The Science of Bruschetta.

I posted about a video by Taylor “Language” Jones last year, and now he’s got another one I can’t resist sharing, Dear Hank Green, here’s the science of “Bruschetta”. It’s about how we choose which version of borrowed words to say (with detours into what even counts as “borrowed,” e.g. the fake-French “nom de plume”), and it’s one of the few video essays I wish were longer — it’s under fifteen minutes, and I would happily have watched for half an hour if he analyzed a bunch of good examples. One of his trick questions (“leave the answer in the comments if you know it!”) is what the real French phrase is; another is “in what language is bgadim an actual word?” (spoiler: it’s Hebrew). I was distressed that he called /beɪˈʒɪŋ/ (“Beizhing”) the “standard” pronunciation of Beijing, but I can’t in good conscience dispute it. And I’m reminded of my comment here: “The problem, of course, is knowing with whom to use which pronunciation.” (I just thought of a good example: I’ve heard enough Cantonese-speakers call Wong Kar-wai “Wong GAH-wei” that that’s how I say it in my head, but I would never dream of saying that in conversation — I will keep calling him WONG kar-WYE like a normal English-speaker.)

Relatedly, I ran across the name of the luxury clothing line Xuly Bët (or, as they apparently style it, XULY.Bët Funkin’ Fashion Factory), which is said to mean “to open your eyes wide” in Wolof. Amazingly, that is actually correct; Arame Fal’s Dictionnaire wolof-français has “xulli, v. écarquiller les yeux, faire les gros yeux” (Bul xulli xale bi, dafay tiit ! Ne fais pas les gros yeux à l’enfant, il va avoir peur !) and “bët b-, n. oeil.” As I understand the writing system of Wolof, this should be pronounced /ˈxulli bət/; my question, in case any of you have any dealings with luxury clothing lines, is: how do non-Senegalese pronounce this? If I were an English-speaker who knew nothing about Wolof, I might try /ˈzuwli bɛt/, but I can think of all sorts of other possibilities, and I can’t imagine either English- or French-speakers hitting on the correct (i.e., Wolof) one.