But they do say I-RON-Y for irony. FWIW, my Webster says that irony can be pronounced correctly as either I-RON-Y or I-ERN-Y. It gives a second entry for irony, pronounced I-ERN-Y when it refers to something consisting of a lot of iron. I swan, when will the learing end?
I had an engineering prof (in Boston) who actually pronounced column as COL-UME.
Damn! I must have been missing sleep that day. Sorry about that, calm kiwi. How bloody rude of me! shame-faced Wolf here
Yep, you know how to get hold of me for that midtown meet, mate. Any time you’re ready. I promise not to be so up myself as to correct your pronunciation, fellow Kiwi! (Fuck, I must have been barmy to do that …)
Excalibre (posting #47)
That was a lengthy exegesis of my posting and so it warrants a reply.
As far as my “equation” of the word “nuclear”, I was just having some fun with the English language and I was not attempting to present some profound linguistic revelation. (Comedians such as Victor Borge liked doing similar things - “inflationary language” whereby “tennis” becomes “elevenis”, “before” becomes “befive” and so on).
Yes, Jimmy Carter also said “Nuke-YOU-LAR”, which if nothing else shows that even experts in a field can ‘screw up’. You must have heard a mechanic refer to an automotive part as a “Cadillac” converter. (It changes your car into a Cadillac? I’ll take a Ferrari converter please.) No doubt we’ve also heard the word capacitor incorrectly called a “capacitator” by supposed experts.
Maybe there is no “governing body” for policing the English language but I think people (especially those with high media exposure) should be more alert to their skills (or lack thereof) with the English language.
Only common usage dictates correctness? Excellent. So, for all intensive purposes, anything in common usage is correct.
So we can begin the mass burning of all those pesky grammar books, right? They aren’t teaching anything meaningful anyway, right?
You’re failing at this. I specifically asked on what basis we can go about determining which pronunciation is right and which is wrong. In your post you simply take it for granted that there is a “correct” pronunciation, and conveniently, it happens to be the one you use. I want to know how you decide that /nu kli @r/ is correct and /nu kju l@r/ isn’t. What is it that makes your pronunciation better that the other one?
It’s funny how these arguments always go. Those of us who disagree with the elitist thought process that chooses to identify one dialect as “right” and all others as “ignorant” will ask what makes one method of speaking correct and another incorrect. The response inevitably contains distractions that avoid the question and instead continue with the baseless assumption that their own favored pronunciation is just, somehow, right. What makes you decide that people who say /nu kju l@r/ have inferior “skills . . . with the English language”? Why do you claim that Jimmy Carter proves “that even experts . . . can ‘screw up’”? You’re arguing from the assumption that /nu kli @r/ is somehow inherently correct - are you capable of questioning and analyzing that assumption? I don’t mean you have to agree with me - just that you have to be able to justify it, because I don’t accept it as axiomatic. Your argument proceeds from erroneous assumptions here.
And no, I’ve never once heard “Cadillac” converter.
:: racks his brain trying to figure out what he might have learned from a book on English grammar ::
It’s perfectly appropriate to teach students how to read and write. People inherently, naturally, and inevitably develop a grasp of their own language’s grammar, but writing is not part of our instinctual programming. Your brain has wiring that can accomodate the rules of speaking, but not writing - there’s no semi-colon instinct. Most of the “grammar” I remember learning in school was actually orthography - the rules of writing. Stuff like capitalization and commas and the like. I also remember learning a lot of style in English classes. I can’t remember actually learning much grammar.
Schools ought to teach decent writing skills. And I don’t have a big problem with schools teaching standard English, either - being able to speak in the dialect of the powerful is a huge asset in life. But it should come without the baggage we normally pick up in the process - the claims that a student’s native dialect is somehow inferior and the mark of poor education. It should come without the idiotic claims that “ain’t” ain’t a word, or that “they” isn’t a valid gender-neutral singular pronoun. Schools shouldn’t be trying to tell students that the way they speak, the way their families speak, and the way their communities speak is a mark of stupidity. It alienates the students and, furthermore, it’s just plain untrue. The standard dialect - the one taught in schools as correct - is just the dialect that happens to be in power. The speech patterns of stigmatized groups are themselves stigmatized, giving yet another weapon to the folks who want to reinforce class structures.
But that’s beside the point. The point here is that there is no justification for the belief that one form is just inherently better than another, if both are commonly used. I tried, jokingly, to illustrate it by saying that God didn’t come up with the rules of English grammar, no matter how many people cling to them with dogmatic surety. I shouldn’t really try to argue this point, because people inevitably end up offended by having a basic belief questioned; those who don’t question their own beliefs seldom appreciate it when others do.
You’ve got a good point. For example, I find my opinion of a person’s knowledge is intelligence is significantly decreased when they use grammatically incorrect or poorly spelled written English.
Would you care to borrow some punctuation marks? They’re quite useful. 
Mr. Excellent
You replied:
I find my opinion of a person’s knowledge is intelligence is significantly decreased when they use grammatically incorrect or poorly spelled written English.
Would you care to borrow a “PREVIEW” button?
Also, should the term “poorly spelled” be hyphenated?
I’ll try to offer an explanation to Excalibre.
“Noo-kyoo-ler” does not correspond to the spelling of the word. Making “nuclear” into “nucular” is essentially making it a different word. It’s true that “ough” can be pronounced as a long O or “uff,” depending on the word, but those are alternative pronunciations of the same sequence of letters.
I don’t think it is in any way legitimate to pronounce n-u-c-l-e-a-r “nucular.” That is a subraction, addition, and juxtaposition of letters. Would it be legitimate if someone pronounced your name “Ex-al-ki-ber”?
There are many words which have variant pronunciations that we don’t even think about. I myself am not sure how I pronounce Envelope' when I'm not thinking about it. But the mispronunciation of nuclear’ is a matter that not only gets attention, it grates on people terribly. It’s worth discussing.
I agree in general that there is no absolute authority that decides how the language is supposed to be spoken. Those who defend the `nukular’ crowd are right to point out that change and variation are inherent in language, and nobody has a monopoly on it, so why judge people by it?
Well, here’s one reason: Judging people according to how they use the language is also an inherent part of the language, and is going to be no matter how you feel about it. Maybe you think that this harsh judgement is an ignorant prejudice, and in that case people who complain about ‘nukular’ are in the compromised position of having their prejudice bared for all to see. But if any of you think you don’t judge people by their language, I submit that you are bullshitting yourselves.
‘Nukular’ is a distinctive register word. Many associate it with ignorance, and others associate it with humility. Neither of these associations is fair or right. There is nothing in the nature of language that demands fairness. We have good reason to simply avoid words that convey the wrong message, and to criticize others for not doing so. And again, this is not the same as saying that it’s fair or right. It’s better not to use the word ‘crusade’ when dealing with a conflict in the middle east, no matter how dead the metaphor is.
George W. Bush is suspected of using the bubba register of a mispronunciation that is not in his actual idiolect in order to create an artificial image for his constituency. If this is not the case, then the change observed by the OP represents a different hypocrissy.
While it may not be fair to judge people by their language, it is fair to take the scion of an American aristocracy to task for self-consciously using language to fake an image of being precisely the person he is not.
People think of Gerald Ford as a “klutzy” President (due, in no small part, to Chevy Chase who did a lousy job of imitating him by the way).
There is something else for which Gerald Ford received criticism. He pronounced the word “guarantee” as “GARR-an-tee” (the first syllable being pronounced similarly to Terri Garr’s surname). A great many people took note of this and his speeches were modified to avoid his use of the word. Imagine people noticing and criticizing this small variation in pronunciation. Of course that was 30 years ago.
Times sure have changed haven’t they? Nowadays, nobody needs no high-falutin’ speakable skills even if you become Predisentiary of these here United States.
You’re making the common (but, to me, ultimately mystifying) mistake of treating writing as the “true” form of language, and speaking as a mere reflection of it. That’s just not how language works, though. A few hundred years ago, people spelled English the way they spoke, and everyone used their own idiosyncratic spellings (I need hardly point out that Shakespeare spelled his own name several different ways!) When the printing press came in, spellings were standardized in order to reflect the pronunciation of a particular group of speakers.
Which means that spellings developed as a way of reflecting speech. Speech is the true form of language, and writing, while it has evolved into a medium of its own, is still a skill based upon a more fundamental one. The spelling of a word is irrelevant, and if some historical accident contrives to make a spelling and a pronunciation completely incompatible, we normally don’t get all bent out of shape. So unless you can explain why “colonel” and “kernel” are both perfectly rational ways to spell out one string of sounds, your argument just doesn’t hold water.
There’s a lot of words with different pronunciations in different places. Febuary or February? Apricot or Ay-pricot? Neether or Niether? Not every word is pronounced the same way by everyone.
Excalibre
No, I definitely agree with Nordic on this point.
This is not a matter of differing pronunciations nor even a matter of mispronunciation. It is just plain incorrect.
To use your example word, if someone said “cole-a-nell”, it would be a serious mispronunciation of “colonel”, but it would still retain the order of letters and syllables.
Like “NUKE-YA-LAR”, another egregious mangling of a word is saying “PRE-vert” for the word “pervert”.
Does anyone know the grammatical term for this? It is not a “spoonerism” and there has to be a more formal term than classifying it as mangling of a word.
And once again, I have to ask: Do you say I-RON for iron? No, the common element with the chemical symbol Fe is pronounced “eye yern.”
The term btw, is what linguists call metathesis, which is the switching of two adjacent sounds, and it is not uncommon in our language.
So then “mis chee vee ous” is a correct pronunciation?
Dude, you can call it incorrect all you like. But sooner or later you’re gonna have to come up with some sort of justification for what makes /nu kju l@r/ incorrect. I’m starting to wonder if you understand me at all here. I’m challenging the very notion that the pronunciation you dislike is incorrect. If you really believe it’s incorrect, you ought to provide a reason for that attitude, since I’ve obligingly provided several reasons why it’s perfectly acceptable. See, I maintain that whatever the word, pronunciation, or grammatical construction may be, if it’s widely used by native speakers, it’s correct. You maintain that this common pronunciation is wrong.
I think this smacks of dogma. You are free to provide a reason, but saying it’s “just plain incorrect” is ridiculous. If you don’t agree with the definition that I use of “correct” and “incorrect” language, then you need to come up with your own. If /nu kju l@r/ is incorrect, tell me why. You’ve repeated that it’s incorrect several times. As I pointed out earlier, some of your posts assumed without any question that /nu kju l@r/ is wrong, and /nu kli @r/ is right. Well, why?
What I claim here is that there is no way to decide what’s right and what’s wrong except by looking at the way native English speakers - the folks who invented and continue to invent the English language - talk. Your pronunciation of the word may be different from others’, but it is not better than theirs. It’s certainly the more prestigious pronunciation, but to associate prestige with correctness makes about as much sense as stating that it’s “incorrect” to eat potato chips and dip instead of crackers spread with caviar.
What I did with “colonel” was prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there are English words whose spellings and pronunciations do not match at all. There is no broader pattern in English of using “lo” to indicate an “r” sound. No part of the English orthographic system, no rule or exception to a rule or exception to an exception to an exception of a rule can be used to indicate the pronunciation of the word “colonel”. If you saw the word in writing and didn’t know how it was pronounced, you’d never be able to figure it out. The spelling and the pronunciation of “colonel” are just plain incompatible, and if you insist that “nuclear” must be pronounced how it’s spelled, then you better start pronouncing “colonel” the way it’s spelled as well.
All I tried to do with that example was demonstrate that the idea that a word’s spelling somehow dictates the way it “should” be pronounced is wrong. There are words whose spelling simply does not reflect their pronunciation. Our ridiculous spellings are one of the charms of English.
Thanks, wolf_meister, I think that’s the first time anyone’s said that on these boards. I feel like an official Doper now.
Excalibre, I’ll concede your excellent point about writing being a reflection of language and not the origin of it. That actually made me go “Huh…I guess that’s true.”
However, I would submit that what writing is (or should be) is a standardization of language, and hence of pronunciation. In order for communication to work, we all have to abide by the same rules. That’s why we’re taught at a young age that different letters have their own distinctive sounds, and different sequences of letters make certain sounds. There are plenty of exceptions and oddities, but those too are at least consistent and can be learned.
“Nuclear” was spelled that way because that sequence of letters, according to the rules we all learned in kindergarten, produces the sound “new-cleer” (or if you prefer, “new-clee-ar”). Since the word is in fact standardized that way, I maintain that it is not correct to say “nucular.”
Do we really have carte blanch to just rearrange sounds and syllables at any whim? That defeats the whole purpose of language, if you ask me. You still haven’t said whether it would be legititmate to you if someone called you Ex-al-ki-ber. Wouldn’t you wonder about his intelligence, if only for a moment?
It certainly plays that role, as do things like the broadcast media, which helpfully introduce all of America to a unified Upper Midwest pronunciation.
But writing isn’t sufficient to unify pronunciation. After all, compare the very similar styles of writing used by Merkins and Brits, and then think about their pronunciation.
Why do we all need to pronounce things the same, anyway? Sure, “nucular” gets on your tits. We all have little things that bug us for no good reason. But I can’t believe you don’t understand what someone’s saying when they use that pronunciation. It’s a common enough pronunciation that I have no doubt you were familiar with it before this thread.
Languages are self-maintaining. They don’t need professors with pipes and patches on their elbows to draw up rules for them to work, because they work anyway. A language community won’t dissolve because a couple people pronounce a word differently; there are forces conspiring to bring folks’ pronunciation together that work without anyone’s conscious awareness. There is no threat posed by “nucular” or “aypricot” or “ahmond” because people’s language competency is designed to cope with regional pronunciations of words, even stupid ignorant pronunciations like “aypricot”. (I kid, I kid. See, I’m subject to linguistic prejudices too. But that’s what they are - prejudices. Your fourth grade teacher might have pushed certain “standard” forms on you, but that doesn’t mean they were really correct and incorrect. Just different.)
What makes “nucular” different from ahmond anyway? Can’t you see there’s an “l” in almond? Why aren’t you pronouncing it? It’s easy to read. And yet a lot of words we just accept as having multiple correct pronunciations. Why does “nucular” bug people so much? I just chuck it in the “exceptions” pile along with all the other words in English that have pronunciations that can’t, in any way, be predicted from their spellings.
The elevation of a standardized form (however arbitrarily chosen) at the cost of regional forms is one of the many ways we stereotype people from less advantaged backgrounds. Calling “nucular” incorrect is a great way of implying that southerners are ignorant and illiterate. Saying, “It’s spelled ask, not ax,” is an excellent way to suggest that black people are stupid, since African-American Vernacular English uses a form different from Standard English. (Both forms are equally old, though - they’re found in documents dating back to the beginning of the word’s presence in English. Two parallel but distinct pronunciations have survived all that time. I find things like this fascinating.)
I’m not saying you’re trying to do that. But there’s a very subtle style of bigotry in these linguistic prejudices, one that maintains itself because it seems separate from the issue of prejudice against stigmatized groups. It’s no coincidence that teachers spend so much time harping on nonstandard forms used by black people and southerners, making ridiculous claims like the one that “ain’t” isn’t a word. The development of standardized forms and subsequent stigmatization of nonstandard forms is old and has been seen in countless different language communities, and it goes hand in hand with other things like racism and elitism that we have rightfully disclaimed in the modern age. Just as the French government continues to support the idea that southern speakers of Occitan are ignorant and backwards, highly educated folks who should know better engage in the exact same behaviors in the English language community.
Except that “Ex-al-ki-ber” isn’t a common pronunciation of the word. Though I use a somewhat unusual spelling of the word (in order to more easily maintain uniformity among different online environments), it’s easy to see what word it represents, and that word only has one pronunciation. I’m not trying to make a bold call for everyone to speak however they like - what I’m saying is that stigmatization of what are in actuality common pronunciations is futile, it’s intellectually unjustifiable (since there’s no objective way to decide which form is incorrect and which is correct), and it’s ultimately a weapon against those who aren’t from the dominant social group.
All right !!! For a moment I thought this thread would die. :eek: Wow that was a close one.
Nordic
You are welcome. I didn’t know that my agreeing with you legitimizes or establishes your official entrance into the realm of “Doperdom” - but I appreciate the compliment.
Ex-al-ki-bar
If a common usage makes a pronunciation (or spelling) acceptable, how many people must say it before it becomes common usage? Your name has now been misspelled by two people. Do you now have an incorrect but nevertheless acceptable alternate spelling of your name?
But seriously folks do you think it is time to let this thread die?
Excalibre I appreciate all the time and trouble you take to expound on your standards for pronunciation. Still, your time could be better spent in other SDMB topics don’t you think? (1920’s Style Death Rays for example).
Since this posting was written with about 3% seriousness, please Excalibre, do not respond to this with another lengthy, but well-written posting.
And there’s more to the Internet than the SDMB. Time for me to visit the Naughty Lesbian Medieval Wench Dungeon of Punishment Chat Room !!!
I made a distinction earlier between writing and speech as forms of language, and I stated that I think teaching the standard rules of orthography is quite important - writing and speech are different things and it’s relevant to speak of “proper” writing when it’s less so to speak of proper speech.
If you wish to bow out of the discussion, feel free. No reason to keep talking about something that doesn’t interest you anymore. I just tend to feel pretty strongly about “proper English” for the reasons I cited in the post above - I think it’s a subtle weapon to reinforce stigmatization of certain groups.
Meh. The Naughty Medieval Lesbian Wenches are all Chomskyan structuralists, and, coming from a more cognitivist perspective, I just can’t muster up the energy for another chat about Principles and Parameters.