Bon Mots

These words have nothing in common, apart from the fact that I love hearing them said aloud (okay, they also both start with B and end with T, but that’s a bit elementary).  I hadn’t thought about them together, until a long-time twitter pal mentioned it. I said that I love the word Budapest, but prefer to hear it as “Budapesht”. She mentioned borscht, which reminded me of how much I love that word too. It’s made even more wonderful by the fact that you can hardly mispronounce it, even if you’ve never heard it before. I know saying Budapesht instead of Budapest sounds a bit pompous, but I did learn that it’s the way Hungarians say it. Though I may rethink my conviction, now that I’ve confirmed that Henry Higgins pronounces it Budapest, to rhyme with “rudder pest”, as in this wonderful song, The Dreadful Hungarian. What about you?  How do you like to say it? Do you have occasion to, beyond hearing it in ads for world cruises at the start of Masterpiece Theatre?