling it 'gras' rather than 'grace,' but that could just be you cutting out one ambiguous letter and one silent letter.

 

[Umbran]

I now notice that you're spelling it 'gras' rather than 'grace,' but that could just be you cutting out one ambiguous letter and one silent letter.

To avoid confusion. The terms are:

coup de grâce (pronounced "coo de grahs")

Mardi Gras (pronounced "mar dee grah")

The difference is in the spelling. French tends to not pronounce a final letter "s". It does pronounce a final "-ce". So grâce gets the s sound, while gras does not.

 

[korjik]

Until aint aint a word, melee is pronounced me-lee, like a chinese-american stuck in Bejing.

 

[Aloïsius]

It's written "mêlée" but many French will say "mélé" because of provincial accent (South) or just because the correct pronounciation "mêlé" sounds snobish.
My microphone does not work, so I won't be able to record the "é" and "ê".

 

[Umbran]

I'm amused by how many responses this thread has gotten!

Yep. Only on the Internet can a thread of 75+ responses be required for something that is handled in one line of a dictionary.