What a maroon.
Your view is fascinatingly incorrect:
Smart people can be poor talkers; people with severe mental retardation (people with Williams Syndrome usually score between 50 and 70 on IQ tests) can be brilliant talkers. We live in a fascinating world.
dnooman suggests one rule. I’ve got an alternate suggestion: don’t soapboxify on language unless you’ve studied how it works.
Daniel
Hatred of the “nucular” pronunciations is one of my ignorances that this board successfully fought, and it happened in the very thread Lib linked.
I fought against it desperately, but in the end, hatred of that pronunciation is irrational.
Dork - it’s a good thing this is the pit. Otherwise, your arrogant and supercilious rant would be inappropriate. Look again, idiot. I said that - in my view - people who do not think well, do not speak well, nor do they write well. You know nothing of what I’ve studied, but I can tell that one thing you HAVEN’T studied is IQ tests. Your example of Anne McGarrah only points to the inherent flaws in the concept of measuring intelligence. I’ll stay with the point I made, thank you.
Its nucular dummy, the S is silent
Whether that is true or not, pronunciation of words is not a reliable indicator of one’s intelligence. Do you agree or disagree?
Proper names may be pronounced in a variety of way correctly. Think how many ways New Orleans can be pronounced!
I suspect that you and I pronounce nuclear the same way. When I hear Presidents Carter or Bush say it, my teeth grind on edge, my ears ring and my eyes roll back in my head. But they are not mispronouncing it. There is no such thing as “majority rule” in determining “standard English.” There is no preferred standard pronunciation of one region over another – except in broadcasting, of course.
If you are the boss and you are interviewing someone for a job, the above rule does not apply. Just remember, we Southerners have our way of saying things that are comfortable and “right” to our ears too. Sometimes outsiders sound “thick” to us, but we try to be considerate and not hurt anyone’s feelings.
guizot, that addresses your comment about Southern Congresspeople also:
Want to give an example of a hyperdipthong and explain why it’s wrong?
Welcome to SDMB! I already like you for saying Congresspeople instead of the usual. 
#1) I basically agree, although I think I believe that while not a 100% reliable indicator, it may be among a constellation of features that in the aggregate give a pretty good indication.
#2) whatever the hell “hyperdipthong” means, I’m betting that it is supposed to be spelled - AND pronounced - hyperdiphthong. i.e. Hy per diff thong, not Hy per dip thong. (related to the commonly misspelled and mispronounce diphtheria.)
xo, C.
This is a completely new and original rant that I have never seen before on these forums.
This is beyond lame. There are enough arguably valid reasons to pit the POTUS, but this ain’t one of them, unless you’re one of the group who needs the entire front page papered with anti-Bush bitching.
There may be exceptions, but if a person uses the language beautifully and skillfully, I always come to the concusion that that person is reasonably intelligent. I have made a fool of myself in the past in assuming that people who used poor grammar and truly mispronounced words were less than bright.
I suspect you are right. I wish that I could pretend that I was trying to trap guizot, but I misspelled it myself – just as I mispronounce and misspell diphtheria. I knew better about dipthong, but had forgotten. I never mind being corrected by someone who knows her stuff and I was unaware that I’ve always fu…done an injustice to “diphtheria.” (I depart now for English Teacher Disgrace Hell.)
“…someone who knows her stuff…”
her???
I hate using the phrase “her or his.”
you may now use “his.” And, actually, that’s a good place to use the apparently ungrammatical “their.” I vote for function over form in that case. xo, C.
Of course it’s “diphthong,” silly! What else did you think it would be?
I’m just a lousy speller. Especially after dark. And I hardly ever use that word in English. If you’d like, I can make more gafs, a fau pas or two, for you to correct. And then Zoe could “trap” me good ‘n’ proper, too.
Is it fun to get “trapped"?
Anyway, it probably wasn’t a very apt term (“hyperdiphthong”)—just the only thing I could come up with at the moment. I know it’s a cliché, and it doesn’t describe the subtle and wonderful differences in pronunciation throughout the South, but I was thinking of the way some Southerners pronounce those diphthong-like vowels. Often they emphasize one part of the diphthong more than the other. So “five” (/faiv/) becomes “fuh-ayve” (/f^:aiv/?), or something like that; I don’t know if that’s clear, or even correct, but it was just an example.
Thank you. (I’d been lurking for years, but finally decided to register.)
I wasn’t saying that it’s wrong, Zoe. It was a rhetorical question. The point was just that, while “nucular” isn’t a regionalism per se, those who say it are probably doing so without affectation, and so you might just as well complain about regionalisms like those in the South (which I personally wouldn’t).
Many people say “prescription” as “perscription”; I think I do. But nobody seems to care about that. For some reason “nucular” gets people all hot under the collar. It could be that when political figures are talking about things nuclear, more ears are focused than when somebody says “perscription.”
I agree completely, CC. Function is the key in this case.
Lois: And shame on you for scaring the kids with your nuclear nonsense!
Peter: Heh, you said nuclear. It’s nucular, dummy. The “S” is silent.
Nuke-ya-ler,
Nuke-ya-ler,
Nuke-ya-ler,
Nuke-ya-ler …
The hell are you talking about? That wasn’t a rant.
Yes, I know what you said. I pointed you toward a synopsis of a disease of people with severe mental retardation who are extremely eloquent speakers. Unless you’ve got some fancy new recursive definition of “think well” that is recursive, my cite refutes your view.
You’re incorrect again, but not fascinatingly so this time. I’ve studied IQ tests enough to know of their limitations. I’ll further admit that folks with Williams Disease often show spectacular interpersonal skills. Then again, so does my boss’s poodle. When we talk about humans “thinking well,” we tend to be referring to their ability to reason. Especially when we discuss cognition in the context of language use. The ability to reason maps much more closely to IQ tests than it does to the ability to exercise interpersonal skills, which is why I used the former as shorthand for discussing the ability to think well.
You can stay with the point you made if you want. The first time you made it, it was simple, forgiveable ignorance. If you stick with it, it’s willful ignorance, which is my cue to write you off.
Daniel
I worked at a predominantly Southern-populated company in NYC and learned, among other things, that Southern people WILL NOT change their pronunciation of anything. Frankly, I find it part of their charm.
Imagine my dismay.
I don’t understand people who complain about variant pronounciations. It’s bad enough that America is so monoglotal; do we really need to have a standardized dialect? It seems to me that people who attack others’ speech patterns are either 1) insecure about their own idiolects or 2) prejusticed against diversity.
And, for the record, I’m from Ohio and pronounce nuclear as “nucular”. Most people from my home town do as well. (And mature is “matur” not “machur”, ancient is “ainchent” not “ainshent”, wash is “woish” or “worsh”, and soda is “pop”.)