A rant in defense of mis conventional pronunciation (relayed with approval by languagehat):

. . . Or were we planning on spending the rest of our lives saying “Paree” for Paris?
So to answer your question – no, I think it’s sad and silly to say things the way the locals do if there’s an accepted English pronunciation. . . .

I’m in the other camp ( . . more . . )

Sean Gabb’s “Free Life Commentary” has moved.

Ever wonder about the economy of Middle-Earth? Like: What do Rangers eat, where do their children sleep, and how do they pay for their beer at the Prancing Pony? What do the goblins of the Misty Mountains eat between dwarves? Why has Eriador – which ought to be hospitable to nomadic shepherds if nothing else – been mostly empty for a thousand years despite being defended by the Rangers?

This week KTEH showed a Lovejoy episode in which the owner of a splendid collection of Jewish antiques is made to crawl for having acquired it by bartering food and supplies to the ghetto of Cracow during the war. Heaven knows I don’t watch Lovejoy for profundity (Q.: Why the heck do you watch it? A.: Quiet, you.) but still – where in pop entertainment is any character with the character to stand up and say, “If you think my profit was excessive – and of course it was high, which is why I risked my life and reputation – you should encourage and honor the smuggler, so that in the next war there will be more of us, to drive prices down. But I suppose the moral thing, in your eyes, would have been to let people starve, and let all this fine work be melted down by the Nazis.”