An Erudite Rant

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t think this quite belongs in the Pit, and it certainly falls short of a Great Debate, but dammit, it’s really beginning to peeve me.

In preface, I’ve always been annoyed by (e.g.) a common British pronunciation of “aluminum” (“alumin-i-um”). I’ve had my already correct pronunciation gently corrected by well-meaning Brits, and a friend who was a science ‘reporter’ on a show intended for international distribution almost came to blows with her British producer over this, after teh fiftieth ‘correction’. While I actively welcome correction, on this I stand firm: show me that second “i” - or anything in the word or its history to indicate that it should (vs. ‘can’) be pronounced that way, and I’ll consider adopting that variant - but not before. Lacking that, I’ll continute to consider it a semi-literate error that passed into common usage.

Now, I know it’s not “incorrect”. Much to my annoyance, it’s well established that spoken language trumps the written word, and ‘accepted usage’ trumps grammar, spelling, or any other mere rule. The brute force of democracy triumphs in language as nowhere else, so it is not “the masses” who must come to grips with the facts, it is I.

[Yes, I dare to use the predicate nominative instead of the more common accepted usage “it is me.” I know that this is a probably a retrofit from Latin, and is just as stuffy and arguably wrong as the lame injunction against splitting infinitives (which I happen to greatly enjoy doing) but dammit I’m a pedant, and my joys are few!]

Now to the meat of my rant: the word "erudite"

I have nothing against the word. Indeed, I’ve always been quite fond of it. However, over the past few years, I have noticed an increasing tendency for it to be pronounced “eriodite”(or any number of variations), which, given the meaning of the word, ranges from jarring to ironically humorous. Ten years ago, I’d have dismissed it as a mark of ignorance (a trait we all have to some degree, myself in particular), but it occurs to me that in the past few years this seems to have become the predominant pronunciation, in actual use - a grating habit which is made all the worse because the word itself seems to be undergoing a resurgence in common casual use (at least that’s my casual impression) on this side of the puddle. I also hear it increasingly mispronounced this way on the other side of various puddles.

We can nip this one in the bud. We must! If we allow ‘erudite’ itself to be mispronounced, erudition itself may soon be doomed - and I refuse to allow the dream to die before I attain it [which could take another century or so - in the words of the Mighty Cecil “it’s taking longer than we thought”]

Is ‘erudite’ part of a cohesive trend? Are other semantically relatable words slipping over to the dark side? Of course there are the standards such as “nuclear”, but am I missing something?

[BTW, as a child I had a theory on why words like “nuclear” were mispronounced. I thought they reflected our species subconscious rejection of new technology that frightens us. Hence, in the Iron Age the word Iron was fossilized as “I-earn” reather than “I-ron”, and in the nuclear age, many mouth seem to reject “nuclear”. “Sword” (pronounced “sord”) might be another example, but alas the theory fell apart on the silent L in “salmon” - which I briefly took as support for humanity’s much-bruited semi-aquatic phase, untilI realized trout, not salmon are the prefered fish for combat]

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I always pronounce erudite as “ee-roo-di-tee.”

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European Aluminium Association
International Aluminium Institute
Australian Aluminium Council

It’s the preferred spelling and pronunciation outside the U.S.

The correct pronunciation of erudite is air-you-dite. The transition from the r to the y sounds produces the extra “ee” sound.

4

How about “carmel”, apparently the now preferred pronunciation of the delectable confection which is actually car-a-mel. People, Carmel is a city in California. car-a-mel is the stuff you pour on ice cream, on apples, and find in the center of chocolates!

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I have always conceded that concede that “correct” and “preferred” usage follows whatever the prevailing common usage. In point of fact, the discoverer of the element (Sir Humphry Davy) named it ‘aluminum’ before changing his preferred spelling to ‘aluminium’ in 1812 to bring it in line with other elements he’d named (e.g. magnesium, sodium, and potassium), so there is some claim of primacy for the tetrasyllabic spelling and pronunciation. To be fair, however, he originally named it “alumium” (from the source mineral 'alumina", which Joseph Black brought into English by pseudo-Latinizing the French name, ‘alum’), and since that original name, isn’t used by anyone, anywhere, the primacy (‘secundacy’?) of aluminum seems less important.

Oddly, it appears that the spelling ‘aluminium’ was adopted as the US form before it was universal in the UK, and though there are examples of ‘aluminum’ being used in the US trades early on, the US didn’t adopt this spelling until 1925 [In considering its etymology and history, it’s important to recall thatit is a fairly reactive element and had barely been produced in pinhead quantities until ca. 1855, and the tip of the Washington Monument (1885) was made of this metal just to allow the public to glimpse this ‘amazingly rare and precious’ element.]

I did however learn while researchig this that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) did finally standardize on “aluminium” in the 1990s, which was not the case, at the time that I and my friend were corrrected and gathered our sources. Therefore I not only stand corrected, but feel obligated to use that in scientific settings from this point on. It will probably take me a year or more to phase it into my casual speech, but this would hardly be the only word where I differ from those around me.

I thank you for drawing my attention to this. I was not joking about appreciating correction. It seems I have turned my obnoxious pedantry elsewhere in the nick of time!

However, though it may simply be my atrocious Yank accent, I have never had any difficulty pronouncing ‘erudite’ without synthesizing a superfluous syllable, and (to my ear) the extra syllable actually seems to usually be strained and artificially exagggerated by many people who use it - almost as if they are deliberately attempting to sound -erm- ‘erudite’ (or, more likely, are emulating other speakers, who stress and extend that affected syllable)

"Do you know the difference between a ‘smart Yank’ and a ‘sharp jerk’, my dear boy? … None at all. None at all"

  • an Oxford-educated (American) Anglophile to an American teen,
    in a ca. 1981 novel I am currently re-writing for long-delayed publication
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From the forum description for In My Humble Opinion:

Off to IMHO.

Cajun Man ~ SDMB Moderator