Every time I hear it, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard: “nucular” instead of “nuclear”. It’s baffling where that locution comes from. I am afraid it really does bring the speaker down a notch in my estimation, on the intelligence scale, though I am usually able to get past it. Even in my field, where we use the word a lot, you hear the occasional “nucular”.
Recently it’s been in the news, with Sarah Palin being a nucular type. But she also likes “heckuva”, “doggone”, and “you betcha” and many more, despite their clear tendency to turn off her audience. Anyway, Palin’s problems go a lot deeper than that – I think Steven Pinker got it right in the New York Times op-ed section today.
There are, if you start to think about it, a ton of words that many people mispronounce, and it doesn’t cause one to necessarily cringe. Though, I have to say, some of the following ones do make me cringe now that I sensitized myself to it:
- “realtor” Somehow, a lot of people pronounce this as “ree-la-tor”. Perhaps it’s because a realtor handles real estate?
- “jewelry” This one comes out of some people’s mouths as “joo-ler-ee”.
- “February” Why do we need that first “r” anyway?
- “Wednesday” Okay, I have to admit no one at all bothers with the “d”…should they?
There are so many more…asterisk, espresso, et cetera. (Yes, people mispronounce that last one.)
Well, you get the idea. Language is ever-evolving, and, alas, common usage wins out in the end.
October 4th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
It’s like how American’s incorrectly spell colour, honour, doughnut and so for, but think it is okay. It won’t be long before their insular society has their own language altogether.
October 4th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Some mispronunciations used to be a real shibboleth in the UK, and I’m sure that’s true in most countries.
One example was “eether” (vulgar) rather then “eyether” (refined) for “either”, until in the 60s Princess Anne outraged the upper classes by pronouncing it “eether” in a notorious TV interview. Also “REEsearch” used to be considered a bit non-U and should be “reSEARCH”, and likewise “forred” instead of “fourhead” for “forehead”. But then in everyday speech 100 years ago it was considered vulgar to use the word “mirror” instead of “looking glass”. So customs change.
Names are another example “Barkley” instead of “Burkley” for “Berkeley” (although Yanks are absolved from that as they all say “Burkley”!), “Chumley” for “Cholmondley”, etc. Some names are plain silly, like “Fanshaw” for “Featherstonehaugh”.
G W Shrub’s “nucular” is a bit irritating, as one assumes it would be so easy for him to fix it. But the verbal tic that gets right up my nose is public speakers, especially politicians, putting a bizarre emphasis on insignificant words like prepositions. I guess it may be a technique to give them a fraction of a second longer to think what they are saying, without having to um end er; but I suspect there’s also an element of deceit and in a sense perhaps subconsciously they are trying to draw attention away from their weasel words!
October 4th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I heartily agree with John on this one. When our president mentions ‘nucular’ proliferation in regards to North Korea, Iran or (in the past) Iraq, why doesn’t someone pull him aside and coach him on the correct pronunciation? Even for the ‘leader of the free world’, it does bring his overall message down a notch. I thought Palin was to be an agent for change, you betcha!
October 4th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
As a Brit, I tend to get pretty annoyed when an American talks about “Wimbleton” for which there is no excuse (especially sportscasters who should know better — Stuart Scott used to do it *every* time when he first started on ESPN). And I have given up on the possibility that any American I meet can come close to pronouncing Warwick (the place, not the singer) correctly.
On the other hand, my northern English (Yorkshire) pronunciation of garage–”garidge”–is enough to solicit amusement among(st) my Texan friends, and I have just about given up being able to pronounce the name Jared to their satisfaction. Even with my own surname — plain old boring “Walker” — I have had to remove the “l” from the pronunciation in order not to have to repeat myself every time I say it.
October 4th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Oh, and if you ever have the pleasure of meeting Ralph Feinnes, be very, very careful what you call him
October 4th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart
October 4th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
The view given at dictionary.reference.com is interesting: The idea is that words like circular, particular, vascular, molecular, muscular, etc., are fairly common, and thus promote this mispronunciation by analogy.
I think the reason that the “nucular” gaff is particularly annoying for me is because we’re talking about weapons that can, in the blink of an eye, kill millions of people and unleash more destructive power from a single warhead than was used in all the bombs dropped in all the theaters of WWII. Is it really so much to ask that people who may someday have this kind of power learn to, at minimum, pronounce the word correctly?
October 4th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I must say I am a language snob. I went through a great deal of effort to lose the less-educated language patterns of my Pennsylvania Dutch roots and now I cannot stand to hear any of the examples you mentioned above (except Wednesday – it’s been “Wensday” from every mouth I’ve ever heard) as well as many others.
Even the common pronunciation of “kilometer” bothers me. The proper way is “KILL-oh-MEE-ter” not “kil-LOM-eh-ter.” Accents on the second syllable are reserved (in this case) for devices for measuring things (e.g., barometer, thermometer). “Kilometer” is a measurement (just like centimeter and millimeter) and the prefix gets its own first accent separate from the root word. Alas, I am in the minority for ever getting that one corrected, however. Spread the word, though, if you care.
Unfortunately, I considered Palin’s debate a failure as soon as the first “nucular” left her mouth. (The other colloquialisms didn’t sit well with me, either, and let’s not even go to the high school-ish “shout out”!) In the interest of disclosure, though, I was only watching because I expected it to be a train wreck. (She did much better than I expected, but that’s not the same as a “win.”)
October 4th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
There are a number of forces which change the English language, which in the US might as well be called the American language. In India something of the form of Hinglish is taking shape. One force has been immigration where grammatical usages from other languages intertwine with English. This has lead to a what I see as some form of grammatical entropy. In more recent times popular commercialized culture has come into play. With hip-hop “culture” the English language, or some subset thereof, is morphing into something almost unrecognizable as the English T. Jefferson or King George III used.
Lawrence B. Crowell
October 4th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I watched Palin’s abuse of the language in the VP debate with total disbelief. She was behaving like a hooker on Main Street with the facial tics, winks and come-ons of the “you betcha” and “heckuvva” etc variety. It was almost a parody of something from the days of Roy Rogers. Not being American I can’t be 100% sure … but surely to God the average American anywhere in the Union doesn’t easily relate to this lingo in 2008, outside some old dude in a rocker who fondly remembers Annie Oakly. It was farcical in the extreme.
More generally … being in Canada, I’m torn between Brit and American spelling of certain words. I often pause on “defense” and think I should really be typing “defence” … since the latter was drummed into me in a UK school. There is also “labor” and the Brit “labour.” As for “nucular” … it’s almost as bad as Bush’s pronunciation of Iraq … written with his phonetic cues it comes out sort of as “Eye-rack.”
October 4th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Edward Teller, also known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, said “nucular.”
Source: “Physics For Future Presidents” by Professor Richard A. Muller
October 4th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Another one that makes me cringe: “athlete” pronounced “ath-a-leet”.
October 4th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Oh, and the one that is always mispronounced in particle physics circles: quark!
(It should rhyme with “Muster Mark”, sadly it rarely does)
October 4th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Amusingly, I wrote a different post about the same thing with the same title.
I love it when this happens, especially when the other article is good.
October 4th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
To sum it up, because plugging yourself without doing that is evil: while ‘nucular’ is a legitimate feature of dialect (Carter, who would know better if it wasn’t, used it), it’s not one native to anywhere Palin ever lived anywhere near. She’s a newscaster; while she gets caught flatfooted by complicated questions about society because she holds it in prom-queenish contempt, she’s not an idiot and she can pronounce basic words. She’s acting like an idiot because that’s what she thinks we’re like. Palin thinks that, because you pronounce it ‘nucular’, you are obviously an idiot and she needs to prove she’s as stupid or stupider than you, you fucking mouth-breathing real American retard.
October 4th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
If word’s like colorless is good enough for Chomskys use its good enough for I.
Seriously, the perfidious argie-sympathizing Webster pap is so nineteenth century. It might behoove you to learn that relatively few of his ridiculous usages are still in common parlance (primarily those, like -our, that imply something the sound shift has since made incorrect) and that the rest are a natural feature of English usage here. Fixating luftrativelye on ye originalle Spellinges & Ufages of ye Language wille withal make a Foole of Thee.
I’d strongly advise learning the grammar a little better – it kind of undercuts prescriptivist duck-speak – and further that pretty much every bit of British slang, from U to non-U to those who cannot buy a vowel at all, sounds like it’s custom-designed to seduce toddlers. You finish that butty with spotted dick in, I’ve got sweeties in me caravan.
October 4th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
She’s got the winking, blinking and grinning down pat, but I actually thought she was working at mispronouncing nu-cu-lar. I’m a Texan, and I’ve heard tapes of Bush speaking before Rove got ahold of him and made him the folksy guy we elected president. His speech was faster, he pronounced his final g’s, and he could say nu-cle-ar. Droppin’ g’s ‘n sayin’ nucular is part of a schtick he developed to appeal to a certain segment of voters, who apparently have never wondered why he sounds like a hick and his parents don’t. Gosh darn it, I think Palin’s got the same thing goin’, ya know, with the nu-cu-lar thing.
October 4th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I completely agree with those who emphasize that correct rather than common usage should be favored. Please check my website http://www.language-back-in-time.com and sign my petition: children in this generation should be taught to speak and write like people more correctly did in 1900. In the following generation we will move closer to correct speech by going back to 1800. In a few short generations we will be getting much closer to true, correct grammar, eliminating this ridiculous “modern English” for the honorable and right speech of Chaucer. With will and effort we shall thereafter be able to speak like our ancestors the Angles and Saxons. All change in language is bad and must be undone as rapidly as possible.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
language snob, I am assuming/hoping your post was meant as sarcasm. My intent above was to suggest that words should be pronounced as they are spelled and taught today, in our lifetimes, in our current dictionaries. I am not advocating shifting back to 1900, 1700, or even 4000 B.C. Language drift can happen, usually in a multi-generational fashion, because of general changes in the usage of words, yes. It can also happen – much more quickly – due to a lapse in education. Here in America, the so-called “greatest nation in the world” (just ask any politician, including all four of the folks big in the news just now), there is no (good) excuse for it. However, we’re starting to pronounce American English (to differentiate from British English) worse than anyone else in the world.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
My favorite is “bidness” (for business), which we often hear in Texas.
The science persons who follow this blog should note that on the topic of Global Warming, it was Sarah Palin who got it right and Joe Biden who got it wrong. Palin said that there are both natural and man made components to global warming. That is correct. Biden said that all global warming is caused by humans. That is wrong. In practice, it is very difficult to sort out the relative contributions of the two components.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Actually, “joo-ler-ee” is valid in some places. In UK english, it’s spelled “Jewellery”, so you can’t argue people saying “joo-ler-ee”.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:02 am
I was going to make the same point as Freiddie. In Ireland we say “JOO-ler-ee” because of the British spelling. “JOO-ler-ee” is the way I hear it most often, but I also hear “JOO-el-ler-ee”. Oddly, some of my American friends from the South pronounce it like me.
On a related note, people regularly compare my cadence and turn of phrase to rural ones encountered in the South. Is that because of the Scots-Irish influence there?
October 5th, 2008 at 12:41 am
The only constant in the history of language is that it is always changing in many ways. And this change has always caused many people to decry the downfall of the language.
Saying things like “unfortunately, common usage works out” is misleading, since language is nothing more than the common usage. And really, the overall trend has been towards simplification, which should help improve ease of use and communication.
Pronunciation has actually changed more in the UK than it has in America since the 1800s, so early Americans (as well as the British of the same period) sounded more like someone from the modern American Midwest than someone from modern London. In addition, there is greater regional variation in Britain than the US. So the myth of superior British pronunciation is just that.
As for the obligatory shot at hip-hop culture (which is as viable a sub-culture as any other): Subcultures have always been a source of language innovation that often migrates to the culture at large. There are a variety of reasons for this language innovation, but one of them is the desire to identify the in-group and be unintelligible to the out-group. Of course, the language will eventually leak across the boundary between the groups, leading to things like Palin’s use of “shout-out.”
October 5th, 2008 at 3:15 am
what gets me is “flourine” and “flouride” instead of fluorine and fluoride
October 5th, 2008 at 4:37 am
There are tons of folks I know who (could) say “nucular”. They can all relate to Palin, and they all can vote. Condescending them is probably not the way to help Obama.
October 5th, 2008 at 6:22 am
But what are your feelings on “moist”?
LanguageLog has plenty of discussion of these (silly) s(h)ibboleths. As it happens Latin had free variation between nucleus and nuculeus meaning “nut” (the edible bit inside the shell) as I understand it. (Sorry for the lack of lengthmarks.)
October 5th, 2008 at 7:35 am
On the joo-el-ree thing. Depends where you’re from in Ireland. The southern brogue would tend toward joo-el-ree … however the more brutal Belfast accent from say the Shankill or Falls Road would enunciate more along the lines of ‘joolray’ – more compact with a tweak on the “ray.” Joo-el-ree might sound too dangerously gender ambivalent.
The English spoken in the north of Ireland can be very bizarre to foreign ears, and most Americans would have difficulty following a good deal of it. When I had a friend over from Canada she couldn’t understand what guys were saying when they made a sideways flicking motion of the head and said “bout ye.” This is a greeting you hear from time to time … simply “about you” … or “how are you doing?”
October 5th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Could aneyone please explain what Joe Biden ment by this statement from the VP debate:
When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.
?????????????
October 5th, 2008 at 8:44 am
#3 ‘100 years ago it was considered vulgar to use the word “mirror”‘
Actually, that’s a word that Americans almost UNIVERSALLY mispronounce.
It almost always comes out something like “Meer” (as in the painter from Delft)
I think ‘Nucular’ is a bit more than a question of pronounciation, more a inability to articulate the *cl* between those two particular vowels.
I actually heard someone using it on a TV science program(me) recently. Yes, it makes me cringe…..
October 5th, 2008 at 8:47 am
..whereas ‘a inability’ is just a lazy typo!
October 5th, 2008 at 9:22 am
What gets me is politicians saying Missoura when they’re looking for votes from there. Sure, some folks pronounce it Missoura – my grandmother did. But she said Missisippa and Miama as well, and I bet these politicians wouldn’t be caught dead pronouncing those places that way.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:15 am
The one that always gets me is that people who drop the final ‘t’ from “breakfast” will also make the plural as if the word ended in ’s’. So they’ll say “breakfasses” instead of “breakfasts.”
For Ben (comment #1), is that similar to the way Brits mispronounce “mall,” so it *doesn’t* rhyme with “wall,” “tall,” or “ball?”
-pfd
http://www.ideasgreatanddumb.com
October 5th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Here are my peeves (which I’ve seen argued, but > I < am right):
MYRIAD – it’s not “a myriad of choices” – it’s “myriad choices”.
DATA – it’s not “daaaata”, it’s “DAY-ta”.
I very lightly pronounce the d in Wednesday. Try it. The d sort of rolls right into the n.
I also hear the r in February. It’s light, but it’s there.
October 5th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Hey alec, great minds think alike! I had not seen your post (honest!). Watch your language…
I think, Maria_M, that what Joe Biden meant goes back to 2005:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62296-2005Mar1.html
We all know what happened after that.
There was a lot in the VP debate that was spoken in shorthand due to the time constraints.
October 5th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
When I first arrived in the states almost 9 years ago in University of Chicago, I was subject to an English Language Test to judge my proficiency. If I fail, I would have to take a special course in English.
The Test is basically an interview : someone from the ESL dept comes over and have a chat with me over coffee. It was scheduled for an hour. So we met, and she asked me to introduce myself and describe why I want to come to U of C. After 3 or 4 minutes into a monologue (i.e. I did most of the talking), she stopped me and said “Ok, you are fine. Interview’s over. You speak excellent English. There is only one thing that I would make a comment on : you pronounced ‘The’ as ‘Da’.”
9 years later, I still do that. I can’t get rid of a speech habit. It’s not that I can’t flick my tongue : I say “Thanks”, not “Danks”. So there.
October 5th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Regional variations in pronunciation don’t bother me. What I object to is the tendency of words with very specific meanings to be worn out and ruined by promiscuous overuse. I’m thinking of “unique,” “paradigm,” “deconstruction,” and “begging the question,” each of which were once useful words or phrases. Of course, if substitutes appeared to replace such terms, it wouldn’t be so bad. In the case of “begging the question” and some of the others, however, the adulteration of the expression seems to have led to a general unfamiliarity with the concept.
I don’t waste my snobbish impulses on newcular.
October 5th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Nucular..
Love your blog and always look forward to your posts.
I’d have to offer however, you might consider sticking to the cosmology and leave the politics to others.. your disparaging comments are heavy handed and elistist, and I am disappionted. They reflect poorly on a person whom I would have thought to have a broader and more accomidating view of his fellows, this considering your credentials. Ah well.
Regards, Meaux
October 5th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Seriously, guys? This is dumb. It’s just a different dialect, that’s all; it doesn’t mean anything about their intelligence or education.
I was fortunate enough to be born into a Standard American English speaking household, so I sound “educated” natively. However, there’s no reason, a priori, why my dialect should sound educated. And don’t even try to single out “nuclear” as one word that ought to be pronounced according to its spelling when you have no problem with the myriad other English words that don’t follow their spelling at all.
So stop being so bigoted. It sounds “uneducated” to you just because you associate that dialect with uneducated people; not because it IS uneducated in any way.
October 5th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
If Palin were black, John’s blog posting and 95% of the comments above would appear appallingly racist.
October 5th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Well it’s only in America that jewellery’s spelt missing a syllable. Maybe people pronounce it phonetically?
A few weeks ago I was at a ceremony where a mathematician giving a speech could never pronounce “statistics”. He always managed to drop a ‘t’ or two. Although I have no idea how “nucular” can possibly come about….
October 5th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Just to point out, apparently the pronunciation was used by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who used a nucular weapon. Jimmy Carter (who had a degree in physics) also pronounced the word pretty poorly.
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/nucular.html
October 5th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
So, in other words, it’s not really fair to pick on Palin when the pronunciation is (actually) pretty common.
You could just as well pick on Obama for saying “They’re gonna tell you I have a funny name…” instead of “They’re going to tell you that I have a funny name…”
October 6th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Right ON to Alec !
Yes, embarassingly enough, Jimmy Carter, a trained nuclear engineer, repeatedly `southernized’ the pronunciation a`la W’s version…”nukeyahla”. Oh course he also referred to `Bani Sadr’ as “Bonny Soddah”…
Lets face it, its America, and the use of proper spoken or written English immediately labels one as `elitist’.
Particularly irritating to me, are many of the national sports announcers, who cannot summon the muscular control of the tongue & vocal chords to enunciate the `g’ in `strength’, and let it go out as `strenth’, or `athaletic’,
or `good’ instead of `well’. This is OK for hicks, but not for someone with a college degree, drawing a 6-figure salary to speak to ten million-plus people !!!
Why does’nt someone fire these jokers ???
October 6th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Too bad the UN doesn’t fund a project to send a few thousand ‘enry ‘iggenses to the USA to improve our accents, thereby making us as intelligent as the English. (Yes, I said “English” as opposed to “United Kingdomish”.)
If you want to hear some annoying voices and accents, listen to the BBC. This morning I heard “marathun”, “millitree”, “Febbery”, a glottal stop in “football”, and and a woman pronouncing “you” as something like “yee”. All this from obviously native speakers.
To mac, the Canadian: a lot you’ve got to holler about talking funny. Canada, the land where “about” comes out “aboot”. Listen to CBC presenters discuss “jawbs”, “dawlers”, and “hawkey” for a while and then tell me how dumb Americans sound, eh?
October 6th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Someone mentioned Language Log already, but they actually posted about Pinker’s article about this. I think their explanation is better than Pinker’s.
And personally, I pronounce all of the days of the week, not just Woden’s Day, in true and accurate ways to honor the all-father and the other deities who reign over Midgaard.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:22 am
PFD Studio @ 32: I’ve never been to the UK, so I wouldn’t know for sure. From my memories from Doctor Who and A Brief Encounter, I don’t remember any issues with the pronounciation of “mall.”
October 9th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
My (English) Condensed Matter lecturer in the 3rd year of my Physics degree always said “nucular”. I don’t know if any students ever mentioned it to him…
October 11th, 2008 at 11:17 am
It doesn’t matter how it’s pronounced as long as other people can understand it. Of course spellings can matter in cases like the Labour Party in England, but I still will spell the word labor when not referring to a proper noun.