(06-26-2016 02:39 PM)Wiessman Wrote:  I'm just stunned by the number of people who don't know who Chauntecler is (that's how his name is spelled in more traditional versions of The Canterbury Tales). No offense, elf owl.

Not everyone should know, but I've seen whole threads on sites that end with someone typing, "It's a rooster," and yet there is still no mention or knowledge of what his origin is. This is just a little more evidence of the decline of general education in the US, IMO.

Though the spelling has changed (the original is the French "chante-cler" or "-clair"), Chanticleer's name should still be pronounced "Shawn-te-clear." "Shan-" is wrong, IMO, and the "e" in "te" should be a schwa (don't know how to type one of those offhand). How the last syllable sounds is down to whether or not you think it should sound even more "French"; I've heard it both ways from academics.

People should read The Canterbury Tales. Good stuff. The Nun's Priest's Tale is entertaining.

Chantecleer is indeed not just a rooster, but a particular rooster of folklore, in fact pre-dating Chaucer by a fair bit. He certainly appears in the French folk tales of Reynard the Fox. One common treatment is that he is an extremely vain rooster, who believes that his crowing causes the sun to rise.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the character may be the origin of the rooster as France's national symbol. Given the role that South Carolina played in the first third of our nation's history, it is perhaps an equally appropriate symbol for one of that state's institutions.

As for the pronunciation: I don't know. In general, it's OK for a language to have its own pronunciation of foreign names rather than to imitate the foreign pronunciation (e.g. it's fine that English-speakers say "Par-iss" instead of "Par-ee", or "Mex-i-co" instead of "Meh-hee-co"). In that respect, "shant" seems a bit more natural as an English rendering than "shaunt". But I really have no idea what the generally accepted English pronunciation was in, say, 1900 or 1950, when Chaucer was indisputably still part of the Anglo-American canon.