Mispronunciations?

[mmcirvin]

Language Hat rips apart a popular list of "common mispronunciations", which turns out to consist mostly of examples of accents that the author doesn't like, jokes, and some standard pronunciations damned by incorrect etymology.

Language Hat is so nonprescriptivist about usage (see the old post exonerating nucular) that I suspect ronebofh would not approve. But as he or she points out, while there are cases in which a certain pronunciation will make you sound untutored, this list doesn't do a good job of collecting them.

As a prescriptive usage guide, I enjoy Bryan A. Garner's Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style... but, on the other hand, I've found some factual errors in his digressions on non-language topics, and I still refuse to pronounce "schism" as "sizm", regardless of what he says.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

My 6th grade English teacher, who has since gone on to get a PhD in Linguistics, is decidely non-prescriptivist. I love the guy, and i try to follow his lead, but... i fear humptydumptyism.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I am prescriptivist enough to find that newspaper article awkwardly written. I wonder if the author got the joke buried in "colorless white people sleep soundly (http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1997/chomsky.html)."

[davetheinverted]

I'm something of a prescriptivist when it comes to language, though this shows up a lot more in grammar and syntax than it does in pronunciation. That said, I find most of Dr. Language's "errors" ridiculous. Where I do agree with him, either one word is being mutated into another (thus reducing the precision of the English language) or the new pronunciation is sufficiently far from both the "standard" correct one and what the word itself looks like that I just twitch when I hear it. (Yes, "nucular" falls into the second category.) IMO, YMMV, etc.

Dav2.718

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, Language Hat apparently also likes Garner's usage guide (or, more precisely, a version of it under another title), but really didn't like David Foster Wallace's favorable review of it (http://www.languagehat.com/languages.php).

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The introduction to the book I've got reveals that it is an abridged version of the one that Wallace and Language Hat were talking about.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Some further thoughts on the subject:

1. It's ridiculous to expect modern linguists to stress correctness in their linguistic work; they're trying to do science, not lay down the law.

2. Usage guides that tell you how to write are good, useful things to have around, and most descriptive linguists would probably agree.

3. The user of a usage guide should regard the rules within as, at best, a set of instructions that seem to work well in the production of clear, engaging writing or speech. (Of course, some usage guides also encode the decisions of a particular organization as to its preferred voice, and if you're writing for that organization you'd better follow them.)

4. I don't see anything wrong with a dictionary occupying any given point on the prescriptive-descriptive spectrum, as long as you know what you're getting when you buy the dictionary.

5. It is probably not a good idea to use somebody's list of usage rules as a means of belittling dialect speakers.

6. There are many popular superstitions about grammar: rules of the sort that were promulgated by somebody in the 19th century as part of an ill-conceived attempt to impose Latin grammar on the English language, even though the greatest English prose ever written is rife with violations. These are best ignored. But good modern usage guides deprecate them anyway.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

1. Trying to lay down rules of pronunciation in English is like trying to impose a dress code in a whorehouse.

2. Grammar rules that, when broken, do not alter the message of what is said may be considered optional.

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

3. Not regarding as idiots people who don't care how they say it as long as they say it may also be considered optional.

I am not one to exercise that option lightly.

At a recent meeting at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, a graduate student in nuclear physics got up and made a presentation in which he repeatedly used the word "nucular". I was so busy wanting to strangle him, I don't really remember what information he presented.