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Nuke-you-lar

 
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Or... words that increasingly few people pronounce correctly.

Aparently Sarah Palin joins our esteemed president in the 'nukeyoular' vs. 'nuclear' schism, so I am beginning to wonder if this word is a shibboleth for membership in the Republican party. I'm trying to think whether there are any other English words like this that a nontrivial number of nontrivial people so blatantly mispronounce. Anybody?
 
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Those stinking British and their "miss-isle" and "al-lou-minium" and freakin "left-tenant". Don't they know how to speak English?
 
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gif - hard or soft 'g'?

linux - i sound or e sound?

bruschetta - is it an 'sk' sound or a 'sh' sound?
 
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What is interesting about the word nuclear and the mispronunciation is that those that say it incorrectly are using a different spelling.

nook-yoo-ler

vs

noo-klee-er

It's not the same as gif or linux. Those are spelled the same regardless of their pronunciation.
 
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Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
Or... words that increasingly few people pronounce correctly.

Aparently Sarah Palin joins our esteemed president in the 'nukeyoular' vs. 'nuclear' schism, so I am beginning to wonder if this word is a shibboleth for membership in the Republican party. I'm trying to think whether there are any other English words like this that a nontrivial number of nontrivial people so blatantly mispronounce. Anybody?

As I recall, Jimmy Carter notoriously pronounced it that way. That wasn't recent and he wasn't a Republican either.
 
Joe Ess
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Originally posted by Paul Clapham:
As I recall, Jimmy Carter notoriously pronounced it that way. That wasn't recent and he wasn't a Republican either.



Interesting if true since he was on the cutting edge of nuclear energy back in the day.
 
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Your current president is for ever littering his speaches with references to "American" ,pronounced in a way that makes him sound like he's talking about something completely different.

[MAY NOT BE SAFE FOR SOME WORK ENVIRONMENTS]
[ October 03, 2008: Message edited by: fred rosenberger ]
 
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Could she have meant nuke you liar? Maybe she had someone special in mind.
 
Paul Clapham
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Originally posted by Joe Ess:
Interesting if true since he was on the cutting edge of nuclear energy back in the day.

It says so in the Wikipedia article about Nucular.
 
Darya Akbari
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Originally posted by Paul Clapham:
Nucular



What the heck is NUCULAR ?
 
fred rosenberger
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sorry to edit your post, Paul, but when I saw the image, i felt it better safe than sorry...
 
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I don't understand hhhhhhhwhat you're talking about. Everyone in Warshington talks normal
 
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I think we need to put an asterisk er asterick er astrick next to it.

Mark
 
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What about the pronunciation of the char datatype?
How many programmers do you know that insist on pronouncing it like the verb, as in: ch�r? How annoying is that!
 
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Originally posted by Marc Peabody:
I don't understand hhhhhhhwhat you're talking about. Everyone in Warshington talks normal



Except those who get elected running against Warshington.

I have no idea where that "R" comes from, or the one at the end of cuber the island south of Florida.
 
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I have no idea where that "R" comes from


It's known as The Migrating Vowel Syndrome
Some years back, somebody won a contest of the most ridiculous posed theory or something like that. Why in some parts of the country a soda pop is pronounced "soder" and other things like that.
I was actually surprised to find this on google .

- Doug
-- Nothing is impossible if I'mPossible
 
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But it sounds so cool when Joe Strummer sings "riding al-u-min-i-um crutches" in "Car Jamming."
 
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A phonetics lesson from The Vapors...


[ October 03, 2008: Message edited by: marc weber ]
 
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I remember my amazement as a child that the world "nuclear" was correctly pronounced as it was spelled, and not as nookyuler, which was the more common spoken pronunciation. It was around the same time that I was told that the horse-soldiers coming to the wagon train's rescue were the cavalry, not the calvary.

Originally posted by Pat Farrell:
...Except those who get elected running against Warshington.

I have no idea where that "R" comes from, or the one at the end of cuber the island south of Florida.

Pronouncing an `r' which isn't there is probably just a variation of the error common in many dialects of not pronouncing `r' when it does exist.

Among the British, it seems to me that the Welsh tend to have the most correct pronunciation of the letter 'r', whereas the Irish overcompensate and over-pronounce it. It seems to be a particularly troublesome letter; Dave Barry ones wrote that the letter `r' is mispronounced in most languages.

I get especially annoyed when people who know better (as evidenced by their normal speech) suddenly begin dropping ending 'r's (and `g's from -ing words) when they sing.
 
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Originally posted by fred rosenberger:
linux - i sound or e sound?


You can hear the creator himself say it.
 
Paul Clapham
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Originally posted by Frank Silbermann:
Among the British, it seems to me that the Welsh tend to have the most correct pronunciation of the letter 'r', whereas the Irish overcompensate and over-pronounce it. It seems to be a particularly troublesome letter; Dave Barry ones wrote that the letter `r' is mispronounced in most languages.

There's no such thing as "correct" in that particular example. There is only what people do in real life. Often people have a strong opinion about what is "correct" in areas like this one, and when you look closely you find that, amazingly enough, what they consider correct corresponds to their own usage.
 
Paul Sturrock
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+1. Given an English dialect can be valid and rhotic/non-rhotic I've no idea how you choose who is "right". (Unless of course you are speaking about the Scots - we are always right).
 
Pat Farrell
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Originally posted by Paul Sturrock:
I've no idea how you choose who is "right". (Unless of course you are speaking about the Scots - we are always right).



Its easy. "right" is how folks from there pronouce it.

Take the Appalachian Mountains. If you go to wikipedia, they are wrong on pronunciation. The proper way is Appa-Latch-en. As this is how the hillbillies that live in the mountains pronouce it. Only flatlanders use "ap-pa-Lay-chen". and this allows the locals to know who to shoot.

See also Houston Street in NYC:

The street name Houston confuses many people from outside of New York (invariably becoming one of the easiest signs of spotting tourists) because the letters "ou" are pronounced as in the word house (pronounced /ˈhaʊstən/), whereas the same letters in the name of the city of Houston, Texas are pronounced like the "u" in huge (pronounced /ˈhjuːstən/ or /ˈjuːstən/ Template:"HYOO-stin"). This is because Houston Street was named for William Houstoun (note that the spelling is different), long before the fame of Sam Houston, for whom the city in Texas is named. Some people mistakenly believe that the pronunciation was popularized by the accents of local Jewish immigrants.

 
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then why is the area pronounced like a garden implement?

"So-Ho" is pronounced like "sew-hoe"
 
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[Pat]: Its easy. "right" is how folks from there pronouce it.

Hmm, yes. So for example, the right way to pronounce "Germany" is "Deutschland". Got it.
[ October 06, 2008: Message edited by: Mike Simmons ]
 
Pat Farrell
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Originally posted by Mike Simmons:
Hmm, yes. So for example, the right way to pronounce "Germany" is "Deutschland". Got it.



Could be. Then again, we tend to mangle stuff, Pennsylvania Dutch are not from the low countries, but from Deutschland.

Still, if you pretend its the same language, who gets to claim that their pronunciation is "correct", the locals? or snobs in New York City?
 
Paul Clapham
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Originally posted by Pat Farrell:
Still, if you pretend its the same language, who gets to claim that their pronunciation is "correct", the locals? or snobs in New York City?

Both of them. If I'm talking to you then I'm going to talk about the Appa-LAY-chans, because that's correct for you and me. And if some folks in the backwoods of Virginia say it their way, that's correct for them. Just like tom-AH-to and tom-AY-to.
 
Darya Akbari
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Originally posted by Pat Farrell:
and this allows the locals to know who to shoot



 
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