So ummm who’s Lisa? As in the Lisa in “it’s Nucular Lisa…”??
A good language arts teacher would tell you nothing of the sort. You write as if some areas of the country speak the “standard form” and others don’t. You will find that in the last forty years, scholars have moved away from the stigmatizing concepts regarding dialects. That’s why you will find that Webster’s and other reliable sources now list pronunciations from more than one dialect.
Who are these “powerful” that you are referring to? The powerful people that I am familiar with speak in many, many dialects – a hundred perhaps.
The dialects that are taught in schools are the ones that the classroom teachers are speaking.
It was mentioned upthread that it was a joke on The Simpsons.
Exalkibar, I hear what you’re saying, but I think there are some flaws in the theory. It sounds great for oral traditions that eventually get transferred to written text. But nuclear didn’t join the lexicon until after writing was established, and I’d be willing to bet that the written form was created before the spoken form.
Either way, that’s not my main point of contention with your argument. I’m still waiting for your opinion as to the correctness of:
for all intensive purposes
mis-chee-vee-ous
Some more to consider:
Valentime’s Day
Illinoiz
A direct response to these examples would be appreciated.
The best argument against nucular, which has been mentioned several times, is that it phonetically transposes the letters. “kli-er” becomes “ku-ler”, with the vowels changing sounds (not a big deal) and the L retaining its default sound but changing syllables (which is irritating in the extreme). You have responded with colonel, but there is no transposition of letters in the pronunciation of colonel. I really have no explanation for pronouncing colonel as kernel, but I would take major exception to it being pronounced as kern-lell, which would be a similar butchering to what nucular is, with the L having jumped syllables.
Unlike colonel, but similar to nucular, can you name any word in the English language where the accepted pronunciation involves consonants changing syllables compared to a phonetic reading of its spelling? Give me a couple concrete examples and I might be forced to concede.
And finally, is it also acceptable to pronounce nucleous as nuculous? Why or why not? Being the root of nuclear and all.
Ellis Dee, quit coming up with questions that I can’t walk away from without looking them up in the dick! It is 4:26 a.m. in Nashville and I want to sleep! I know what Webster’s says about * nucleous*, and I ain’t tellin’!
Proper names can be pronounced in a variety of ways – even within families.
The phenomenon is called “metathesis”, and is common in many languages. Most people say EYE-earn instead of EYER-on (iron) and COMF-ter-bl instead of COM-for-ta-bl (comfortable). A lot of people also say REAL-a-ter instead of REAL-ter (realtor).
Did you attend elementary school within the past forty years? Because if you did, I can’t see how you missed the parts where they taught “correct” English and told students that “ain’t” or the use of double negatives was “bad English”. I know there have been some attempts to bring some science and some honesty to depictions of nonstandard varieties of English, but they certainly didn’t make many inroads at my elementary school.
Do you disagree that standard English isn’t treated preferentially to other dialects? I disagree pretty strongly with that claim but I’m willing to listen if you wish to discuss it.
I’ve already addressed this one, dear. Please don’t pretend that I was calling for some sort of stance that every syllable out of every person’s mouth is equally valid and correct.
That may well be. Again, though, speech is not some sort of deficient or degenerate form of writing. I’ve already put forth arguments that the spelling of a word is not, rationally, a basis to prescribe pronunciation of the word. I don’t see why it should be just because, it this case, the written and spoken forms of the word joined the language at the same time (though if you wish to argue based on that assertion, please provide evidence for it. I don’t know the etymology of the word of the top of my head, and I don’t have time to look it up for you.)
I have never heard this is speech nor seen it in writing except in discussions on the internet of “incorrect” speech. Personally, if I did, I probably wouldn’t care, as I don’t think most people actually parse “for all intents and purposes” when they use it - it’s become a fixed phrase whose meaning doesn’t necessarily come from the component words.
Why would I have a problem with this? Again, I think frequency of usage is a perfect guideline for determining the correct form of a word.
I have never heard an adult say this, and I doubt it’s common enough to qualify under my criteria. There’s a difference between occasional errors people make - most people make errors in their speech constantly, and sometimes people simply mishear a word when learning it and don’t discover it under much later. It doesn’t qualify as part of the language until it’s a form being taught by parents to children or moving through the language community. Occasional errors due to mishearing or misanalyzing a word are errors.
I have never heard anyone say this, except perhaps children learning to read. Is it a common pronunciation? I could be convinced that it’s a regional pronunciation. But I’m not the one arguing that pronunciations ought to proceed from spellings anyway.
“Letters” are those little doodly marks on papers that we use to record language in a more lasting format. Like I said, speech does not proceed from writing, and to discuss “letters” when speaking of pronunciation is an apples-and-oranges argument. Unless, of course, you wish to provide some justification for using spelling to prescribe pronunciation.
So why are metatheses bad, while other exceptional cases are not? You seem to be clinging to this belief because metathesis (being less common than many other forms of pronunciation shift) is simply less common in the language. But you’re ultimately making a philosophical argument that very common pronunciations can still be wrong, and I’ve already discussed that quite thoroughly. If you want to continue, please do me the favor and address the arguments I’ve made against linguistic prescriptivism in earlier posts, just as I took the time to address the pronunciations you gave above. If the crux of your argument is that other pronunciation shifts are fine, but metatheses are not, then why? This is a false distinction until you can provide some justification for it.
Your argument seems to boil down, at this point, to “words that feature metathesis that is not represented orthographically are incorrect usages”, since you haven’t taken any brave stands on metatheses that occured long enough ago to make it into the writing system, and you’ve specifically claimed that being the result of metathesis somehow makes a pronunciation wrong in contrast to other pronunciation shifts that are not represented in writing. All you’re doing is making your category smaller and smaller until /nu kju l@r/ is the only member left, and then claiming that this one category is an exception to every other general principle I’ve outlined. Why not address my arguments rather than finding ways to sidestep them?
There aren’t all that many examples that fit into your narrow category here. Lib has already addressed “comfterble”, and there’s also Wednesday (though the resulting /ds/ is assimilated to /z/ in many dialects. I have a professor, hailing from Ireland, who pronounces the word /"wEd nz deI/ - just about exactly how it’s spelled.) The other common examples are, I’m afraid, also stigmatized.
However, you’ve also skipped over the many historical examples. Why do you think the ordinal form of “three” is “third”? It used to be “thrid”, actually. “Bird” comes from “bryd”; “alligator” suffered a metathesis and a wrong cutting on the way from the (obsolete) Spanish “el legarto” (in this case, a pronunciation shift possibly motivated by taboo avoidance.) “Dusk” used to be “dox”. You’d be shocked how many modern words come from “mistakes” like this. Of course, these happened long enough ago to have made their way into spellings - so is the argument that metathesis used to be okay, but now it’s not?
Not familiar with /nu kju l@s/ as a root word. Why should it have to be? Are the epenthetic vowels that turn “circle” into “circular” and “muscle” into “muscular” also wrong?
But why should the root form have to match the derived one anyway? There’s no rule about that in English. Look at this example - I’m using SAMPA transcription, as there’s no way to use IPA here.
/"foU 4@ gr{f/ -> /f@ "ta gr@ fi/
Note that of the eight phonemes in “photograph”, only four survive into the derived form, “photography”, and the stress shifts syllables. In fact, in the middle syllable of “photograph”, both of its two sounds shift to entirely different ones. None of the vowels in the root form survive into the derived form, and none of the syllables remains intact. This sort of thing happens constantly in English and it doesn’t bother native speakers at all.
/"nu kli @s/ -> /"nu kju l@r/
Now, in the switch from “nucleus” to “nucular”, we lose /i/ for /ju/ and the /l/ moves one space, plus the regular morphologically-motivated switch from /s/ to /r/. One consonant moves, one vowel changes, and one consonant changes, and an entire syllable is left alone. Deriving “nucular” from “nucleus” is actually a smaller change than turning “photograph” into “photography”.
You don’t have to agree with me, Ellis Dee, but take some time to look at my argument itself. I maintain that linguistic prescriptivism in general is unjustifiable, and I’ve posted a lot of arguments for my position earlier in the thread. You’ve taken the opposing position for granted and haven’t examined my arguments surrounding it. I claim that spelling does not dictate correct pronunciations of words, and you seem to agree, except within an arbitrary and ever-shrinking category that includes the word “nuclear” - why is a simple metathesis, which I’ve already shown to be a relatively common phenomenon, unacceptable, while the wholesale pronunciation of “lo” as /r/ in “colonel” is fine? And finally, is there some sort of objective basis for determining which form is correct and which isn’t? Your argument seems to be “Ignore every other example. In cases in which the spoken form represents a recent metathesis that hasn’t yet been reflected in the orthography, the word should be pronounced phonetically.” What’s your justification for that argument?
You can continue to refine your categories until they’re arbitrarily small, and argue that English has no other examples of three-syllable words starting with /n/ and coming from Latin origin in which metathetic pronunciation shifts are accepted if you like, but I feel rather irritated that I continue to make broad arguments that are ignored in favor of irrelevant claims that the spelling ought to define the pronunciation of “nucleus” even though this principle doesn’t work in any other area of the language.
If one pronunciation is correct and another is incorrect, how do we decide which is which? Dictionaries print both pronunciations. Both are fairly common among Americans. Neither is particularly close to the word’s original pronunciation. Can you come up with an objective argument that may be used to determine which among alternate pronunciations is the correct one? Otherwise, your position boils down to “the way I say it is right and the way other people say it is wrong.” I don’t think that’s a sound argument, and I wish you (or the now-departed wolf_meister) would actually take the time to come up with some arguments to counter the ones I’ve taken the time to make.
I thought I did a pretty decent job of this. “Nuclear,” being a relatively new word, is actually a good example to go with. Most other words evolved over time and/or were borrowed from other languages, so that accounts for pronunciations that don’t conform to “standard” rules of English phoenetics. We don’t really know whether the pronunciation of “nuclear” or the spelling came first, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that it was the pronunciation.
So we have this sound – noo-klee-ar – that represents a certain agreed-upon concept. When the time comes to represent that sound in symbols, we turn to our pre-existing system of symbols that represent sounds. Thus, we come up with n-u-c-l-e-a-r. When the individual sounds of those symbols are said in rapid succession, we’re happy to find that the intended sound of noo-klee-ar is produced. Success! If “noo-kyoo-lar” is a common or correct pronunciation, why was it not spelled in such a way as to represent that sound?
We do have a set of general guidelines for symbols and sounds. There are exceptions like “colonel,” but those can be learned on a case-by-case basis. Most people who see that word know it’s pronounced “kernel,” and we agree that “col-on-el” is wrong. I’d be surprised if noo-kyoo-lar is being taught as correct anywhere. Consistently disregarding the sounds that symbols represent shows either a lack or understanding or a lack of caring. Neither of those is an admirable trait, IMO.
Well, nuclear is essentially a borrowing. It’s one of those technical words compounded together from Latin and Greek roots that’s generally shared amongst all the Western languages. It’s not a native English word in the way that ones of Germanic origin are.
It may not originally have been a common or correct pronunciation. It is now - well, it’s common at least. Common defines correct because the language was created by a community of people, not a professor in a study. And languages change. “Nuclear” was turned into “nucular” by analogy with technical words like “muscular” or “circular”, and the change was probably also motivated in part by the strange vowel cluster (which I can’t accurately describe without IPA) that, to my knowledge, is not found elsewhere in English.
I just don’t think you’ve made an adequate argument to justify the idea that some pronunciations must conform to spellings, and others don’t have to.
That’s pretty strong. And again, I don’t see why some words must match their spellings and others don’t have to.
Okay, I admit I received a beatdown with the example of realtor. Comfortable is another good one.
Excalibre, your logic is impeccable and I must concede your general point. I may have to accept my abject hatred of “nucular” as irrational. I simply despise it, but that may just be my problem.
I have one last thing to cling to:
That’s what pisses me off about nucular. Nuclear was created by a professor in a study as a word to decribe interactions on the nucleous of atoms, not by a community of people.
It is a scientific term, and scientific terms should always have precise pronunciations, due to the fact that they’re, you know, scientific and all.
As long as there are those of us who pronounce words like mischievous(only two"i"s in the word) correctly, then mis-chee-vee-us is just plain wrong. No matter how many people pronounce it that way. Same with etcetera, or nulear or whatever. I didn’t work hard in school to just blow it all off now. Mispronunciation is mostly laziness, or people just rushing through a word.
If someone pronounces faux pas correctly or ask or forecastle, I’d say they must be more knowledgeable than most. So it’s stands to reason if they pronounce them incorrectly they must be less knowledgeable.
Iron is also a scientific term. You know, one of the elements and all. Do you pronounce it EYE-ron?
There is no correct pronouniation of most English words.
American English (and all its varieties) are not the same as English English (and all of it’s varieties), which are not the same as Scottish English, which is not the same as Australian English or South African English or even Kiwi English 
etc etc.
Ask someone Scottish how you prounounce Iron Bru!
I meant to mention Indian English. I’m sure maleinblack won’t mind me saying this (actually he probably will), he speaks the Queens English perfectly…PERFECTLY. While typing the language flows perfectly. On the phone we do our fair share of “pardon”, “say that again”, “huh” etc.
Neither of us speak incorrect English, we just prounounce English differently.
Is that a whoosh?
How about “technical” instead of “scientific”; does that help clear up the difference?
I’m surprised “realtor” worked, since personally, I admit it grates a little on me. But what about Wednesday? I racked my brain for that.
Thank you. I’ve been trying this whole thread, and if I convince one person that linguistic prejudices are irrational, then I’m happy. I won’t claim to be free of them myself - if you listened to me speak, you’d hear pretty solidly standard pronunciations of most words. And I’ll admit that it gets on my nerves a little to hear “foilage” instead of “foliage”. But that’s my own problem; it’s not reflective of larger truths about language.
It’s just that there’s no such thing as “correct” and “incorrect” because those terms depend on a higher authority that doesn’t exist. There’s standard and nonstandard; there’s pronunciations associated with education and wealth, and those associated with a lack of one or both of those things. And kids ought to learn standard English in school, for the sake of their success in larger society, but they shouldn’t learn it at the cost of hearing speeches about how their parents, families, and friends all speak “bad English”.
Thank you again for the compliment. I’m an armchair linguist and I’m considering going into it for grad school. One of the things that makes certain areas of linguistics hard to study is the impulse of people being interviewed or recorded to speak “correctly” at the cost of allowing study of regional or nonstandard usages - or even complete languages, in some areas of the world.
Thing is that “nuclear” isn’t really scientific. Real scientific terms have specific pronunciations, and often for very good reasons. Back to my long-ago study of organic chemistry. Chemical names had very specific pronunciations (sometimes at odds with their pronunciation in normal speech) - acetyl rhymes with “eel”, and so forth.
Nuclear had it’s start in science but it’s used constantly by laypeople, because it describes things not strictly within the realm of science. Nuclear power and nuclear weaponry have ramifications far outside the lab, and so their status as scientific words is weak. Further, the specific pronunciations of some scientific words mostly exist to prevent confusion. What is “nucular” gonna get confused with?
Oops, meant to quote this in my post. All I was gonna say is that I really enjoy it when someone, instead of reading a thread, posts arguments made several pages back and pretends like they haven’t been addressed yet. I really enjoy it. It’s one of the more charming things you find on the SDMB.
No. Why should either technical or scientific words be immune to metathesis?
So you admit that there is a standard. My question is, why should education not be that standard? Okay, elitism and snobbery aren’t nice, and I don’t advocate putting people down needlessly. But aren’t more educated people presumed to be more knowledgeable, and therefore more correct, than the uneducated, whatever the subject in question? To suggest that the ignorant are just as knowledgeable or that their opinions are just as valid seems a little silly, and smacks of political correctness. When you’re sick do you see the doctor, or does his receptionist do? When you need legal advice, do you go to a lawyer or your barber?
That’s the crux of it for me. “Alternative” pronunciations (which I maintain are wrong) are the product of ignorance, not some society-wide democratic vote. It irks me that the often-beautiful precision of the English language is constantly hijacked, diluted and corrupted by the less-knowledgeable. Sure, they have the numbers on their side, but that doesn’t make them right.
In an earlier post you said you’re “not trying to make a bold call for everyone to speak however they like.” To that I say: Why not? If it’s okay for nucular, why shouldn’t it be okay across the board?
I think his basic point is not that you can pronounce whatever word however you want. He probably would have been on the side of “it’s wrong” in the early years of the word’s life, assuming nobody pronounced it nucular yet.
But now that a significantly large number of people do pronounce it nucular, that pronunciation has been elevated to acceptable status, consistent with the fluid nature of spoken language.
Am I close?