Talk:Maître d'hôtel

Literal meaning
It doesn't mean 'master of the hotel', literally. Hotel has several meanings in French, Maitre d' is closer to 'master of the household'/staff - ie, the Butler, most senior servant. (Maitre d's would have been in private houses originally.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.107.158.101 (talk) 14:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. -128.61.82.232 (talk) 08:06, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation
What is the correct way of pronouncing maître d'? PhS 11:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I have no idea... For someone knowing just a little French, it looks absurd since "d'" allways precedes a vowel or mute 'h'. The apostrophe just indicates that the 'e' in 'de' is not pronounced since theres a vowel in the next word. The full term "Maître d' Hôtel" is pronounced some thing like [mɛːtʀ d otel] (Bit unsure about the wovels ). But without "Hôtel" it doesn't make sense, in french.. :) If I should guess the English pronounciation is "matered": [maitɘd] or [maitɚd], just a guess. Qvasi 14:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Does not it make sense? In Latin the letter "H" doesn't sound, there for the apostrophe indicates that! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.80.11.234 (talk) 07:09, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Using English pronunciation, it is pronounced as "may-ter-D", the whole thing being "may-ter-dotel". 209.6.243.42 02:08, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * In England anyway, one would say "maitre dee". This is usually rendered as "maytruh dee"; use of a French 'r' would be a bit pretentious.

What-ho-vicar (talk) 19:19, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

redirection the wrong way round
As the disgusting term "maître d'" is merely a shortened form of the proper term, it makes no sense to redirect from there. The shortened (and less correct) form should direct to the full term. It's unsurprising that the article gives no explanation for the half-baked shortening of the term, which I suspect is due simply to many people's difficulty in pronouncing French terms. It's ridiculous that so many people have to say "Dayja voo", "maitrer dee" or to write "cafe" simply because they don't know how to type é on their outdated keyboard. Owen214 (talk) 22:47, 14 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I thought I should add that after looking at the only reference for this article, it refers to the role as "maitre d’hotel" and there is therefore no reference to justify the shortening of the term. Owen214 (talk) 02:32, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

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