So what’s your justification for saying it’s incorrect? Why is it wrong? It’s a common pronunciation of the word. What makes a common pronunciation wrong?
If there’s a “correct” and an “incorrect” in language, then there has to be some source for making that determination. The source I look to, and the source dictionary makers look to, and the source linguists look to, is usage. You know, that old bitch Norma Loquendi. The way people actually talk. What’s your source for right and wrong?
What? /nuk/ isn’t a morpheme on its own. The word wasn’t formed from /nuk/ plus an ending - the slang term “nuke” is a backformation. I don’t see why you’d think you could just chop it off - or what point you’re trying to make. Really, I’m utterly puzzled as to what you could be trying to demonstrate here. (Furthermore, the ending on “nuclear”, in my dialect at least, is two syllables: /li @r/. Whereas the king depicted in the Bard’s greatest tragedy is just one: /lir/. I doubt that’s different in your dialect; I’ve certainly never heard either /nu klir/ or /kIN li @r/.)
If you don’t understand the difference between technical language used for a very specific purpose, and explicitly defined by a governing body (in this case IUPAC, who set up such things as naming rules for organics and systematic names that never get used - methanoic acid, anyone?) and the language used in the real world by most people, then this is going to be a difficult discussion. There’s no governing body defining English usage that you can appeal to here - but then, in some languages there is one. No one takes the Royal Spanish Academy seriously on usage issues either. Hell, chemists don’t even use the systematic names for things if they’re too used to the old ones.
What I find distressing is that people seem to believe that my native language - the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Joyce, and William Carlos Williams, among others, is such a fragile, sickly creature that it’s in danger of dying when teenagers use slang terms or people from other parts of the country continue pronouncing things the way they have for fifty years. It’s the second-most widely spoken language on earth - you think /nu kju l@r/ is gonna kill it? Is English really so weak and bereft of power that it won’t survive what you mistakenly call incorrect usage?
Thank you, Liberal. GuanoLad, if you had bothered to read my previous post, you would have noticed that I consider the only definition of “correctness” to be common usage. If you claimed that “bubbanubba soopley cwaprety” was the Lord’s Prayer, you’d be the only one doing so. It wouldn’t be a valid claim, because if English speakers don’t do it, it’s not English. It’s the way normal people speak that counts.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. If you can find a real justification for /nu kli @r/ being correct and /nu kju l@r/ being wrong, I’ll listen. But if it’s based on an appeal to past pronuncation, I’ll laugh, because the pronunciation of words changes all the time. If it’s based on some sense that /nu kli @r/ is closer to the root word (/nu kli @s/), then I’d point out how many words have radically different pronunciations from their roots.
So far, though, you guys haven’t done any of that. I mean, look at your posts responding to my first one. You haven’t come up with a single justification for deciding that /nu kli @r/ is the correct pronunciation. What authority determines it? What mechanism can we use to distinguish correct and incorrect speech? Who sets the rules, and why should anyone listen to them?
You’ve taken it for granted that one is “correct” and the other is somehow “trashing” the English language. Why is the way you happen to pronounce it correct? As has been pointed out, former president Jimmy Carter was an engineer who worked on nuclear engines - he pronounced it the “incorrect” way. Why shouldn’t I believe him? Not only was he president (what higher authority can you ask for?) but also he no doubt new a damn lot more about them and worked a damn lot closer to them than you or I. Wouldn’t it be logical, in light of that fact, to acknowledge Carter’s pronunciation as correct?
Tell me how we decide what’s correct and what’s not, and we can talk. Otherwise, you’re blowing smoke just like folks who insist that only the style of music they listen to is worthwhile, or that you really should convert to their religion.