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

[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.)