'Bred Crumbs

Pronunciation Part 2: An Hissy Fit

In that last entry I forgot to mention one glaring omission from the mispronunciation list. Or maybe it belongs on the misspelling list. All I know is, it's mis-.

It's the whole "an historic" thing. What gives? Why do even educated people fall for this one? There is no justification for the "an" except for some misplaced assumption, some urban grammatical legend, that all the rules change for historic. No one has an history. You never hear doctors telling patients they need an hysterectomy. And, of course, no one bets on an horse. But make something historic, and suddenly everyone's Cockney. Gives me an headache.

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So Say I

The Morning News (whose articles I'm not big on, but it always has a hell of a link list) points the way to an online dictionary's tally of the "100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English." Lists of 100 top anything beg to be picked apart. So let's motor.

First off, flounder for founder isn't mispronunciation; it's ignorance of word meaning, like comprised for composed. (Shudder.) And you've got to wonder what world the authors of the list inhabit. Not mine, or the Caucasus wouldn't make this list at all. Most mispronounced? How often is the Caucasus pronounced at all?

The focus is weirdly narrow in other ways. The list tsk-tsks putting the wrong emphasis on mischievous without addressing the common tendency to add an extra i in it ("mischie-vious"). And while I appreciate the note that Britons and Australians find the common American butchery of nuclear ("nucular") "quaintly amusing," as do I, why isn't the Australian/British habit of tacking an r to the end of a word ending in an -ia sound ("Californyer") just as snicker-worthy?

No one pronounces the i in parliament anymore? Well, just try to. You can't, at least not without coming to a complete stop after the l ("parl-yament"). Why bother? The i has failed. It's got to go. That's how language changes. "Bidness" for business, "idn't" for isn't, and "wadn't" for wasn't, all noted offenses in this list, may seem a little silly now, but they show the kind of across-the-board sound shifts that create distinct languages. They're why we don't speak German anymore, at least not intentionally.

And "prolly" for probably? Get out of the way or get run over, 'cause it's a-comin'. And I for one welcome this compact new model, both sporty and fuel-efficient, into the language.

I realize that's prolly pretty arbitrary, but so be it.

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