An unfamiliar accent

I am about to tell a slightly embarrassing story. Here goes:

In my tenth-grade honors English class, we had maybe two boys. Because of this, every time we read a play and the teacher (who I loved) asked for volunteers to act out roles, it was these same two that always got the majority of the lines, because most (if not all) of the plays had male lead characters.

So when it came time for us to read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, I had had enough. I raised my hand to volunteer to read Caesar. My very cool teacher didn't even blink, and in fact commented that some very talented actresses had played Caesar on the stage. Now I would be added to the list (kind of)! I was so proud.

We started the reading, and I relished my part. I was as dramatic as was possible while still sitting in a high-school desk-chair (you know what I'm talking about). Finally, we were nearing the pivotal point for my character and for the play: Caesar's murder. I anxiously awaited it, but as the famous last line drew closer, I struggled internally—Should I pronounce "Bruté" the way I knew it was meant to be pronounced, or should I avoid being made fun of for being a goody-goody polyglot and just ignore the accent like Americans do on most words?

I chose the latter: “Et tu, Brute?”

Well, it was as if the murderous betrayal was taking place right there in the classroom. My teacher stopped the reading, and made a big show of spelling out Bruté really big on the board, circling the accent over the “e.”

"This is one of the most famous lines in all of English literature!" she said.

I was so embarrassed, and tried to defend myself, but to no avail.

A related thing happened a few months later when I was downtown with friends. We’d just gone to see a Tom Stoppard play that I found so unbearable (we thought we were really cultured, but even my ego couldn’t stop me from complaining about the show to my friends) that I was already in a bad mood, and were walking back to our car when I started reading the signs on the hip new drinking-and-dining complex they’d recently built in the Theater District.

“Sake Lounge looks really cool,” I said, pronouncing the first word like you would in “For Pete’s sake.”

“Sake!” My friends started cracking up. “It’s saké, duh!” (Yes, we were all nerds. They probably snorted superiorly, too.)

Again, so embarrassed, but mostly annoyed that my friends expected me to know this. After all, I was a good girl who did not have an exhaustive knowledge of international alchoholic beverages.

“But it doesn’t have an accent on it,” I said.

“It’s Japanese—hello!” one of my friends said.

“Didn’t you say ‘Et tu, Brute?’ in English class, too?” my BFF guffawed. So much for best friends standing by you.

All this to say that, know matter how much of a wordly, voracious reader you are, you never know how a word is really pronounced until you hear it said out loud.

Chagrin, anyone?