Heh heh, shizzle is a corruption of “sure.”
Whereas in the '70s and '80s a hip youngster might say “fer sher” he would now say “fo shizzo.”
As for the idea that we all spell a word the same way, therefore we should all say it the same way, I maintain that is simply not true, no matter how much you want it to be.
I submit, for your consideration: the word roof . As you can see from the link, there are two accepted pronunciations of this word, and yet they are both spelled the same way.
racekarl
First, thanks for the shizzo thing. I always wondered.
But the two pronunciations of roof have the same phonetic spelling. Nuclear and nuculer do not. We have agreed on the spelling and it shouldn’t be unclear how to pronounce it. Isn’t this something that could be changed in early learning?
Ok, look, I can give my two cents (as a linguistics major).
I can pronounce nuclear both ways just fine (same for nucleus). When I speak faster I am more likely to say “nukyular” but I can say both at most speeds. (I’m from the Northwest).
The question has been answered as to why people “mispronounce” it. That answer is that the cluster of consonants in that context (i.e. “u-cl-ea”) is not simple. Some languages don’t ever have consonant clusters, there’s always a vowel between individual consonants (though the concept of ‘individual consonant’ is a little bit misleading).
Because consant clusters are hard, especially between two non-reduced vowels (i.e. those that are not schwa-ish), there are some dialects in English that find it very difficult to say the word nuclear and resort to the common tactic of inserting a reduced vowel (i.e. a schwa). This is entirely natural and common. You most definitely do it. It really doesn’t matter what your dialect is, chances are very high that there is a word for which you insert a vowel that isn’t in the standardized spelling. Listen when you speak and you’ll find it.
The theory that we shortened the word to ‘nuke’ and then worked from there is almost certainly not the origin of this pronunciation but may have some effect on it. For example to reinforce it. This is a sort of Occam’s razor thing, it is just a simple answer to hypothesize an ease of pronunciation issue.
As to the issue of written vs. spoken, I have a few thoughts on the matter. First of all, spoken language came first and even today serves as the medium for the vast majority of human communication. Just think of all the conversations you had today, just think of all the people who are illiterate or semi-literate. In that sense spoken language is vastly more important.
Written language doesn’t have to have a particularly close connection to the pronunciation of spoken language. Look at Chinese which doesn’t really encode sound (at least not for meaning). Look at Hebrew, which doesn’t encode vowels. Look at English spelling which isn’t too consistent in its spelling but still basically works.
In some sense the idea that spelling doesn’t have to reflect pronunciation is an ideological stance, but it is one that is backed up by some reasonable evidence (for example, what I’ve said above). The fact that we can still read Shakespeare without too much trouble attest to usefulness of keeping your spelling somewhat static. Furthermore, the regional variations in English are wide enough that it is probably easier to just spell everything in the standard way rather than try to reconcile the irreconcilable pronunciations in a spelling system.
Having said all that, I must admit that in theory you ought to be able to make everyone pronounce things as they are spelled in Stamdard American English today, but it would require a lot of work and probably engender a certain amount of resentment. No one would be spared from having to change and some words would be pronounced in ways that no one pronounces them currently. If you wanted to keep everyone pronouncing things this way you’d have to expend a lot of energy to keep people in line phonetically. We’d all sound basically the same, at least in terms of accent. I think that those people with speech impediments would have an extremely difficult time, much worse than today.
As for our president’s use of the “nukyular” pronunciation, you can certainly be amused by it, but it is not bizzare or abberent nor is it in and of itself really an indication of low intelligence or bad breeding (so to speak). In our society we do value a Standard American English dialect, which I believe includes “nuclear” as a proper pronunciation of the word. So in fact it may say something about our president’s intelligence and education that he has not learned to pronounce nuclear in this way, in that he may be incapable of pronouncing it or never learned the proper way. However, it is probably safe to say that he is aware of the standard pronunciation and whether he chooses not to or is unable to pronounce it in this way says nothing fundamental about his intelligence.
Looking at this on Preview I see that it is a pretty big reply and I hope you’ll wad through it. I also hope it is clear.
Actually, the two do not have the same phonetic spelling, and if they did it would prove the point that spelling, even phonetic spelling is always an approximation. And even though they are written different phonetically, phonetic spelling is still an approximation. You use different levels of accuracy for different purposes when you are transcribing phonetically, and it is never quite right for any individual instance of a sound. Dictionary phonetics is fairly fast and loose, but works fine for its purpose.
If you look at a plot of the acoustic information from spoken language you will find that a given letter is pronounced quite differently at different times, in different contexts or by different people. It varies quite a bit. You can still sort of distinguish between sounds based on what they look like, but it is not easy or 100% accurate (better equipment and detailed data helps, but you still need to interpret a lot of information, something your brain does automatically when given actual audio data). There are a couple problems with trying to pick out letters from this. For one thing the sounds all blend into each other, there are no breaks (well, consonants are kind of areas of less sound, but still things blend together). For another thing there aren’t clean breaks between individual sounds despite the fact that we percieve them. sounds are really on a continuum and we only insert breaks to be able to communicate.
OK, that was another dense treatise. I apologize, but I find this stuff fascinating and like to share it with others.
sjc
Wow, if that was only two cents, I’d be impressed with the whole dollar!
Couple of points. Here we are communicating without speaking (except for the voices in my head), isn’t it wonderful? We couldn’t do this without at least some standardized form of written language.
I understand the tactic of inserting a reduced vowel to aid in a difficult pronunciation. racekarl (I think. Sorry if it was someone else) used the example of kvetch yesterday. I said this out loud last night to the amusement of Mrs. the one and she said that yes, I am inserting a greatly reduced vowel sound but not to the extent of adding an entire syllable. We might both have hearing problems. What I’m taking exception to is the insertion of a long vowel sound and an extra stressed syllable.
What I say when I’m at home with a beer in my hand is one thing. What I say when anyone should be listening is another. I make a conscious choice to try and speak as clearly as I can to avoid misunderstanding.
Like I said in the original post, I’m not saying anything about Mr. Bush or his intelligence or education. If it sounds like I was, that was not my intention. I just used him as an example because a good many people have heard him pronounce this word.
Just previewed and have more to add.
My error. I don’t always have time to read what I write and I’m posting from work. What I meant was that I can see both pronunciations from the agreed upon spelling. I can’t see justifying newkewler from nuclear.
Hobie, I understand the point you’re supporting, but I think you’re expecting to much from the language. As others have said, our language is constantly evolving, both in time and by region. Are you hoping to keep pronunciations fixed among the different regions and over time? You’ll be fighting a losing battle. Well-educated Americans often learn to replace many of their native dialect’s idiosyncracies with the “standard” equivalent. But it’s rather elitist to expect everyone to willingly give up their native dialect to match someone else’s.
As a hypothetical question, what if there was a competing standard spelling. Say, nucular vs nuclear. (This is defensible considering the original Latin.) Would you be more willing to accept the alternative pronunciation? What if the alternative pronunciation was dominant in another nation instead of just another state? (Compare, aluminum vs aluminium.)
sjc, great posts. In my (limited) experience, most people actually mean phonemic when they say phonetic. Phonemic, to answer the inevitable question, is based on the “logical” sound units (phonemes) rather than the actual pronunciation. When we write the letter t, we imply all of the “t” sounds that English lumps together. A better linguist could give specific examples. (I also should mention that your long ----- breaks the formating of your post in my browser; it’s way too wide for my small screen.)
bordelond, don’t kid yourself, it degrades his message. Compare and contrast:
Homer Simpson: ‘No. Lisa, it pronounced nucular, nOO-kyu-lar.’
Audience: Laughs knowingly at the greatest American clown of the past, say, thirty years willfully flaunting his ignorance in front of his intellectual betters.
vs.
George W. Bush: ‘…using chemical, biological or, one day, nucular weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.’
Audience: Oh right. Sounds good. War it is then.
(Was that a bit heavy handed? :))
What irks me is folks who mispronounce “comfortable” by switching the R and the T: /kumf.ter.bull/
– CH
Sorry, Czech, but that’s the first pronunciation given in Merriam-Webster!
com·fort·able
Pronunciation: 'kəm§(f)-tə®-bəl, 'kəm§-fə®-tə-bəl, 'kəm-fə®-bəl
Thanks, Pleonast sorry about the long breaks, I was actually concerned about that as I sent it. I’ll keep it in mind next time. Oh, and thanks for bringing up the phonetic vs. phonemic thing, I forgot to address it.
micilin, you have a point, I laugh at nukyular from the mouth of GWB, but it is also kind of silly for me to laugh. It’s mostly just looking down on a non-standard way of speaking, one that is just as efficient and useful (except when we are laughing too hard to listen). Heck, I even say nukyular at times. You probably do too (not to cast aspersions).
Hobie, when you say
You bring up an excellent point, but this has no bearing on questions of pronunciation. Actually, now that I look more closely at it I’m not entirely sure what your point is exactly. Other than that written communication is really amazing. I totally agree with you. (I should also point out that spoken language is exceedingly cool too. How we are able to distill meaning from very little audio information for one thing.)
Oh, sorry Hobie I think I may get your point. Are you saying that we can communicate on this board (and in other situations) because we have a standardized writing system?
Yes you are right, you do need a set of agreed upon conventions for written language. Absolutely true. However, you do not need adhere strictly to pronunciation in order to do this. In fact, it is usually an impediment to communication to pay too close attention to how you pronounce a word at any given time. The point is that the connection between written and spoken language is, in my considered opinion, strongest in the realm of thought. In other words, unless the information you are trying to convey is the pronunciation of a word, accurate phonetic (or phonemic) spelling is unecessary. In most cases we don’t need to know the pronunciation, we just need to know the proper sequence of symbols for a word.
George Bernard Shaw pointed out that the word ‘fish’ could also be spelled ‘ghoti’ in English. ‘gh’ as in enough, ‘o’ as in women, and ‘ti’ as in nation. We don’t spell fish that way, but we don’t spell ‘enough’ ‘enuf’, ‘women’ as ‘wimen’, or ‘nation’ as ‘nashun’ either.
The point is this: accurate representation of pronunciation is not necessary for written language, and in some ways it is better if the system is not slavishly devoted to pronunciation. It follows from this that the way a word is spelled should not be the sole arbiter of pronunciation.
If you want to fault the nukyular pronunciation you really have to say this: “that pronunciation is not standard and I believe that it is important to speak Standard English.” Now, it is true that nucyular is not considered standard English. It is also true that speaking standard english is valued by Americans. However, it is not universally considered important and furthermore, its value is basically subjective.
pleonast
Yup.
As I said lo these many posts ago, I don’t think it is a regional difference. If it were a regional difference in pronunciation, I think I would have less of a problem with it. Take the aluminum example. I hear British or English person saying Aluminium and think to myself, “that person is from Britain and that’s the way they pronounce that word.”
sjc
“That pronunciation of nuclear is not standard and I believe that it is important to speak Standard English.”
That’s what it boils down to to me. In this case (the case of nuclear) I don’t think you can say more than that.
Why is it important to speak standard English? Isn’t it kind of arrogant to classify one variety as standard? I can certainly see reasons for adhering to a standard, but there are also problems with this idea. For example, if you value standard English so highly the people who grew up speaking standard English are going to have a distinct advantage in life (through no merit of their own, it’s simply a matter of where they grew up). No one laughs at my accent, but that is because I speak an approximation of standard. I didn’t have to try to learn it, my parents and peers just spoke it while I was growing up.
In some sense designating a standard language is simply a way to emphasize the power of a domnant group. I don’t think you need to put too much effort into defending the Standard since it already is the dialect that everyone wants to speak (that’s an overstatement, but I think it is true that nearly everyone in America has some idea of what standard is and condsiders that the ‘correct’ way to speak).
And really, what is Standard anyway? No one speaks it all the time. And I’ve said it before, if we all spoke the same way it would be very boring.
Excuse me, that should be “the power of the dominant group”
So why does this particular pronunciation irritate me so much?
As I have said, I don’t have problems with regional pronunciations, accents, George Bush himself, or a host of other pronunciations that are non-standard. For example, I hear people “axing” questions all the time and that doesn’t drive me nearly as far up the wall.
That explains it. Bush is not an ignorant moron, he is a Latin scholar. Thus he should move to Latin America and be forced to read aloud Asterisk and Obelisk cartoons after ingesting Nukes Vomica.
Mmmm hmmm. And if Merriam-Webster jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?
– CH