Are you kidding?
Bush say’s new-cue-lur.
Nuff said.
Not enough for me to understand your point.
It was regarding the above.
What information about Bush’s intelligence do you think you can reasonably infer from his pronunciation of “nuclear”, a pronunciation he shares with Eisenhower, Mondale, Clinton, and many others?
And you misused an apostrophe. Are we required to beat you with a stick now?
Aww, thought I changed that!:smack:
Bring on the stick.
It’s much less fun when you volunteer!
It was a joke. Guess I thought the odds of addressing a Bush basher were pretty good.
Okay, well you’ll have to hunt me down then.
That’s essentially the question for which the field of historical linguistics exists (the phonetic branch of same, anyway). Epenthesis (the addition of a vowel sound in [about] the middle of a word) is, like most sound changes, a complex process that often requires holistic study to understand. Sometimes these sound changes happen as the end (or middle) result of a domino-effect kind of situation. I don’t think that’s what happened here, but an example would be that the schwa sound started appearing between “L” and “T” in some other phonological context to make some other set of words easier to pronounce, and the change got generalized more and more.
Additionally, epenthesis often happens for the purpose of vowel harmony (bridging the gap between two highly differentiated vowels; the /i/ in the “real” part is a tensed close front vowel while the /ʊɹ/ sound at the end of the word is a rhotacized, rounded lax back vowel that’s a little more open. Schwa is central (between the two vowels) and more open (and almost rounded), thus bridging the two vowels. My understanding of this could be flawed (I’m currently taking my first historical linguistics class), but if I’m getting it right, that’s one possible explanation.
Also, changes in timing can often create new sounds. Schwa is close to /l/, so if the word is drawn out a little more, the tongue could shift gradually into the schwa position between the /l/ and the /t/.
Just my two cents. BTW, your attitude regarding language change is reprehensible, not to mention silly, impractical, and likely to raise your blood pressure unnecessarily without actually having any beneficial effects.
There are a lot of really good reasons to criticize president Bush. The fact that he pronounces some words different than you do is not one of them.
According to you of course.
And you, too, I would assume, given your retreat into “It was a joke”. Or would you like to take a second stab at what, specifically, we are to conclude about Bush’s intelligence from his non-standard pronunciation of that one word (again, keeping in mind the plethora of distinguished other speakers who use that very same pronunciation)?
I did run into a customer service rep with (IIRC) MCI back in the day when they offered home phone service, and the rep needed to ess-kyoo-late the problem to a supervisor.
Never said mispronunciation had anything to do with intelligence.
No retreat.
Nope. The speech pattern of someone whose speech differs from those around him is an idiolect.
Idiolects are like accents; everyone has one.
But isn’t Realtor a trademark?
Looks like it is: realtor.com® | Homes for Sale, Apartments & Houses for Rent
It’s not a “route number dialect”. It’s a California dialect. This California dialect has a number of traits, some with respect to pronunciation and others relating to diction and syntax (for example, Californiaspeak has “hella” in its vocabulary, which can be used both as an attributive adjective and as an adverb).
But any individual Californian’s speech does not have to include every single trait of the California dialect. There will be large variations based on their parents, friends, education, reading habits, foreign language experience, the location of previous residences, etc. etc. etc. And most of these factors change consistently. An easy example: every time someone moves, there will be a corresponding change in their language, but this change will affect different people differently. A newly arrived resident might be able to easily pick up the local vocab, but be more resistant to changes in accent.
It amazes me how often ignorant people are willing to show up in threads like this to make blanket statements about language in some feeble-minded attempt to correct others, all without first doing themselves the simple service of consulting a dictionary or two.
Your speech pattern subtly differs from those around you – even your parents and siblings. It is true of all humans.