Killer
As you can see here, an Australian performer is appearing in a one-man show called "Homme Fatale", and I'm of two minds about that title.
On the one hand, "fatale", as part of the French (and naturalized English) phrase "femme fatale", has a gender marker: the "-e" on the end means it's feminine. The masculine version is, logically enough, "fatal", and so "homme fatale" is clearly wrong.
On the other hand, if you coin the expression "homme fatal", just about every English speaker is naturally going to want to pronounce that second word in the English manner, with a strong stress on, and a long vowel in, the first syllable, and this is going to completely kill the meaning of the phrase.
What to do?
Even though I've complained more than once about the wanton misuse of "masseuse" when applied to a man, I have to go with "Homme Fatale". Making the thing grammatically correct is going to wreck the whole double-entendre point of the title, and the sense is more important than the literal correctness of the words in this case.
On the one hand, "fatale", as part of the French (and naturalized English) phrase "femme fatale", has a gender marker: the "-e" on the end means it's feminine. The masculine version is, logically enough, "fatal", and so "homme fatale" is clearly wrong.
On the other hand, if you coin the expression "homme fatal", just about every English speaker is naturally going to want to pronounce that second word in the English manner, with a strong stress on, and a long vowel in, the first syllable, and this is going to completely kill the meaning of the phrase.
What to do?
Even though I've complained more than once about the wanton misuse of "masseuse" when applied to a man, I have to go with "Homme Fatale". Making the thing grammatically correct is going to wreck the whole double-entendre point of the title, and the sense is more important than the literal correctness of the words in this case.
posted by pyramus | 8:33 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home