If there’s no reason not to say ‘nucular,’ then there’s no reason not to say ‘supposably.’
Heaven forbid you ever hear my dialect-influenced pronunciation of ‘cutlery’. It’s the only word for which I’ve had fellow Brits ask me what the hell I was saying 
So, if I have the music for, say Falling in Love With Love in front of me, and I play it so the notes are rearranged to make it sound like I Got Rhythm, is that just a dialect thing, too?
I do not thing that word means what you thing it means.
Here’s another odd pronunciation. A coworker, who is one of the smartest people I know, pronounces the opposite of “maximum” as “miminum.” Strange, that.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some examples of words where the correct pronunciation did actually seem to transpose some of the letters. They weren’t English words though - possibly Polish or something. Does anyone know what I’m talking about?
I always just assume that the speaker is asking me to be more calm.
One of my lease favorites is “choirpractor”. As in, “I seen the choirpractor t’other day, and my back still hurts!”
But what about uncomfortable? The letters-mixed-up pronunciation is quite common, probably the most common?
For those of you who believe in “correct” pronunciations, when you’re in a different part of the country, do you adapt your speech patterns to match the locals’?
Because in my rural Ohio hometown, we say “pop” instead of “soda”, “heighth” vs “height”, “nu-cu-lar” vs “nu-clee-ar”, “barry” vs “burry”, “ain-chent” vs “an-shent”, “ant” vs “ahnt”, “woish” vs “wahsh”, “perfek” vs “perfect”, “ma-tor” vs “ma-chur”, “you-all” vs “yall”, “wy” vs “hwy”, “bar” vs “bah”, “rout” vs “root”, “roof” vs “ruuf”, “i-ern” vs “i-run”, “fi-er” vs “fahr”, etc, etc.
It’s not a matter of education; it’s the local language. Everyone who grows up in the area speaks this way, at least until they’re exposed to other dialects.
If you don’t use the local pronunciation, the local reaction will range from noticing you’re an outsider, to slight mis-comprehension, to just plain not knowing what you’re saying (depends on the word and the local). So to maximize your communication, you’d need to adopt the local dialect, right?
The spelling of a word hardly matters in English. Our spellings were mostly fixed in the early 1600s when the printing press became widespread in Britain. To pronounce strictly according to spelling is to be intentionally archaic.
Ms. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
Tha does in Yorkshire laddie.
'am gown down’t t’pub, sithee!
No, but where there are multiple pronunciations that seem valid to me, I will adapt to the local one. I’m a Brit living in America and will often, for example, pronounce schedule and tomato the American way as both US and UK pronunciation can be justified based on the spelling. But will not say heighth or nukular because they are clearly wrong.
I will aslo say aluminum because that is correct for the spelling that is used here.
So why do dudes fight so hard to keep it spelled “Height”, instead of “hite”?
How so? Spelling is poorly correlated with pronunciation in English. Not a very compelling argument.
How do you pronounce the word “iron”? Or, “colonel”? Or, even “one”?
If one looks at it, one would pronounce “nuclear” as “new- clear”. “Nu” is always pronounced “new” , and “clear” is a common word. Thus “nuclear” would be pronounced “new-cleer”. “NOO-KLEE-AR” just plain doesn’t make sense. Or, one could look at the word as “nuke- leer”. I don’t know where the hell both commonpronunciations came up with 3 syllables!
Dictionaries usually list 'nü-klE-&r, 'nyü-, ÷-ky&-l&r, or "noo-klee-ar, Nyew-klee-ar and noo-que-lar. I have never heard it with the “nyew” first syllable.
However, let’s please not get into a battle about which is “right”- all three are “right”, no matter which one you prefer.
You misunderstand. Nowhere did I say that I will only pronounce words as they are spelled. I said that I will not change my pronunciation to match a local version that to me seems clearly at odds with the spelling. So:
[ul]
[li]there is no way to justify a “th” sound at the end of “height”, so I will not say it[/li][li]schedule can begin with a soft “sh” as there are other words spelled this way that have a soft sh, so I am happy to say shedule.[/li][li]I know of no words where “uc” is pronounced “uku”[/li][/ul]
Although raised to say leftenant, I am happy with lieutenant as it makes sense. I imagine if “colonel” were routinely pronounced kuh-lone-uhl or colon-ell in the US that I could adapt to that.
To me (and I suspect anyone else from the UK and possibly the Commonwealth), “new-cleer” would be pronounced as “nyew-cleer”.
Here in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, “goat” is often used as a verb, as in “let’s goat the store.”
For the record, pop is pronounced “pop” and soda is pronounced “soda”. They are two different words, not two different pronuciations of the same word, and don’t even belong in this discussion.
(and anyway, they’re “soft drinks”!)
Ah, clarification understood. So you should be able to accept others using their own local variants, such as “heighth” and “nucular”, even if you don’t use them yourself.