Don’t you mean the “asterix”?
I’m going to hijack my own post
I pronounce the (missing) “R” February. Don’t most people?
Or go through the relator to buy a home.
“Y’all” is never ever, ever, ever EVER used as second person singular, despite what Yankees, Hollywood, and certain emails might say. Get it right.
Also, we never say “Y’all come back now, ya hear” either.
Believe it or not, it actually is spelled “asterisk”.
Almost no one does, to my experience. It’s not unknown, but it’s rare.
Oh, please. Next you’ll be telling me there’s no such word as “excape.”
Not to nitpick, but I believe the root word is “nucleus”, and “nuclear” means “of or related to a nucleus”.
This could refer to biology (cell nucleus, nuclear transfer) or physics (atomic nucleus, nuclear energy). How do people usually pronounce “nucleus”? I always say new-clee-us. (For whatever it’s worth, I’m a native English speaking American and I’ve never had any trouble with the cl sound in the middle of a word. Maybe it’s regional.) It seems like the pronunciation should come from the root. Do people ever pronounce “nucleus” as new-cu-lus?
New-cu-ler grates on me in the same way that aks (for ask) does. As do lie-berry, feb-yew-rary and ath-a-lete.
Individuals who talk like that come off, rightly or wrongly, as uneducated to many people. It seems to me that someone who’s in a career that requires frequent public speaking would want to give the best possible impression and would hire a speech coach and try to learn to speak as correctly as possible. If you’re in politics you want to give people as little to pick on as possible!
Wrong. In that song, ye' is a dialectical formation of you,’ as in `God rest you merry, Gentlemen.’ (Note position of comma, essential in understanding what the verse means.) It isn’t that tough.
The letter y' was erroneously substituted for is the thorn, which used to represent the voiced /th/ sound at the beginning of the’ and that,' as opposed to the unvoiced /th/ at the beginning of thin,’ which was represented by another letter that we’ve dropped from Modern English. The thorn looked somewhat like a reversed `y’ with the top closed and the descender extended above the closed area.
Damn. DAMN! Sorry, r_k. Ignore my first paragraph and focus on my second. I thought you’d actually made a mistake.
:smack: :smack: :smack:
(Silently goes to wipe egg off face, hopes to make omelette.)
In truth, I think Bush has purposefully been coached to keep saying “nucular”. While in the beginning it was probably his own error (using the term “error” liberally so as not to offend the linguistic relativists among us), imagine how it would look to have the president change the way he says a word. I believe there is an image of weakness and uncertainty associated with it. Sort of like FDR not giving speeches from his wheelchair, despite everybody knowing he was disabled.
Who determines what is “correct” in pronunciation?
Not quite. “Ye” was not a dialectal variant of “you”. “You” was the object form of “ye” (which was used as the subject form) just as “me,” “him,” “her,” and “them” are the object forms of “I,” “he,” “she,” and “they,” respectively (which are used as the subject forms). “Thou” was the object form of “thee.” At some point “you” took over as being both the subject and the object form of the second person plural pronoun and “thou” took over as being both the subject and the object form of the second person singular pronoun. Then “you” took over as being the second person pronoun in all cases and numbers. (And for some dialects, “you all” later became the second person plural pronoun.)
:rolleyes: ek cetera, ek cetera…:rolleyes:
Somewhere on the web recently, maybe on SDMB, I saw a new drinking game growing in popularity. Everybody has to watch the George Bush speech and every time he says “nuke you ler” you have to do a shot. I tried it two speeches ago and I got trashed.
Making fun of GWB’s accent, or are you making fun of the Texas accent? If so what’s next, making fun of the black man’s accent?
Are you sure you want to go down this road?
Wikipedia has some words on the subject at this link:
In Loogotee, Indiana, it’s pronounced “nway-cool-your.” That shows you what they know in Loogotee.
The difference between nuclear and unclear depends on how you use the UN . --Biff Rose:D
The poor fellow just wasnt taught to speak properly in the first place. A degree at Harvard is not going to correct for a poor education.
Anyway, consecutive consonants and consecutive vowels are a nuisance. This can be easily fixed. Simply start by inserting a ‘u’ between any consecutive consonants eg
attrition --> att-u-riton
ignorant --> ig-u-norant
imbecile --> im-u-becile
and contract consecutive vowels eg
carrion --> carron
managerial --> manageral
cereal --> ceral
Now we can have words like:
nuclear --> nuc-u-lar
triangular --> tran-u-gular
factual --> fac-u-tal
Christian --> Chris-u-tan
distinction --> dis-u-tinc-u-ton
function --> fun-u-c-u-ton
Yeah, and pronounced that way too where I come from.
I am aware that this post and, particularly, the one it relates to, may have been written in jest. However, I have learned not to take things like pronunciation accross regions for granted, and so I am forced to assume that there may actually be people out there who pronounce the word asterix and believe it to be spelled that way too.