Bellamy: 'MAYAN-aize'

In Chinatown Jack Nicholson describes something as his "metier"
(rhymes with P.T.A.)

It's meh tee-yea

I won't go into who is not too smart here but you posters do make a case for studying history in school and taking it seriously.

Ralph Bellamy was correctly pronouncing the sauce we butchered into calling "May-a-naize" or the execrable "Man-naize". It comes from the French ""My-a-nez". Mayonnaise was fairly new in the United States when "Carefree" was made and it was the original way to pronounce mayonnaise. This was true with "tomato", too. "Tomato" came from Nahuatl, the Aztec language, by way of Spanish. In English-speaking countries, it was originally pronounced "to-mah-to" instead of the more common "to-may-to". In New York and New England, there are still people who pronounce it "to-mah-to". Check out the way Lucille Ball pronounces it on "I Love Lucy". Being raised in upstate New York, she continued saying "to-mah-to" for the rest of her life, I assume.

Language, like everything else changes. It's studying how things change that, hopefully, gives lie to what the philosopher Santayana said, "Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it."