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The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!
The word is not “preg-net.” The word is “preg-NANT.” “-NANT.” When you pronounce it “pregnet,” you sound like a five-year-old. Stop it.
The fact that it’s 90210 reruns of the Jackie-and-Mel-spawn era that drew my ire on this topic is rather pathetic, but I ain’t wrong.
I’ve (re-)discovered a few things over the course of the recent Days Of Rage. Some of them are great!
I found it while researching a murder (…this is a sentence I have more frequent use for than most), the true story of a neighborhood legend from my childhood. I grew up in a leafy, …
As much as the unintentional mispronunciations give me the heebee-jeebies, I have NO room to talk, and neither does my sister. We can reduce our mother to tears of laughter by confidently spouting out some word we’ve read a million times but never QUITE learned how to pronounce:
You reBEL against an injustice. You don’t REBel against it.
You don’t pronounce macabre “Mac-a-bray.”
Usurp. It’s apparently not “upspur.” (no excuse, I know.)
Ooo, and I HATE that you don’t take a brief “re-SPITE.” RES-pit doesn’t sound right at ALL to me….
“bolth” for “both”
I do this. Embarrassing but true.
I actually screamed once at the end of Antiques Roadshow when the voiceover guy said that DVDs and *PRIMMER* books were available. There’s only one M in “primer”, dammit! PRY-MER! PBS is supposed to be more correct and intellectual than me at all times! Otherwise my childhood was a sham.
“Supposably” makes me want to strangle people! I have a friend that works in a department store in the “jury” (jewelry) department, of course, she also used to call me “Shawn-in”. Last week, on my vanpool, someone was talking about “Ethiothians” (Ethiopians).
ET cetera people, not ECK cetera. That’s why it’s written etc. Everyone in my office does this and it makes me want to get up in staff meetings and stab them all to death with my pen.
And my mother doesn’t use the word “brought.” She makes “bought” do double duty. No idea why.
Slightly off-topic . . . My dad does malapropisms like nobody’s business. He once told my mom and me a story about two men having a heated argument where he worked: “Suddenly Bob turned around and started screaming epitaphs at him!”
He, of course, meant epiTHETS.
To this day, when I’m in the car with my mom and some jerk cuts me off, I will invariably yell: REST IN PEACE, A**HOLE! Cracks us up every time.
Ahem. As you were.
My big pet peeve is the misuse of climatic/climactic. One has to do with the weather…and the other doesn’t.
I have a good one that I never heard until a month ago, and since then I’ve heard it at least three times: “The problem was exasperated.” NO! NO IT WASN’T! IT WAS EXACERBATED! GAHHHHH!
My pet peeve is people making dialect variation or normal English pronunciations that don’t match spelling (February, comfortable) into their pet peeves. Hardly anyone says “fifth” with all the final fricatives. Sixths, anyone? It’s perfectly normal elision to drop the odd /fth/ and /sths/ sequences down to something more manageable.
Not everything in English is spelled the way it’s pronounced. And that includes “often”. It was originally “offen”. “Of-ten” is a spelling pronunciation. So is Feb-ru-ary. There’s a flap in “water” which is different from both /t/ and /d/ phonetically (so it’s true there is no /d/ in it, but also, there is no /t/ in it).
As the illustrious Language Log often points out, our profession has done a terrible job of educating people on this stuff.
When I’m off duty as a linguist some of these things do drive me crazy, but it’s nice to understand where they come from and which ones are annoying idiosyncrasies and which ones have some rationale behind them as regionalisms, dialectal variants (even the oft-hated “aks” is dialectal), and normal pronunciations not matched by spelling.
I love my best friend dearly, but it’s milk not melk. There is no e anywhere in that word. And count me in on the warsh/wash hate. My third grade teacher drove me batty with that one.
Whenever I’m arguing online with someone (a favourite hobby!) and they state that something is “just my opion” – meaning opinion – then my heart sinks, because I just KNOW trying to argue rationally will be about as successful as nailing custard to a wall!
I understand that there are regional differences in pronunciation; I embrace those. If we all spoke newscaster English, it wouldn’t be any fun. “Yinz,” “might could,” all those variations are valuable and give you a sense of how big and broad the country is. See my entry re: Mailer from a few weeks ago; he was an expert at tuning those variations in the third person so the reader can tell who the subject is.
But *with all that said*, certain pronunciations are bothersome to me regardless, and “preg-net” is one of those. It’s not folksy, it’s not flavorful; it sounds babyish. Someone axes me for a glass of wudder, that’s fine. “We’re pregnet!” = nails on a chalkboard. (And “we” ain’t anything, mister, but I’ve covered that elsewhere.)
After a year in the south, the two that still get me are the words ‘guillotine’ and ‘mezzanine’. People down here pronounce them ‘gilloteen’ and ‘mezzaleen’. I can understand them pronunciation of ‘guillotine’ (even though it irks me when they say the L’s, but seriously….mezzaleen??? Where the hell did the L come from?!
@ Irish: Your “mute/moot” point peeve reminds me of that great line of Joey’s: “This is all a moo point. Yeah, it’s like a cow’s opinion. It just doesn’t matter, it’s moo.” Hee.
@Llyzabeth: I want the word “adamant” to be pronounced “a-DAY-mant.” It sounds so much more…well, adamant!
I also thought lapels were “LAY-puls” for a long time. heh.
From me and my fellow DVMs – it’s veterinarian, NOT VETRANARIAN.
OMG, I think I cracked a rib laughing at Shotrock’s story!
@Jen – I thought of Joey too, with the “supposably” (“Did they go to the zoo? Supposably.”)
I think I do one – ancient. I say it ANK-shent. My daughter wants to know where I found that second “c”…
Dad used to say “deef and doom” for “deaf and dumb” and your teeth are in your “gooms” – I suspect that’s a regional AND generational thing, all his old buddies did it too, but none of us kids picked that one up. Whew.
“Pregnet” for “pregnant” is probably the most irritating example, but it’s not the only case where a word ending in “-ant” gets kind of elided into a “-et” or “-ate” ending. Drives me absolutely bonkers! (Does it seem more common in Southern California/Hollywood than other places? I can’t tell.) Of course, I can’t think of any other examples right. But there are some, boy oh boy!
I can’t help wondering if Mischa Barton’s mangling of “pregnant” into “prugnunt” was a reflection of some distaste for the whole idea. Maybe it was an acting choice for the Marissa character, but probably she just found the whole thing repugnant – if not repugnate. (Hah!)
My post-9/11 peeve: “terra attacks”.
Is ‘terror’ really so difficult to pronounce?
@krissa: Much like you, I have my own preferences. Until I was 11, I thought “bedraggled” was bed-raggled. To me, that brought a visual to mind that was totally accurate as to the meaning of the word – like you’d just gotten out of bed.
L.H., I am under the (somewhat vague) impression that “primmer” is a starter book and “prymer” is a base coat – both spelled ‘primer’.
It’s sherBET, not sherBERT. That one makes me cringe.
“Premise” for “premises.” One is a statement on which to base an argument, the other is a property or piece of land. Working in property insurance, I get this all the time. It never fails to bug.
There are others, but they generally fall into the mealy mouthed corporate-speak genre of irritations, and while I could really get a good screed going about that, this is not the post for it.
@Alexis: i think i love you, even though i say “of-ten.”
@Smash: the lazy switcheroos and drops kill me as well, even though i’m my own worst example. as i grew up in WASP central (orange county, CA) and rarely saw the word written, i thought until i was 18 that one was supposed to say “JELL-fight” fish.
Years ago, I took a biology course with a professor who could not pronounce “nuclear.” It was Cell Biology. There are a lot of nuclei and nuclear structures in Cell Biology. And every single one of them was “nuke-u-lar” to him.
It was a very, VERY long semester…
The Boy talks about “pellows,” “melk,” and “samwiches.” I try to ignore it. We’re in Alberta – there’s no specific regional accent like you find in the Eastern provinces, but there’s a few subtle patterns you can hear sometimes. “I” flattened into “e” isn’t unusual, and people drop syllables and soften middle consonants all the time.
@smartyboots: Beware the tare-ists!
This is a very specific example, stimulated (unfortunately) by the TWOP Survivor board: people spelling Parvati’s name “Pavarti”. Any time I see that, I think cheese. And while there are, no doubt, many similarities between Ms Shallow & holey cheese, getting fussed about this misspelling makes me spend more mental time on that twit than I would really prefer. Plus it’s an insult to the cheese.
Otherwise, jewellery pronounced as “jew-lery” or, even worse, “jool-ry”. I recognize that the second is often accent/dialect, but more people mis-pronounce it than have recourse to that excuse. Please, pronounce as spelled – it’s not hard.
My pet peeve is when people make the fact that other people have pet peeves into their pet peeves (and I’m in linguistics too, so don’t give me that).
Unfortunately, I really can’t talk about mispronunciations because it never quite stuck for me that certain words in English are not pronounced the way they look to me (“lyrics,” for instance, I will say as “LIE-ricks,” not “LEER-icks,” if I’m not thinking about it). Throwback from learning to read early but talking late? Laziness? Electrical miscommunication? ALIENS? It is a mystery! Either way, I’m with Llyzabeth.
HOWEVER! I am also apparently a hypocrite, because I have a couple of these myself (and, for what it’s worth, a former professor of mine – and well-respected linguist – has said that most people do and linguists are no different, but the trick is recognising that they are pet peeves). Stuff like, for example:
– “I seen” (regional dialect, but still makes me twitch a little)
– “Just assume” (when “just as soon” is intended)
– “Ro-tiss-er-ARY” (When I wore a younger (wo)man’s clothes, I worked in the service department at Meijer’s, a midwestern chain of stores that I suppose would be comparable to WalMart in design, selection of products, and treatment of employees. Heh. Anyway, one of the women in the deli would make announcements promoting the rotisserie chicken every half-hour or so, and you could just feel everyone in the store cringing every time.)
– I think this is more a writing thing than a spoken thing, but “should/would of” instead of “should/would have (should/would’ve).”
I hate to admit it, but certain accents/dialects also… for lack of a better word, hurt my ears. I’m not going to name which ones because I don’t want to offend those who happen to speak with/use them and because I think those accents/dialects are just as valuable as any other – it just happens that they also sometimes set my teeth on edge.
I work at a library… and the woman who answers the phone has worked here for going on 30 years. She STILL pronouces it “liberry”
…”Liberry, this is Joe-blow, how may I help you?”
Also, “suposebly” gets to me too. I used to work with a girl who said “suposevly” which irked me even more!
One thing I hear all the time now, which just immediately makes the speaker sound like a total moron is the unnecessary pause in words. I’m going to climb a moun-an. I’m drinking from a foun-an. What, exactly, is your objection to the letter ‘t’ people?? Is this a California thing? I grew up in ‘ull’ (oil) country, where people have a lot of weird vocal ticks, but this one drives me bazoo.
Oh wait, my least favorite is “acrosst.” ACROSST. Where did that “t” come from?? Or maybe it’s “across’d.” I have no idea. All I know is, across ends in an S. Across, it’s across!
True confession: I totally thought that respite, was pronounced the same as despite well into my mid twenties. I think I actually went so far as to lose money on a bet there.
After reading through this list and seeing just how many of these I unintentionally mispronounce (realtor, cabinet, comfortable, probably and other non-dialect affected words) I think it’s time for me to admit that I have no concept of correct pronunciation. I’m okay with this and thankfully my wife is as well, but I hereby renounce my ability to complain about: axe (ask), melk (milk), but oooh warsh (wash) and fer (for) are tough to swallow.
One that I really, really don’t get is JAG-WIRE for “jaguar.” If you’re American, it’s JAG-WAR. If you’re British, it’s JAG-U-UH (at least according to the commercials). I will never know why legions of morons feel the need to make a “wire” sound at the end.
A local chain of strip clubs runs radio spots constantly, and until I saw a billboard for them, I honestly believed the place was called “Jagwire’s Gold Club.” I wonder how those poor stripper-job-seekers ever find the place in the Yellow Pages!
@Claudia: That’s called a glottal stop, I believe. Fairly standard feature of NYC-area spoken English.
See… I love dialects… I think that anything that can be attributed to region or upbringing is just completely interesting to me.
However – blatant disrespect for how a word is spelled drives me nuts – “axed” instead of “asked” is probably my biggest issue…
I, however, am guilty of “aygg” instead of “eg” for egg…. but i think i’m a pirate…
so, none of us are perfect and we all screw up words – i like to use “suposebly” for fun… and the worst – i say “crick” just to piss my mother off – “it’s creek, it rhymes with week” “It’s crick, it rhymes with hick”… hehe… drives her nuts…
@Claudia: californians are more likely to drop a consonant at the end of a word.
One more, sorry:
Empathetic/empathic. They are not the same. No, they are not. No, really — they’re not. And neither is a synonym for “sympathetic.” You don’t “feel empathetic” toward a friend’s problems, you aren’t “empathetic” when you are feeling someone else’s feelings, and you aren’t “empathic” when you feel empathetic. Different situations (although I will allow that they’re all gradations of, essentially, the same thing), different usage.
As a result of a previous, similar discussion here, I now pronounce “Chipotle” as “Chipoodle” because I think it’s hilarious. It irritates my boyfriend, I suspect, but he pronounces “drawer” as “drah” (he’s a Massachusetts boy), so he has no room to talk.
Also, after years of living in NJ, I adapted to “Trenton” as “Tre’n”, so now that I live in Denton, Texas, I pronounce it “De’n”, and I may well be the only person who who calls it that. There’s a town down the road called Newark, which I’ve been told actually has two syllables and a W in it. Weird.
@smartyboots: I agree about primer. I was taught the difference between the book and the paint pronunciation (NOT “proNOUNciation”) in a junior high writing class.
I chalk up most mispronunciations to regional accents. I love that the diversity of American english is still here even after decades of TV.
How do y’all pronounce “folk”? with the ell or no? My Chicagoan classmates at guitar school all sound the ell, but I don’t (I’m southern). For me it’s “foke music” or more likely “fo-ak”. Long live the tripthong!
I can’t seem to stay away from this subject!
Thought of another….when our prez says “American” it sounds like “Merkin” and I crack up.
“My fellow Merkins” – heh.
Go look up what a merkin is so you can laugh too.
@Claudia – Sars is right, it’s a glottal stop. Your examples only bother me personally when someone sings them, but I don’t mind them whn spoken.
So, in your throat? you have a larynx and a pharynx. They are not, no matter how many times you hear it, pronounced “lair-nix” or “fair-nix.” One of my vocal technique professors mispronounced these and it still makes my left eye twitch to just think about it.
@Ashley (waaaay up there): I work with a guy who pronounces it “MassaTOOsetts”. He has no idea he’s saying it wrong, and I am not about to correct him. Funny thing is, dude used to live there, so he talks about the place all the time. Hee!
My biggest pet peeve arose when I was in college in central New York state. EX-spesh-ly. NO. BEGel. Again, no.
I now live in the mid-west and still titter at the fact that my boyfriend, at times, says “crick” and “warsh” instead of “creek” and “wash”.
I had an English teacher once that said crispy as “cripsey.”
AN ENGLISH TEACHER.
She definitely meant crispy, too, like she’d write it that way on the blackboard, or read it from the textbook. It gave me ulcers.
Oh shit. I say foun’an and moun’an. I never realized it. And I AM an eliist snob from California, who thought it was those middle states that got everything wrong. How embarassing. In my defense, it’s harder to say with the ‘t’. It’s like a roadblock right in the middle of the word. I also say “the 405” and “the 101” instead of “I-405”, which I’m told the rest of the country doesn’t do. I think it’s because we drive on more freeways than everybody else. I also have a friend from Alabama who always says “VUNerable, like it rhymes with ‘fun’. You wouldn’t think it would come up very often, but she uses the word alot! And I can’t make fun of her because she’s, well, you know…
I feel a little guilty about putting this out there, but a friend was once whispering to me about her super exciting “triste” (tryst) over the weekend…. I started giggling. I’m immature.
I have a different friend who was a high school teacher in the deep south. When one of his students would say, “Mr. Smith, can I ax you something?” he’d say “No! Please don’t ax me!” He claims not one of them got it. I think people can’t hear their own regional dialects. I’m a native Californian and am guilty of pronouncing tin/ten, pin/pen almost indistinguishably, which I never notice until someone from New York can’t figure out what I’m talking about.
Krissa,
How do you pronounce them? I’ve heard DOCTORS say “lair-nix” and “fair-nix.”
Here in Arkansas, my in-laws say “ast” for “ask” and “cysk” for “cyst.” I’ve given up wondering why.
I don’t mind a little verbal laziness or colloquial pronunciations, personally. I elide the first ‘r’ in February because it’s just easier to say. I’ll also commit the glottal stop for ‘t’ in the middle of a word.
IMHO, getting too bunched up about it is like expecting people to say Wed-nes-day instead of “wensday” (or wensdy, or winsdy). That’s the fun and fluidity of the spoken language. What bugs the heck out of me is when it starts permeating back into the written word. ARGH!
Also, Lisa, larynx and pharynx are properly pronounced “LAIR-inks” and “FAIR-inks”
@Lisa,
I’m not Krissa, but I’d have to go with “lair-inx” and “fair-inx”.
@Ryan,
Even the rest of the state doesn’t share “The 405”. It’s largely (exclusively?) a Southern California thing.
Local TV/radio people are forever pronouncing “infrared” as “inFRAIRed”, with two syllables. If there were any justice, they’d immediately be afflicted with a crippling anal itch, but there apparently ISN’T any justice.