I don’t want to turn this into a political discussion. I will say I voted in 2000, and I did not vote for Bush or Gore. So when I use “President” in quotes, I’m doing it out of spite for the person, not because I think he shouldn’t be President because of the flawed Electoral College system. I don’t want to argue about it.
This is going to be a weak post. I don’t care about spewing bile and hate. It doesn’t fit anywhere else on the board, and if I say how I really feel, I might get a knock on my door :).
Mr. Bush:
It’s “TERRORISM”, not “terraism” “teruhism” “taraism” or any other way your monkey brain tells you to say. Two R sounds. TWO.
I’d be happy with a “tearerism” or “tera-rism”.
Also, your “terror” and “terrorist” need work too.
That goes for you too, Dan Rather.
/troll
I swear…maybe we should give Texas back to Mexico…
/troll
Actually, it’s “new clear.” Got that, GWB? [Cartman] GODDAMIT!, STOP SAYING THAT! [/C] I’m in the annoyed and not amused by it camp. I’d hate to let his use of one word affect the way I vote. But, that’s my right. I might not cast some kind of fucked up protest vote for a third party candidate if Bush doesn’t shape up. I’m not afraid to vote for a Democrat.
Ace, I’d have to disagree and say that new-cue-ler is a down-home dialectical oddity, too. Heck, Jimmy Carter said it, and he was an honest to goodness nuclear engineer!
One thing: Learn to use " properly. George Bush is, in fact, the President of the United States. Putting the word in quotes makes you look like an ass.
Touching how KeithT in the heartland and I on the West Coast were both having a nostalgic Jimmy Carter reminiscence at exactly the same time. Sorry for the simulpost.
Keith, my big problem with it, as a non-linguisticianisticating person, is that I don’t see how you can POSSIBLY look at “nuclear” and come up with “nuculur” (the Tom Toles spelling). It would be totally different if the word were spelled “nuclear” and properly pronounced “nuculur,” only for Bush to insist on pronouncing it “new clear.” That would at least have some… logic to it.
Irritates me as much as people who look at “larynx” and say “LARE nix.”
There’s something called Phonotactics. In Bush’s dialect of American English, apparently the particular set of sounds which constitute the way you pronounce ‘nuclear’ are not permitted in that same arrangement, thus Bush and others who speak that particular dialect insert another segment–in this case, a glide followed by a vowel–between the sounds that dialect “doesn’t like” in that arrangement.
As to the pronunciation of ‘larynx’ you might be finding yourself in the minority. All of my Linguistics professors here pronounce it the same way www.dictionary.com indicates, that way being the one you say irritates you.
It’s not a Southern thing either. I’ve heard it pronounced “new clear” by those with a mouth full of grits. Do it Forrest Gump style yourself. (Hey, that’s funny) Anyway, do that fake Forrest Gump accent everyone does and say “new clear.” See, even Forrest Gump can say it.
My mistake, I was sloppy and unclear on the ‘larynx’ gripe and so it came out looking like a typo.
Unless I’m epically missing something - which is more of an option than I’d like to admit - the pronunciations on dictionary.com are consistent with the way I think the word should be pronounced. That is, they have the second syllable being pronounced like “inx” and not like “nix.” My complaint is with the transposition of the ‘y’ and ‘n’ sounds.
Ahh, yes. I remember the time I was in the gift shop at the airport in Atlanta, and some teenager came in and asked if he could get a tube of Cularasil.
I think you’re missing something, Ace. Scope out the pronunciation: larngks. The [n] comes before the [ks] which makes the 2nd syllable pronounced as “nix.” Oddly enough this is the opposite of the way the thing’s spelled.
Kaylas, I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not (and frankly, I don’t give a whit). Just because a particular set of sounds doesn’t appear next to each other word-medially does not rule out their appearance next to each other word-initially or word-finally.
Let me know if you’d like some good links regarding Phonotactics.
I don’t know what you’re seeing, Monty, but the [n] comes before the [gks], as you (almost) point out, but it comes after the {i]. The second syllable is properly pronounced to rhyme with Sphinx, not with Styx. I think you’re problem is that you’re missing the presence of the {i] in the pronunciation key altogether. See how you transcribed it: