I’ve brought this up before. At a Civil War reenactment a while back, one of the Confederate officers was explaining which “Calvary” regiment he was representing. It was very jarring to me, and I wondered if he really didn’t know the difference. He obviously had every other detail of his character accurate, so he should have been aware. It occurred to me that it might be an actual, historical regional use of the word, due to educational issues of the time, or religious bias. Or he was being deliberately ignorant. There is no way he couldn’t have known.
No. It is just too easy to mispronounce either of those words. I have to be very careful whenever I say them to be sure to get it right…a lot of people (especially those who may not be church-goers and may not know what Calvary is) may not even reaize they have made an error…not because they think that the horse brigades are actually pronounced like the place Christ died, but because it is a bit of a tongue-twister. When I get really jumbled I have to think “calves grow up with horses in the cav-al-ry”. But it doesn’t help that the word “calves” is not pronounced like it is spelled, and looks like the incorrect word.
I’m not sure how you’re pronouncing “calves,” but to me that looks like a way to induce, not avoid, the mispronunciation.
Most people I know, myself included, pronounce them both as essentially cav-a-ry.
Not just the US, my cousin always said calvary when referring to mounted troops.
Born and raised in Wellington, New Zealand.
He didn’t watch a lot of telly, so I figured he’d read the word wrong and never watched enough F-Troop, Dusty’s Trail or Lone Ranger to get a proper education in the pronunciation of cavalry.
Right now, typing this out, they both just look odd.
I think it’s common in this area. I’m from the same dialect region (Inland North), and I wouldn’t even particularly notice it in casual speech.
I never hear it the other way – everyone says “Calvary Hospital” or “Mt. Calvary Cemetery” just fine. (I think even people who don’t know the Biblical reference are familiar with it as a common name for cemeteries, etc).
I think the problem Calvary and cavalry is much the same as the problem with prostate and prostrate.
Thank the gods that’s I’m not the only one who used to mix them up. My family used to correct me a zillion times when I was growing up and I still would still make the mistake.
And I can never quite remember how to say the name of that one metal.
By the same token, a great many people mispronounce Calvary as Calgary, suggesting that the Crucifixion took place on the prairies of Western Canada. Or more specifically that one is referring to one of the countless Catholic cemeteries that use the name Calvary or some variation.
When I was in the 7[sup]th[/sup] Cav. people would look at me funny. Whenever someone would mispronounce cavalry I would ask them to give Jesus a poke while they were there. Very few caught on.
One of our local newspapers ran a column called “Calvary Tales” for a couple years. It was a guy that submitted stories about what his relative was doing during the Civil War, 150 years ago this week. At one point, the editor ran a correction stating the column should have been entitled “Cavalry Tales.” Ran for a couple years, with a readership around 3,000, at least one newspaper editor and an amateur Cavalry buff not noticing.
Not when you say it in your head, because the L is not in my head. It only confuses things if you think too hard and visualize the letters and not four-legged hoofed animals. And I’m from Cleveland. Cavs, calves, it’s all the same out loud.
I’ve never heard anyone say “Calvary.” I suspect it is right up their with “nucular” or “cashay” as words that have somehow proliferated the incorrect pronunciation to the point of excluding the correct one. It’s absolutely grating on the ears of someone who knows how it is supposed to be pronounced.
I live in Virginia and I hear “calvary” for “cavalry” quite often. In fact, I’m fairly certain I hear that pronunciation more often than the correct one and it was how I originally learned to say it. I realized I was pronouncing it wrong sometime in high school, I think, and so I try to say it correctly now.
I think the reason it’s said that way is just because it’s a bit easier to say. I also often hear “nucular” or “warshington” and I think those are easier to say than the correct pronunciation too.
I’ve never heard anything but “cavalry.” In fact, I had no idea there was a word “Calvary.” I thought it odd that the church down the street from my timeshare in Kihei, Maui was named for horse-mounted soldiers. It was here on the Dope that I heard about Jesus’s hill.
It would bother me if I heard it, but luckily, it doesn’t come up that often.
If I’m singing the Death Cab for Cutie song “I Will Follow,” I usually switch out Calgary to Calvary. Thus,
“You and me,
have seen everything to see,
From Bangkok to Calvary,
And the soles of your shoes,
Are all worn down…” etc.
I feel like it’s a bit more poetic.
In our local Civil War Roundtable about half of the presenters say Calvary for Cavalry. I think it’s because they’ve never considered the differences between the two words and hearing others say Calvary reinforces their speech. Like others have said, it takes me some effort to say Cavalry. I also catch myself mouthing Cavalry to myself when I hear Calvary, but I dare not correct the speakers out loud.
I’m in the cavalry, and from north-east Ohio. I’ve never confused the two words’ pronunciations, but it’s a very common mispronunciation, even amongst cavalrymen. I haven’t noticed any regional tendencies towards the mispronunciation, although younger people tend to be worse about it.
So, I’m at church choir rehearsal the other night and the song we are practicing has many mentions of Calvary (plus we kept messing up and having to go back over it again) and I’m thinking about this thread, and I’m very grateful that musical scores give you the words hyphenated to match the notes. So it reads Cal-va-ry and I’m giggling about it. And then I get miserable because Lillith Fair is no longer our church organist and isn’t there to share the joke with. Bummer.
I think I mostly hear people pronounce cavalry correctly. But I almost never hear anyone say Calvary to begin with and only have vague associations with it re: Catholicism and the end Jesus’s life.