I have noticed that the H-L is now using the very trendy double diacritical marks for the spelling of resumé or résumé. It seems to me, that if you use the French spelling of the word, with two accents ague, you should pronounce it (ray zoo may) and not (rez oo may). I honestly do not remember ever hearing anyone pronounce it the first way. So, is it correct to use the French spelling and not the French pronunciation? It seems like the accent ague should reflect the long A.

And why the change?

I am certainly not a linguist and certainly can be wrong on my observations and understanding of the word, so can you clear it up for me? I like your column, great job!

From Brian Throckmorton, the Herald-Leader’s Copy Desk Chief:

I’m glad that using both accent marks is a trend! It makes more sense than using just one, or none at all.

The short answer to your question: The Herald-Leader uses “résumé” because it’s the preferred spelling in the newsroom dictionary (Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Third Edition).

The long answer: Copy editors at the Herald-Leader are learning more about applying diacritical marks, in part so that we can correctly present the names of our increasing Spanish-speaking readership. We have a long-standing practice, however, of applying accent marks when they help the reader distinguish two words such as rose/rosé, lame/lamé and resume/résumé. With résumé, if we’re using the original French spelling for the second half of the word, it would seem unnecessarily inconsistent not to use it for the first half.

Of course, in its preferred spelling for many foreign-derived words, the dictionary strips away all accent marks. This might be because the word is so common that it no longer seems foreign or the accent isn’t distinguishing it from another nearly identical word. Examples: entree/entrée, jicama/jícama, smorgasbord/smörgåsbord, negligee/negligée.

As for pronunciation, it might seem affected to say ray-zoo-may instead of reh-zoo-may, unless you also drink shahm-pahn-yuh. The English language is flecked with lots of words that retain the spelling from their home language but lose their original pronunciation. The most thoroughly butchered one would have to be lingerie. In French, it’s something like lann-zhree, but I’ve never heard an American say anything but lawn-zhuh-ray.

Filed under: Lexington info