# Another pronunciation pitting **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 16, 2008, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180 "2008-10-16T12:03:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/121 "2008-10-19T04:52:39Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Nice use of sarcasm there, **Kendall**. You’re completely and utterly missing my point, and your sarcasm is totally misplaced, but it’s still kind of cute. Nice job. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I aim to create the highest grade sarcasm this side of the Mississippi. > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > And perhaps you should do a little homework before demonstrating your ignorance. You aren’t very clear about whether you mean professional in the real estate field or professionals in linguistics, but I would guess you’re talking about Realtors. The materials produced by their trade association pronounce it RE-AL-TOR, just like it’s spelled. Maybe _you_ should take the hint that you’re being a pompous ass. I’m not the one who bitched that people should “look in a freaking dictionary” when the dictionaries in fact support both pronunciations. That was **you**. You don’t like a snarky tone when someone points out how sloppy you were? Fine. I can take it down a notch. In return, I expect that you pay attention to what I’m actually saying, instead of attributing to me points I haven’t made. More on that below: > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > This has nothing to do with linguistics. I understand completely how dictionaries work, and how pronunciations vary regionally and culturally. What you don’t seem to understand is that a member of a professional trade association won’t be taken as seriously if he or she uses a pronunciation of the professional title that doesn’t match either the professional association or the spelling. First, you’re completely and utterly wrong about this being unrelated to linguistics. This sort of discussion is highly relevant to linguistics. True, it is not the primary focus of most linguists, but these topics relate strongly to sociolinguistics, which does not belong to some other field. It a part of the whole. And I freely admit, it’s true that people will often have a negative impression of others who use a different pronunciation. You might even be right that realtors especially (who hold that trademarked title as members of a professional organization) are particularly vulnerable to adopting this negative impression. What you have not demonstrated, nor even attempted to demonstrate, is how _a majority of customers_ might react. You have only your personal distaste. But if a realtor lives in an area whose dialect is marked with the real-a-ter pronunciation, it might in fact behoove this realtor to choose the (completely standard) alternate pronunciation. If they still push real estate like a mean, lean, property-selling motherfucker, then it doesn’t really matter what the other people think. As long as they have a positive reputation in their local community, the others can suck eggs. > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > _I_ am egocentric? You are the condescending, arrogant, expert in this thread. I don’t care whether you speak like me at all. You keep trying to draw the argument back to a linguistic la-la-land in which nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Incorrect. Absolutely, positively, unequivocally incorrect. I have not once in this thread, nor in any other, pushed a view that there are no standards. This is a classic strawman, and I’m not going to deal with it again, but Geoff Pullum deals with it [here](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001843.html). > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > I’m speaking of the real world, and of trying to look like a professional. If an attorney ran a radio spot calling himself an “AT-TRON-NEE,” he wouldn’t get a whole lot of phone calls. He’d look like he wasn’t serious; like he hadn’t dealt with his own professional associations. Not a comparable situation. AT-TRON-NEE is a mispronunciation. You won’t hear it on the news. You won’t hear in in advertisements. You won’t hear it from attorneys. Real-e-ter is standard. You can hear it on the news, you will hear it in advertisements, and you will it this pronunciation from professionals (meaning professional realtors). > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > The same is true of Realtors. For some people, sure. But not for everybody. We’ve already had one person in this thread who seems to have said that the original pronunciation sounds wrong. This sort of thing happens when there are multiple pronunciations. It’s normal. > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Obviously, much of this has to do with opinions. Perhaps when you hire a professional, you simply pick the one whose name comes first in the phone book. I try to put together a set of criteria to quickly eliminate the non-experts, and then evaluate the rest for suitability. Someone who says “REE-LA-TOR” in their radio spot will be dismissed out-of-hand, as will someone who spells it “relator” in their print ad. Dismissed out of hand by _you_. And someone who uses your preferred pronunciation might be dismissed out of hand by someone else. By an entire community, even. I’m not saying that happens often. I really don’t know how prevalent this is. What I do know is that you have no more evidence than I do, and that other deprecated pronunciations have not held back some people from attaining the highest political office in the land (I am referring, of course, to Bill Clinton’s occasional use of “nucular”). Which is why I’m not going to take your personal views on the matter as indicative of some overwhelming societal trend. > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Your cite is Wikipedia? Quite the expert you are. Did you write that one? I’ll let this snark slide since it was in response to my own. For the record, though, my original claim was: “According to the definitions of Greater Los Angeles Area that I’ve seen, San Diego is not included.” A wiki cite is perfectly appropriate for that. I note also that **Hostile Dialect** ’s location is “San Diego, Obamafornia”, which unless I miss my guess would indicate a level of personal experience. So yes, as I said, San Diego is not included in any of the definitions I’ve seen. I didn’t call your definition wrong (though I’m inclined to believe it is). I simply stated that it did not fit my previous experience with the term. And how do you respond to that? > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > You’re so pedantic linguistically that you feel any mispronunciation is “acceptable,” but you won’t accept the use of the words “greater XXX area” to mean “the area surrounding XXX”? False, false, a billion times false. I do not accept any mispronunciation as acceptable. And I did, in fact, accept your definition for the sake of argument. > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > That’s what “greater” MEANS to the majority of Americans. I understand that people from San Diego have their own identity and don’t want to be seen as part of Los Angeles, but to most people outside of southern California, “greater L.A. area” is just some radius around L.A. I don’t think that’s true. From my own travels, it’s always appeared to me that each “greater” area is defined specifically for the region. > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Therefore, by your reasoning, saying “the 101” is an American accent. If that’s how you’re looking at it, I have no choice but to agree. I was merely trying to be a bit more precise, as people in the general area surrounding L.A. (does that make you happier than “greater L.A. area”?) tend to say “the 101” but people in the northern 2/3 of California tend to say “101” or “Highway 101.” It actually does make me happier if you use “general area around LA”. It jives better with my own idiolect. More to the point, though, it’s perfectly fine if you want to be more precise. I tend to approve precision, and I did find it interesting that the Northern California peeps don’t use that particular construction. But I also approve accurate statements, and it was inaccurate for you to say “No”, when saying “the 101” is, in fact, part of a California accent. My overarching point, though, is that encouraging people to speak well is hampered if you don’t understand how language works. I, for one, think real-e-ter sounds a little bit stupid. But, as I said just before, I’m not going to mistake my own preferences as perfect guidelines for English. There is absolutely a place for good prescriptivism in the world, but only as long as prescriptivists make arguments about _aesthetics_ instead of notions of “correctness”, which (I say again) the vast majority of them don’t understand. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/122 "2008-10-19T05:37:57Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > How, precisely, do you figure that using “greater L.A. area” to mean “the general area surrounding L.A.” is “massive ignorance”? That question is bizarre and totally irrelevant, since I have never seen you describe anything surrounding L.A. as part of the “greater L.A. area”. What you actually did was to claim that everything from L.A. to the Mexican border is part of the “greater L.A. area”. That’s like saying that all of Ohio is in the “greater Pittsburgh area”. > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > If you can demonstrate to me that this isn’t a common usage, then I’ll cheerfully admit to ignorance fought and cease to use it that way. What, you want me to find a study showing which usage is more common? But I thought that wasn’t good enough to determine correct usage from incorrect usage. Bullshit. Nobody–NOBODY–who lives in L.A. or San Diego thinks that either one is in the other’s “greater area”. > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > You, on the other hand, seem so set in your ways that you’re unwilling to even share a message board with people who notice the geographic proximity of San Diego and Los Angeles. _I’m_ set in my ways? _I’m_ unwilling to fight my own ignorance? Projecting much? By the way, among the other things that you’re determined to be wrong about, you clearly have no idea how close San Diego is to L.A. Is Pittsburgh in the “greater Cleveland area”? ---
**Author:** ![Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/87869e/32.png) [@Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Professor_So_And_So)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/123 "2008-10-19T06:39:15Z")
I just read through this entire thread, and I can see truth in both sides of the arguments being made. Something that I don’t quite understand at this point is whether the word _mispronunciation_ is left with any real meaning when the notion of a particular idiolect is brought into the picture. **Kendall Jackson** made this comment here, and I think it can serve as an example of where I’m confused: > [@](#): > > Not a comparable situation. AT-TRON-NEE is a mispronunciation. You won’t hear it on the news. You won’t hear in in advertisements. You won’t hear it from attorneys. Real-e-ter is standard. You can hear it on the news, you will hear it in advertisements, and you will it this pronunciation from professionals (meaning professional realtors). So am I to take it that there are indeed true mispronunciations, even though they could be just considered part of someone’s idiolect (which some people appear to be saying nullifies the idea that the word is being pronounced incorrectly), and that those mispronounced words are only considered mispronunciations until enough people are saying them? Sorry if my questions aren’t very clear, but this was quite a thread to take in all at once for me. Very interesting discussion though, even if a bit heated. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/124 "2008-10-19T07:06:35Z")
The idiolect thing has perhaps been a bit of a red herring, but, yes, there are such things as legitimate mispronunciations. There _are_ correctness criteria. But, as you note, the correct pronunciations (usages, constructions, etc.) among a speech community are nothing more and nothing less than those which are common within that speech community (well, we could put a _little_ more sophistication into the delineation, but this the essence of it). What else could possibly reasonably be taken to constitute correctness criteria? Language doesn’t come down to us from on high. We, in the aggregate, make it; it’s _ours_. As such, correctness is an empirical matter. “At-tro-nee” is a mispronunciation (to the best of my knowledge) because pretty much nobody speaks that way. “Real-e-ter” is not, because plenty of people do routinely speak that way. ---
**Author:** ![Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/87869e/32.png) [@Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Professor_So_And_So)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/125 "2008-10-19T07:25:41Z")
Indistinguishable, are you saying that the word _mispronunciation_ is then a relative term? I understand that lexicographers are always scrambling behind the masses to add to/change their particular compilations, but for whatever reason, to me, it does seem that there would be some sort of standard that all dialects of one language (although I also would say that it would be essentially useless, as that framework was obviously dropped by the people actually communicating) originally deviated from. I suppose I just never considered the idea of a mispronounced word to be a relative one. I assumed (I’m obviously not a linguist) that there would have to be some sort of way to fact-check whether a word was being pronounced properly, if we were to invent a word to describe an error of pronunciation. Does the correctness criteria just get sorted out on the streets of whatever area you might be in at a given time? In considering what you’re saying, I can see the dynamic nature of the mutations, and also the pragmatics behind adopting a change in one’s own speech to suit that particular place and time. I suppose it could just be the remnants of years of being brow-beaten in English classes that has me clinging to the idea of proper pronunciation, but I’d sure like to understand this better before I adopted such a philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/126 "2008-10-19T08:07:35Z")
Nothing more irritating to start a day than a REALTOR who can’t pronounce his/her profession. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/127 "2008-10-19T08:11:40Z")
Actually, the folks who add a schwa between the L and the T would have just as much of a case if they claimed that _you’re_ saying it wrong. But that would be silly, wouldn’t it? But _why_? What intrinsic quality of the pronunciation favored in this thread makes it exclusively correct? ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/128 "2008-10-19T09:39:36Z")
> [@Professor\_So\_And\_So](#): > > So am I to take it that there are indeed true mispronunciations, even though they could be just considered part of someone’s idiolect (which some people appear to be saying nullifies the idea that the word is being pronounced incorrectly), and that those mispronounced words are only considered mispronunciations until enough people are saying them? These are some good questions. **Indistinguishable** ’s answer is solid, but if it’s still unclear, let me try to take a different tack. There have been some linguists out there who have denied that there is such a thing as correctness in language. At first glance, it’s an argument so odd, so scientifically neutral, that it repels the mind. The basis of their belief, though, is simple. It is ultimately irrelevant what signifiers we use. If we wish to speak idiosyncratically, then it’s really nobody’s business but our own. There’s no real purpose to holding their own individual language to a standard that they deliberately (or even unconsciously) choose not to adhere to. Why call it “incorrect”? It’s the way they speak, and that’s that. They might be advised to rethink their position at least temporarily if they need to apply for a new job or something, but otherwise, society’s notions of lingual correctness are completely irrelevant to their own personal private language. To which someone like me will say: Okay, fine. But I’m personally interested in figuring out the rules that we share. I’m interested in the rules of this crazy thing called “English” defined broadly. And I want to know the facts. Not opinions, not prejudices. I want to know the facts of English on a broad level. And so we have need for a new term: Standard English (which can be further subdivided by country as convenient). So what are the rules of this standard language? Some kinds of linguists sit back and figure this shit out. And they do so empirically, by collecting large corpuses of data (both written and spoken) and checking to see what forms and what patterns show up consistently. In the case of figuring out Standard English, they especially like professionally edited publications and significant speakers. In other words, they’ll listen to NPR and read the New York Times. They’ll listen to US Senators and cabinet secretaries, judges and lawyers, presidents and governors, authors and other notable speakers. They collect speech data from public professionals. For example, if a realtor says real-e-tor, that’s noteworthy. The fact that attorneys never say attroney is also noteworthy. What’s more: they know for a fact that hella people say “irregardless” – BUT they also notice that this “irregardless” word _almost never_ shows up in professionally edited publications. So if you look up this word in a dictionary (60 seconds, max), you’ll find that it’s labeled “nonstandard”. It’s obviously an English word, since it’s used by English speakers. But it’s almost never used in certain professional contexts. Which brings us to one possible informed (context-dependent) notion of correctness: If you want to speak Standard English, you need to avoid “irregardless”. If you want to speak Standard English, **then “irregardless” is incorrect**. And of course, there are more levels. Attroney is not only nonstandard, it is nonexistent. It is clearly a mispronunciation. It is incorrect not only in the standard dialect but also in any other dialect you can possibly think of (at least as far as I know). Which is why it was not at all comparable to the incredibly well-established real-e-ter. So yeah, there are notions of correctness in linguistics. But they’re dependent on the situation. If someone stumbles into this thread to bitch about the word “irregardless” and they call it wrong, wrong, wrong, then it would be worth pointing out that it’s “right” for their variety of English. It’s wrong only in the fact that it’s nonstandard, and none of us are obligated to speak standard English all the time. Sometimes you just gotta pour yourself a bottle a whiskey, flip your shoes off, and slip on a more natural dialect. Sometimes it just doesn’t matter what other people think. ---
**Author:** ![Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/87869e/32.png) [@Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Professor_So_And_So)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/129 "2008-10-19T10:22:48Z")
Thanks for the reply, **Kendall**. Could this then be succinctly summed up by saying that mispronunciations can only _truly_ occur when someone compares an arbitrary pronunciation of a word spoken in an English dialect to Standard English conventions, and they don’t match? ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/130 "2008-10-19T10:51:27Z")
Not quite. First off, pronunciation is generally not arbitrary; almost everything in natural language use is governed by internalized rules. That’s a bit of a nitpick, though. (ETA: By “natural language”, I mean a language learned “natively” by humans, like English, Spanish, Faroese, Farsi, whatever–as opposed to an artificial language like Esperanto.) Secondly, “mispronounced” doesn’t really work for something like “real-e-tor”, because it’s an extremely common and (in the proper context) correct pronunciation. “Inappropriate”, OTOH, might be a way to describe its use in, say, a job interview. Or, depending on how you look at it, a radio ad. Again, it depends on context; if an Alabama real estate agent is trying to appeal to the already-cliche Joe Sixpack, she may find it more appropriate to speak as naturally as possible so that her target audience can identify with her and feel like she’s going to do what she can to get him the right home. If an Alabama _corporate_ real estate agent is trying to appeal to local business owners, she’ll probably have more luck speaking what we might call “interview English”: avoiding excessive contractions, nipping epenthesis in the bud (“real-tor” instead of “real-e-tor”), etc. You speak differently at an interview vs. in your boss’s cubicle vs. at a barbecue vs. on the phone with your mom vs. on a radio call-in show. It’s not like there are five different conventions that you consciously switch through for each situation; it’s just that you take subtle and not-so-subtle cues into account when choosing your words and deciding how to say them. I am of the opinion that the word “mispronunciation” really doesn’t apply to a situation where, say, you accuse an “ath-a-lete” of taking steroids at a Congressional hearing. It’s not like you have some fundamental lack of understanding of how the word is pronounced—after all, you used the very pronunciation that’s most appropriate for, say, East Texas backyard barbecues, and if you were more careful, you would’ve used the more appropriate one for the situation you were in. Third, these sorts of linguistic issues are usually complex, especially when value judgments and heated emotions come into play, and it is often impossible to sum them up succinctly. These things require holistic study, which is why people like me spend our time studying them thoroughly. Any succinct summation of most complex linguistic topics runs the risk of (a) completely glossing over important nuances and/or (b) being incomprehensible to laypeople. ---
**Author:** ![Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/87869e/32.png) [@Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Professor_So_And_So)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/131 "2008-10-19T11:15:01Z")
Thanks for the reply, **Hostile**. I’ll address your reply point-by-point, for ease. 1. I suppose I didn’t choose the correct term when I used the word _arbitrary_ in my previous post. What I meant to capture was the ability to choose one of many possible common pronunciations of a word in order to compare it with whatever is considered “proper” pronunciation. 2. What you’re describing here is what I was referring to with my use of the word _pragmatics_ here: > [@](#): > > Does the correctness criteria just get sorted out on the streets of whatever area you might be in at a given time? In considering what you’re saying, I can see the dynamic nature of the mutations, and also the pragmatics behind adopting a change in one’s own speech to suit that particular place and time. 1. I can completely see the complexity of the system, it’s just that in reading this thread, I was left with the question in my mind of whether or not the word “mispronunciation” is capable of ever having a true connection to reality outside of relative opinions. That question still hasn’t been answered in my mind, but I appreciate your attempts. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/132 "2008-10-19T12:01:03Z")
> [@Professor So And So](#): > > I suppose I didn’t choose the correct term when I used the word arbitrary in my previous post. What I meant to capture was the ability to choose one of many possible common pronunciations of a word in order to compare it with whatever is considered “proper” pronunciation. That’s fine–it was a nitpick on my part anyway, and more qualified linguists than I could well disagree with me. By no means do I have my finger firmly on the pulse of the scientific consensus on these things. > [@Professor So And So](#): > > it’s just that in reading this thread, I was left with the question in my mind of whether or not the word “mispronunciation” is capable of ever having a true connection to reality outside of relative opinions. That question still hasn’t been answered in my mind I’m not a capable enough linguist to give you a definition of “mispronunciation”, but I can tell you that it exists as its own concrete concept. The “attroney” example is a good one: it’s simply wrong in English, because it doesn’t seem appear in any dialect that we would recognize as English and it has very real potential to break communication ability. In fact, I would go so far as to say that “mispronunciation” does _not_ connect to reality _within_ the scope of relative opinions: where there is precedent for communicability, there is no error in any absolute sense. (JMHO.) For example: pronouncing “pen” and “pin” as homophones is not an error, but I think we can safely say that pronouncing “pen” like “pong” is wrong. Again, this is my opinion and I can’t back this specific post up with any real scientific authority. (I’m just an undergrad, after all.) ---
**Author:** ![Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazle_Weatherfield)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/133 "2008-10-20T19:09:35Z")
Can we at least agree that prostrate for prostate is wrong? If not, I give up! ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/134 "2008-10-20T20:23:43Z")
Can we just have a descriptivism/prescriptivism sticky, so we don’t have to have this same fucking conversation every two weeks? Or at least have some of the stauncher prescriptivists read a basic book on linguistics so they at least sound like they know what the hell they’re talking about? ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/135 "2008-10-20T20:27:03Z")
Well, I’m sure there are plenty who would agree with your first line, but modify your second one to complain about the ignorance of the stauncher descriptivists. And thus we keep having this same fucking conversation every two weeks. I suppose we could compile a Greatest Hits of threads past and just start linking to the most relevant posts from them whenever possible… It could even get to be like the joke about the tribe who memorized jokes and performed them simply by announcing indices. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/136 "2008-10-20T20:30:56Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Well, I’m sure there are plenty who would agree with your first line, but modify your second one to complain about the ignorance of the stauncher descriptivists. And thus we keep having this same fucking conversation every two weeks. Sure. But I don’t exactly see the stauncher descriptivists saying that anything goes when it comes to pronunciation and English usage. Maybe I’m just on the wrong side of the fence (even though I do defend Strunk & White), but it seems to me that the descriptivism in this thread is well-tempered. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/137 "2008-10-20T20:33:07Z")
I agree, and I believe I’m one of the stauncher descriptivists (and one of the least inclined to see any merit in Strunk & White). I’m just saying, the conversation won’t end until (almost) everyone agrees. Which is clearly far off. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/138 "2008-10-20T20:36:29Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > I agree, and I believe I’m one of the stauncher descriptivists (and one of the least inclined to see any merit in Strunk & White). I’m just saying, the conversation won’t end until (almost) everyone agrees. Which is clearly far off. Yeah, this topic can be as polarizing as some of the political debates on this board. ---
**Author:** ![Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/87869e/32.png) [@Professor\_So\_And\_So](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Professor_So_And_So)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/139 "2008-10-20T20:41:23Z")
Being new to the SDMB, I have the luxury of being able to read a thread like this as if it’s the first time it’s been discussed here. I found the overall discussion to be very interesting and learned a lot in the process. I really don’t understand why some people allow themselves to get so worked up over it though. Maybe it’s just the same as when other areas of peoples’ faith area called into question. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180/140 "2008-10-20T21:08:37Z")
> [@Hazle Weatherfield](#): > > Can we at least agree that prostrate for prostate is wrong? If not, I give up! Well, it can certainly be confusing, but since the word “prostrate” itself is going by the wayside, I for one think it will one day simply be an alternative pronunciation for “prostate”. And there will be nothing wrong for that. But yeah, I guess I can get behind that: as it stands now, pronouncing “prostate” as “prostrate” is wrong, IMO. Not because of any inherent quality of the words, but because it’s a confusing usage that probably doesn’t have enough currency to justify its use. BTW, “Linguistics for Non-Linguists” is an excellent textbook that pretty much does what the title implies, and for straight-up nonfiction I would recommend Peter Singer’s “The Language Instinct”. That’s more psycholinguistics/cognitive-science based, though. Someone might come along with a better suggestion for a primer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-pronunciation-pitting/468180.md?page=8)