# I Pit "Nukuler" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 7, 2005, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474 "2005-12-07T05:29:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Duke\_of\_Rat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Duke\_of\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke_of_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/81 "2005-12-08T17:30:22Z")
It drives my dad nuts that Brett Favre’s name is pronounced “Farv” by the sportscasters. I’ve never heard Mr. Favre pronounce his own name, so I can’t say for sure. ---
**Author:** ![anyrose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@anyrose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anyrose)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/82 "2005-12-08T17:30:30Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > \Of course, most of these don’t fit very easily into the rhythm of the old song, so that may slow their acceptance. "You say joolery, I say jewelry. You say comfterble, I say comfortable. Let’s call the whole thing off . . . " You say “carmina”, I say “burana” - let’s call the whole thing Orff… ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/83 "2005-12-08T17:55:07Z")
> [@anyrose](#): > > will “aks” become acceptable also? If Futurama was accurate, yes. ---
**Author:** ![Faruiza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@Faruiza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Faruiza)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/84 "2005-12-08T17:56:19Z")
> [@Clock](#): > > TOM-AR-TOE, TOM-AY-TOE, POT-AY-TOE… 😃 Keifer? Jack? Holy shit, is that you?! :eek: 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/85 "2005-12-08T20:57:33Z")
> [@anyrose](#): > > [Merriam Webster](http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary/nuclear) says I’m right. Please, show me a dictionary that provides the alternate pronunciation. From your _own damn cite_: "Pronunciation: 'nü-klE-&r, 'nyü-, ÷-ky&-l&r (snip) usage Though disapproved of by many, pronunciations ending in -ky&-l&r\ have been found in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least one U.S. president and one vice president. While most common in the U.S., these pronunciations have also been heard from British and Canadian speakers. " “Disapproved of by many” does not = “wrong” it means exactly that- many don’t \*like \* that pronuniation. That’s nice. So? Doesn’t make it wrong. As Cecil puts it “We don’t vote on the facts”. Oxford lists both also, without any “disapproval”. ---
**Author:** ![anyrose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@anyrose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anyrose)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/86 "2005-12-08T21:07:29Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > From your _own damn cite_: “Pronunciation: 'nü-klE-&r, 'nyü-, ÷-ky&-l&r > (snip)”. and both have “kl” together in the second syllable which is \*\*\*not \* \*\* what happens in “nuke-you-ler” ---
**Author:** ![anyrose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@anyrose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anyrose)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/87 "2005-12-08T21:10:18Z")
> [@anyrose](#): > > and both have “kl” together in the second syllable which is \*\*\*not \* \*\* what happens in “nuke-you-ler” DISREGARD THIS POST - MODS: PLEASE DELETE IT ---
**Author:** ![anyrose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@anyrose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anyrose)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/88 "2005-12-08T21:10:59Z")
> [@anyrose](#): > > and both have “kl” together in the second syllable which is \*\*\*not \* \*\* what happens in “nuke-you-ler” DISREGARD MY POST QUOTED HERE - MODS: PLEASE DELETE IT ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/89 "2005-12-08T21:51:18Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Incidentally, their claim (and I usually like the American Heritage Dictionary - in fact, that’s my main English dictionary. Sheesh.) that /kli @r/ is particularly rare is simply false - “likelier”, as I noted above, is not at all an uncommon word, and it doesn’t ever show the same reanalysis. If the word would be expected to reanalyze simply because it contained an uncommon sequence of sounds, it’s brethren would be in exactly the same circumstance and would be expected to show the same change. I don’t think that’s a good example. When people think “likelier” they are thinking “likely-er” just like they are thinking “pretty-er” or “happy-er.” If the root were a common word pronounced “nukely,” then people would say “nukely-er.” But there isn’t a “nukely” that people are building on to add the “er” ending, so the pronunciation has to rest on what people expect of the sounds. I don’t care one way or another about the pronunciation, but I don’t think “likelier” proves anything. ---
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/90 "2005-12-09T04:43:33Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > \*\*_Usage Note:_ **The pronunciation (n??**’\*\*ky?-l?r), which is generally considered incorrect, _Showgirls_ is generally considered a crappy movie, but I wouldn’t drag out a bad review to try and convince you that your adulation of it is misguided. Ya big prescriptivist lug. I’ll overlook these conservative tendencies and buy you a beer next time we’re at trivia together. (For the record I agree with you and **Cervaise** that _Showgirls_ is too casually dismissed, and I’m not hauling out this argument to bait you, which you probably know, but figured I’d make clear for public info.) ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/91 "2005-12-09T05:05:03Z")
I’m asking the following question out of curiosity, not any sense of elitism. How many of the people who’ve posted in this thread so far have seriously studied Linguistics? I know that Excalibre has (although he or she says that study was not serious) and my degree is in Linguistics. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/92 "2005-12-09T10:01:50Z")
I studied linguistics for a year at Peabody/Vanderbilt, but that was long ago. One of the basics of linguistics is that there is no one standard dialect. > [@](#): > > **lissener** : (FWIW, I tend to prefer Webster’s, but ADH is in Firefox’s default dropdown search menu.) I also prefer **Webster’s**. I checked _nuclear_ long ago and I’ve posted about it before. _Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition_ lists the pronunciation that makes us flinch right up there with the other one. It is like dragging teeth on the tines of a fork for me, but there it is. The Big Dick says it’s okay. > [@](#): > > **anyrose** : will “aks” become acceptable also? Acceptable to whom? It’s likely that it will eventually be listed along with other pronunciations without the “_dial._” designation that it has now. I think that I remember that it came down from what is known as _Cavalier_ English in Great Britain. Settlers along the Mid to South-east Coast of the U.S. brought it with them. **anyrose** , high school English teachers can be wrong. I know because I was one. If any of my students had said _nu-kyoo-lar_, I would have mashed their ears together. I still taught my students the fundamentals of formal English. And I taught them never to prejudge people with California or other bizarre accents ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/93 "2005-12-09T10:21:50Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > {bolding by \*\* Monty\*\*} And I taught them never to prejudge people with **California** or other bizarre accents Hey, hey, hey! 🙂 California is 🆒 ! Although my current location is South Korea, I’ve lived for many years in paradise (also known as California). I did, though, grow up speaking one of the Dixie dialects. My English teachers in high school did inform us that there was nothing wrong with the way we spoke but that it’s not formal English. In other words, our local dialect isn’t the formal standard (also known as prestige) dialect . ---
**Author:** ![whole\_bean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/96bed5/32.png) [@whole\_bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whole_bean)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/94 "2005-12-09T15:01:50Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > I’m asking the following question out of curiosity, not any sense of elitism. How many of the people who’ve posted in this thread so far have seriously studied Linguistics? I know that Excalibre has (although he or she says that study was not serious) and my degree is in Linguistics. I haven’t, but, in my defense, most of my comments here have not been about whether or not a linguist would consider any pronunication “acceptable;” rather I have concerned myself with: 1) perception of the general public and specific audiences regarding a pronnunciation; and 2) tangential attacks on the current poseur hic-chic administration. Once again, no one has answered my question: if you were teaching your child to speak, how would you teach him to pronounce the word? Finally, with respect to the “aks” comments, the claims that is is descended form certain English dialects, I ask, why is it that “axers” are predomninantly poor blacks (e.g.: "lemme aks you a querstion, if I was ficcun to crawx the skreet . . .)? ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/95 "2005-12-09T16:05:17Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m asking the following question out of curiosity, not any sense of elitism. How many of the people who’ve posted in this thread so far have seriously studied Linguistics? I’d like to say my study has been serious, although most of it has been independent. My (soon-to-be-awarded) degree is in Russian. > [@](#): > > Finally, with respect to the “aks” comments, the claims that is is descended form certain English dialects, I ask, why is it that “axers” are predomninantly poor blacks Take a trip to rural England sometime. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/96 "2005-12-09T16:08:24Z")
> [@](#): > > Once again, no one has answered my question: if you were teaching your child to speak, how would you teach him to pronounce the word? When he was old enough to understand, I would sit him down and explain that usages like “nucular”, “ain’t”, and “I ain’t done nothing” are perfectly ok, and there’s nothing wrong with them, but some people are irrationally prejudiced against them, so it’s probably best to use them with family and friends only. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/97 "2005-12-09T18:14:50Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > I don’t think that’s a good example. When people think “likelier” they are thinking “likely-er” just like they are thinking “pretty-er” or “happy-er.” If the root were a common word pronounced “nukely,” then people would say “nukely-er.” But there isn’t a “nukely” that people are building on to add the “er” ending, so the pronunciation has to rest on what people expect of the sounds. > > I don’t care one way or another about the pronunciation, but I don’t think “likelier” proves anything. Certainly “likelier” is a polymorphemic word: /lajk-li-@r/. But phonological shifts like the one proposed to explain “nuclear” are fairly uniform; the morphemic divisions in the words don’t play a role in influencing phonological change in the way you suggest. I agree that it’s not intuitively obvious that language change works that way, but nevertheless it does (again, one of the advantages of studying linguistics is understanding how these processes operate.) Even if that were not the case, though, if people seriously found the /li @r/ sequence difficult to pronounce, it would affect all words with the sequence in some respect (perhaps yielding /lajk l@r/ or something like that); it doesn’t make sense to suggest that a sequence is difficult to articulate for purely physical reasons in one environment and not in others. > [@whole bean](#): > > Finally, with respect to the “aks” comments, the claims that is is descended form certain English dialects, I ask, why is it that “axers” are predomninantly poor blacks (e.g.: "lemme aks you a querstion, if I was ficcun to crawx the skreet . . .)? Why is that a surprise? The heavily stigmatized dialect used by black folk in the U.S. is generally referred to in technical work as “African American Vernacular English”, or AAVE (sometimes referred to by the lay public with the hideously inapropros “Ebonics”.) The origins of AAVE are not well-understood, as it was not the subject of serious study until this century and few decent written examples of it exist prior to this time. It’s commonly believed to have certain features preserved from West African languages, which most likely combined with English to form a creole used among black slaves in the Americas, and many distinctive grammatical features are sometimes traced to parallels in West Africa, though it strikes me as a bit of a leap to aver with any certainty that a particular form is descended from West Africa. At any rate, the English portion of AAVE lexis was not for the most part taken from prestige dialects, which is probably part of the reason some non-standard forms like “ax” survive in AAVE while they’re not common in other American dialects any more (to my knowledge.) (Incidentally, “crawx”? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that myself. Is that actually in common usage?) And **Monty** , I wouldn’t say that I haven’t studied linguistics seriously, just that I’ve only taken a few classes in the subject and done a lot of reading - I don’t really have much in the way of academic credentials, you know? But I’m strongly considering linguistics during grad school. ---
**Author:** ![Flipshod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f19dbf/32.png) [@Flipshod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flipshod)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/98 "2005-12-09T19:28:07Z")
I always figured that nuclear implied “having to do with a nucleus,” and nucular implied having to do with “nukes” i.e. nuclear weapons. (Not that I see widespread distinct meanings emerging, but I think that’s the mental process causing the difference–not any regional variation.) For example, if you sat down with Dubya and had a discussion about cells and their nucleii and got to a point where you had to refer to “nuclear” processes in the cell, he would say nuclear, not nucular. Maybe not. But if not, THAT would seem even weirder. That said, the nucular pronunciation seems to imply that the speaker isn’t cognizant of the connection between “nukes” and the nucleus of an atom. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/99 "2005-12-09T19:34:13Z")
> [@Flipshod](#): > > I always figured that nuclear implied “having to do with a nucleus,” and nucular implied having to do with “nukes” i.e. nuclear weapons. > > (Not that I see widespread distinct meanings emerging, but I think that’s the mental process causing the difference–not any regional variation.) > > For example, if you sat down with Dubya and had a discussion about cells and their nucleii and got to a point where you had to refer to “nuclear” processes in the cell, he would say nuclear, not nucular. Maybe not. But if not, THAT would seem even weirder. > > That said, the nucular pronunciation seems to imply that the speaker isn’t cognizant of the connection between “nukes” and the nucleus of an atom. Someone linked to an article above by Geoff Pullum where he makes just that point, and suggests that it is quite normal for there to be a split in meanings, and people say “nuclear family” but “nucular weapons”, suggesting that the use as pertains to weapons may be on its way to turning into an entirely separate word. When you start looking closely at how people talk, it’s friggin’ fascinating. ---
**Author:** ![whole\_bean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/96bed5/32.png) [@whole\_bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whole_bean)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474/100 "2005-12-09T20:14:08Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Incidentally, “crawx”? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that myself. Is that actually in common usage? It was my best attempt at reproducing in writing the vernacular used by many poor southern blacks (at least in areas where I’ve lived – the Gulf Coast, Central and North Florida, Central and South Alabama and North Georgia) where k’s and k sounds find themselves into word otherwise void of k’s and k-sounds. “Crawx” was an attempt at the way some southern blacks might say cross (certainly you’ve heard “skreet” for street or “skrimps” for shrimp?). It’s the same with certain r sounds, like “how you durin’?” for " how are you doing?" [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-nukuler/334474.md?page=6)