No. Irregardless of what’s correct, most people are also too laxadaisical (or is that “lacksadaisical”?) to pronounce the first “c” in “Arctic”.
You mean:
tuh-ran-u-gular
Cuh-ris-u-tan
As seen in John 8:32 – “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
Actually, “thee” serves as an object, as in “How do I love thee?” “Thou” is the subject form (“Thou art”, “Thou sayest”).
Another thing that bugs me is when people say “kyommyunity” instead of “kommyunity” (community) or “kyoupon” instead of “koopon” (coupon).
I’m Australian…
for nuclear I say NYOO-klee-ar
for february - FEB-byr-ree or FEB-byoor-AIR-ree
for community I say ker-MYOO-nit-tee
Do they say “art-tic” or “ar-tic”? I say “arc-tic”, but I’m Australian.
I’m in the upper midwest, USA. I say FEB-u-ary, AR-tic, kuh-MYOON-ity, and while I almost always say NOO-clee-ur, I hear NOO-cu-lar so often that I have actually caught myself saying it wrong.
Regarding asterix and asterisk… I believe the problem comes from the inadvertent mental swapping of the “k” and the “s”. I have heard people say dex (for desk) and ax (for ask). These last two examples sound quite illiterate to my ears.
How about “strength”? I think this is a regionalism, but I sometimes hear people pronounce it “strenth”.
Hah, I think this might have flowed a bit better if you’d said:
Irregardless most people are also too unorganized
Since I’m from Picksburgh, if yunz need to know how to pronounce something, all yunz gotta do is axe. But not right now cuz I gotta go warsh my car.
Strangely enough, I’ve always pronounced it “asterik” when speaking conversationally. The second “s” gets dropped.
Algernon, regarding “strength”, I’ve got another regional variant for you. I’ve always pronounced it “straynth”. In New Orleans, you’ll either hear that or “strent”. Pronouncing the “g” in “strength”, “length” sounds to me either hyper-correct British or Frasier-esquely stilted.
That may have been true several thousand years ago, but if it were true today then spelling wouldn’t matter, we’d be spelling phonetically. Of course language is written.
The correct pronunciation of “nuclear” isn’t just because of the way it’s spelled. It’s also the etymology and evolution of the word.
It seems to be accepted in English to say “or derv” for the French “hors d’oeuvre”, which reverses the correct order of the R and the V. Of course, it’s more difficult for an English speaker to pronounce the correct French way. But please–“nuclear” is an English word with conventional English sounds in it.
Certainly there are different regional pronunciations of a word, but when the variation goes so far as to change the order of the letters, or introduce letters that aren’t there, it’s just wrong.
Not really. The sounds, taken individually, are common in English, but the stress pattern of the word on those particular sounds is quite unusual.
As Bush’s pronunciation does not lead to a degradation of his message (i.e. listeners understand that his pronunciation means the word nuclear), I’m disinclined to declare “new-kyu-lar” flat out wrong linguistically.
Uh sorry, but spelling standardization is much newer than “several thousand years ago” and IS still in progress today. Look at historical documents written in the early twentieth century and you’ll see what I mean.
New words are basically always invented spoken, not written.
This is a tenous example but the best I could come up with off the top of my head:
Take shizzle for example: it’s generally always said the same way, but is spelled both shizzle and shizzo. It’s a new word that exists as a spoken phrase, but all spelling is phonetic for now. If this word really takes hold and enters popular culture, at some point the spelling will become standardized, but as throughout history, spoken words come first, then phonetic spellings, and finally, standardized spelling.
How many different spellings of Khadaffi did you see in the '80s? Language is always a work in progress…
I can’t stand how Dubya says “horror”. He sounds like Col. Kurtz.
“The hawrah!”
racekarl
Okay, spelling standardization is still in progress but haven’t we gotten to the point where we are all agreeing that the word is spelled nuclear? My point is that since we have a standardized spelling for the word, we should be pronouncing it the way it is spelled.
Language is fluid and that is a (mostly) good thing but sometimes it is difficult. Anybody else remember the phrase “ain’t ain’t a word” from one of their parents?
BTW, and showing my age, what is shizzle (however you spell it)?
racekarl
Okay, spelling standardization is still in progress but haven’t we gotten to the point where we are all agreeing that the word is spelled nuclear? My point is that since we have a standardized spelling for the word, we should be pronouncing it the way it is spelled.
Language is fluid and that is a (mostly) good thing but sometimes it is difficult. Anybody else remember the phrase “ain’t ain’t a word” from one of their parents?
BTW, and showing my age, what is shizzle (however you spell it)?
Man, your grammar needs fixed.
From the OED:
nuclear (first cite 1846) from English nucleus (1704) from Latin nucleus/nuculeus from nucula from nux. BTW, first cite for nuke is 1959.
I find it very interesting that Latin had similar issues with the “extra” syllable.
Also, ye was originally second person nomative plural. It later came to be used as objective plural and nomative singular.
Nor is “Cuba” normally pronounced “Kuber”, nor “car”= “kah”, but that’s they way JFK did it.
Perfectly reasonable regional dialect.
However, “waRshington” drives me nuts.
I can’t say “rural” without wincing. It just sounds wrong.