but it's different when you're on the radio, isn't it?!

[fox]

So okay, I know sometimes we get uppity about language and how it changes and whatnot, but that really language is an organic thing that has a life cycle of its own, so changes happen.  The first generation that would never have dreamed of saying feb-yoo-ary must have been driven bananas by its children's insistence on pronouncing February that way.  We haven't lost library and nuclear to lie-berry and nuke-you-ler yet, but it's just a matter of time.  Both we in the US and they in the UK have laboratory, but we tend to pronounce it lab-ra-tory and they tend to pronounce it lab-or-a-tree.  In short:  you can't fight a tidal wave.

But I do reserve the right to be annoyed when the weather guy on the radio -- and this is the all-news radio station, he's not the guy who reads the weather at some station full of pop music nonsense -- says -- well, listen, I can get behind temp-ra-cher and even temp-er-cher (although I don't like it), but I yell at the dashboard when I hear temp-a-cher.  rar.  And then five minutes later I hear something else like inf-a-structure.  RAR!

[seethe]

And do you know what's worse than that?  Today I heard a bit about how in the 60's there was a kid who was designated the 200,000,000th American, and any day now he will be happy to hand the media attention over to the 300,000,000th American -- and the reporter read these as "two hundredth million American" and "three hundredth million American", respectively.

Oh. my. god.

Comments

[cereta.livejournal.com]

Yah know, I still pronouce it Feb-rue-airy. But I grew up on February Drive, so...

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

We were required to pronounce it that way -- articulating both R's, that is -- when I was a wee thing in elementary school, but it didn't take. (And my father still pronounces it that way as well, and gets snooty about how he pronounces all the letters, until we point out that neither he nor any other native speaker says "wed-nes-day" or even "weddens-day". And then we tease him for rhyming "donkey" with "flunkie". Heh.)

I don't think that way of pronouncing it is wrong; just that this way isn't, either. (At least, for now, people who say feb-ee-ary only -- I hope -- do so ironically.)

[gblvr.livejournal.com]

Things like that drive me buggy -- I am constantly correcting my kids when they say things incorrectly. My biggest pet peeve though, has to be 'pen' when you mean PIN and 'pin' when you mean PEN. It seems to happen more in the South, which means we get a fair amount of it around here...grr.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

[puts on Linguist hat] They're not actually saying 'pin' when they mean 'pen' -- that is, they know and are using the correct words. It's a dialect thing; it's called a pin-pen merger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_the_high_front_vowels#Pin-pen_merger), and it is in fact mostly found in the south -- but not exclusively, of course. In Akeelah and the Bee there's a cute bit where a kid asks the judge at the spelling bee if he's asking for imminent or eminent. That one doesn't bug me all that much, since it's a consistent feature of the dialect -- that vowel changes systematically, I mean to say -- and not just a plain wrong thing that is wrong, like "tempacher", where the R has inexcusably disappeared.

[emila-wan.livejournal.com]

Horrors! What's a purist to do!?

This is my current pet peeve: "So-Security" instead of "Social Security".

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

Or "Pres o' the Uni* States" (*"unai" or "unigh", of course, and not "you-knee"). I know we speak quickly, but damn.

Or "thank you for flying Contnl Airlines." Rar.

[kmg-365.livejournal.com]

Speaking of annoying weather people, Bob Ryan takes the cake for me: he pronounces "day" as "dee", so we get Mondeee, Tuesdeee, Wednesdeeeeeee.

I want to kick him.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

That doesn't bother me that much. I can see where it would, but it happens not to bug me personally. Since it's a relatively common thing that happens when a syllable is unstressed, I mean, that the vowel is reduced. (The guy doesn't say "todee", for example, instead of "today". Heh.)