I’d never heard that “plantane” was a mispronunciation.
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary seems to say that “plantin” is the correct pronunciation for the plant but “plantane” is the correct pronunciation for the fruit.
But if “plantane” were a mispronunciation, it would be a completely different variety from “calvary” or “cumberbun.”
One is the kind where the person has looked at how the word is spelled and is pronouncing it based on that, without having heard it said correctly.
The other is the kind where the person has not looked carefully at how it is spelled, and is instead basing their pronunciation either on a careless misreading of the spelling or on having heard other people say the word (wrongly).
A glance at their entry for cavalry suggests good ole MW isn’t going to hold a lot of weight with this crowd.
I don’t think someone is ignorant if they say “send in the calvary”. If someone else jumps in with “you dumdum it’s cavalry” though, rude certainly springs to mind.
That dictionary also gives ˈplan-tᵊn as a pronunciation, and most of the rest of these dictionaries give it as the only one. https://www.onelook.com/?w=plantain&ls=a
When I was a kid our teachers were high priestesses of the Funk and Wagnall’s. I remember when we looked plantains up because they were mentioned in a story we were reading. We also looked up kiln. Teacher wanted to make sure we knew the N was silent in that word.
Never had a problem with “cavalry” myself. Used to let it slide as mispronunciation but I began seeing people *writing *it as “calvary”. This is to me suggestive of people who learned to read by “look-say” and decide it must be the same word, and that those of us saying “cavalry” are the ones saying nucular.
I hear plenty of people calling mounted soldiers “calvary”, but I’ve never heard anyone refer to the local basketball team as “the Calvs” or “the Cals”.
Well, you just pronounced cavalry “Cav”… that’s really mixed up.
Ha.
Good decision, since he may have had a company of mounted horsemen on call… now excuse me, I hear hoofbeats on the porch, it may be Loach and his 1st Cav friends…
Might ‘calvary’ seem slightly easier to pronounce than ‘cavalry’? Perhaps this is an example of Metathesis, the type of sound change for which Lyle Campbell offers as examples:
parabola [Latin] > palabra [Spanish]
Gabriel > Grabiel [Spanish dialect]
brid [OE] > bird [English]
I always get those two words mixed up. I mean, I know the difference, but I’d have to think about it (“OK, “chevalier” has the V first, so the guys on horseback must be “cavalry,” and “Calvary” has to be the other one”), and on the one or two occasions when I’ve been on the point of saying one of those words out loud during a class lecture, I’ve had an “oh shit” moment when I realized I didn’t have time to think about it. (I’m in the Bible belt, my students would know the difference.)
There’s a town in NW Ohio (near my snowbird mother’s summer residence) which suffers from this syndrome: Catawba. Everyone pronounces it “Cat-a-bwa” tho. Just try saying it the way it is spelled, and get back to me after your lips and tongue are no longer all knotted.
I listened to one of those Leisure Learning tapes about military history, and even the professor (whose name I don’t recall) kept referring to the “calvary”. In a way, I was hoping the same professor would do the series on the history of Christianity to see if he got that one right.
