A ravelled sleeve: a rant.

As if last week's Kiribati problems weren't bad enough, now I'm all tangled up in a sixty-eight metre tapestry. 

This one:


(This is just a small section. It was made quite soon after 1066, which is when the events it depicts took place. As you can see, it's an utterly marvellous work of art)

It's presently situated in Bayeux, in Northern France, and shows the invasion of England by a Norman army led by William the Conqueror. The result of the battle? Well, the clue, as they say, is in the name.

(It does seem my simple patriotic duty to point out here that until earlier that year England's king had been St Edward the Confessor. Yes, that's St as in saint. So can anyone claim the conquering was a sign of progress? I don't think so.)

Anyway, the Bayeux Tapestry (it's actually an embroidery, but hey...) is one of those things every English child studies at primary school, and it's been called the Bayeaux (bay-err) Tapestry all my life until the other day, when the BBC started calling it the bi-oo tapestry, the first syllable, bi- as in the word by.

Could that be right? Wikipedia suggests the UK pronunciation is bi-yerr. I've never heard that said anywhere, though the Oxford Learners Dictionary site agrees with Wikipedia. In the USA they say, apparently, bar-yoo according to Wikipedia and bi-YERR according to Oxford. 

But what of the French, who should, after all, know, Bayeux being in France? 

Ba-oo-errrr (the oo is pronounced, according to Wikipedia, like ee, but with the lips pursed).

Sadly, in an English sentence that's going to sound as if you're about to throw up, so I think on the whole I'll stick to Bay-err. 

With any luck the pronunciation's old-fashioned enough to come over as quaint.

Word To Use Today: any of them, really, as long as it's not Bayeux.