How to Pronounce Homage

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hello, how’s it going?

Great, who’s this?

My name is Gary Cleveland.

Where are you calling from, Gary?

Carolina Beach, North Carolina.

Okay, what can we do for you?

So I play in a fantastic punk band called Sacred Cash Cow.

That’s nice.

Punk will never die.

There’s a local band here that’s going to break up, and so we were talking about covering one of their songs, learning one of their songs and covering it, and I said, you know, it would be a cool way to pay homage to them.

And so our guitar player, Alex, and bass player, Steve, they both are staring at me.

And they’re like, what?

And I said, you know, pay homage to them.

And then they’re like, oh, wait, do you mean homage?

I’m like, oh, my God.

So then the heckling commences immediately, you know.

So I said, I know who can settle this debate.

So I’m thinking it’s sort of the debate between like vase and vase, you know, that kind of thing.

But I don’t want to seem like a pretentious guy.

You know, I’m in a punk band, you know.

So hopefully you guys can settle this debate for us.

Homage versus homage.

Right.

But when you say homage, you’re usually talking about a tribute, right?

And homage to something.

Okay.

I mean, there’s also paying homage or paying homage, but the accent in both of those cases is on the first syllable.

So if you’re talking about the noun that you would use when you’re talking about doing a tribute to somebody, that would have the accent on the second syllable, and you don’t pronounce the H there.

No, wait, I was right? Is that what you’re saying?

Well, it’s complicated.

But it sounds like what you’re doing is putting the accent on, which syllable are you accenting there?

Paying homage.

Paying homage.

Homage.

Yeah.

You would accent the second syllable if you’re talking about the thing itself that you’re doing, the tribute itself.

This is an homage.

Oh.

Yeah, this is an homage to that other band.

Okay, so wait, are you telling me that these guys are right and I’m wrong?

Hang on a second.

Do you have more of them there?

Wait, I was right.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Alex.

I play guitar in Sacred Cash Cow.

Oh, okay.

Hi, Alex.

Welcome to the show.

Okay.

All right.

So what’s your…

Oh, yeah.

Thank you for having me on.

What’s your position?

I’m really just against the homogenization of pronunciation.

Oh, no.

I don’t know what you’re thinking.

You know, I went to school.

I’m not from homage country or anything.

Yeah, yeah.

Let’s focus this conversation a little bit, all right?

So first we have the pronunciation homage, which is sometimes pronounced with the H at the beginning.

If you pay homage to someone, you show them respect or you show them consideration for what they’ve earned as an expert or what they’ve earned as your mentor or somebody who came before you and showed the way.

Correct. They’re superior.

And that tends to be a non-count noun. You pay homage. It’s a substance that you don’t pluralize. You don’t pay homages. You just pay homage.

Then we have homage, right?

So if you play a song as an homage to another band, right?

And that is a count noun.

You can have homages, although it still sounds weird.

And what it has here is something essential that we haven’t talked about yet.

It has the direct influence of the French word homage, which is H-O-M-M-A-G-E, and which basically means a mark of respect.

So what you’re hearing here, and it came through artistic circles in the art world and in the music world and the creative fields, people re-borrowed the word a second time from French, and it still retains some of that French pronunciation, while at the same time, the previous borrowing has been very Anglicized and doesn’t have very much of the original French pronunciation.

So it’s the same word, borrowed twice from the same language at different periods for different purposes.

You’re both right.

You took the word right out of my mouth.

You’re both right.

So what you’re saying is homage is just Gary trying to sound smart at 1 o’clock in the morning.

It’s the tribute itself.

That’s exactly what I was trying to say.

Send us your songs, all right, so we can take a listen, all right?

Oh, we would love to.

Here, let me give it back to Gary.

And I just want to state again, I’m undefeated in these little corals.

So thank you so much, and here he is.

Take care.

His pronunciation is incredible.

All right.

Gary, he sounds like a real fun guy, though.

It sounds like you found somebody cool to have a band with.

Oh, absolutely.

I love these guys.

If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.

Well, you need to call us when you have another argument.

Yes, please.

Yeah, sounds good.

I’ll talk to you in about five minutes.

Okay.

And do send us your music, all right?

Oh, yeah, you got it.

We’ll put a CD in the mail, and thanks again.

This has been awesome.

All right.

Punk lives.

Take care.

All right.

Stay cool.

Bye.

Bye, Gary.

You know, in all that mess, I’m pretty sure I said the word wrong a couple of times.

I probably all did.

Probably did, too.

I think we all did.

So we have homage or homage, right?

And then we have an homage, which is the tribute itself.

Yeah, yeah.

Right?

The artistic work that imitates or pays honor to the other one.

And it’s the same word borrowed from French twice, but centuries apart.

And so the newer borrowing, the newer re-borrowing, retains some of the Frenchiness because it comes up through art circles where people still find the Frenchiness to be a flair that they want to add to their lingo.

And clearly these guys have Frenchy flair.

There are some great punk bands from France now.

Sacred Cash Cow.

We know you’re in a band because everyone’s in a band.

And you’re arguing.

We want to hear it as long as it’s about language.

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