Comments on: The Nucular Option

By: Cider

Cider — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:17:54 +0000

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.

By: Various

Various — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:08:17 +0000

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…

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:22:35 +0000

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."

By: greg

greg — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:39:22 +0000

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.

By: Person of Choler

Person of Choler — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:46:21 +0000

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?

By: Jimbo

Jimbo — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:10:01 +0000

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 ???

By: JustAnotherGradStudent

JustAnotherGradStudent — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:02:44 +0000

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…”

By: JustAnotherGradStudent

JustAnotherGradStudent — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:00:09 +0000

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

By: bonnie

bonnie — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:45:26 +0000

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….

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:02:21 +0000

If Palin were black, John’s blog posting and 95% of the comments above would appear appallingly racist.