Aural ouch

Midweek Mélange

Ubiquitous unattributed internet image

Welcome to the middle of the week!

In my incarnation as a verbihund and verbivore, I reserve the right to wax perfectly crabby when the language is rudely trounced.

I celebrate the existence of English is an ever-emerging language, which is why it is so intriguing and dynamic! Although a staunch prescriptivist I am not, even I have limits. So, today I offer a list of words whose pronunciation in both American and British English I have heard blighted and debased by the not-necessarily mal-educated; in fact, some offenders come from public television and radio, otherwise well-spoken audio book narrators, and people who generally ought to know better—meaning it is their job¹ to get these things right. Others are simply people in positions of responsibility.*

There is a section at the nether end of the list dealing with cacophonous attempts at words and phrases of French origin which are so commonly used, I feel justified calling attention to their aural slaughter. I aim to be not a snob but a setter (an English Setter) of some kind of Standard, below which we do not really need to demean either our efforts or our lingual souls. In an age when anyone with a phone can instantly hear how to pronounce a common word, I have no compunctions about this critique.

As a colleague at a university once gnashedly hissed at me concerning the Latin phrase I used under my email signature: “Am I supposed to know what that means?” to which I replied, “Only if you can spell ‘Google.’ Otherwise, I am happy to translate it for you.”

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• aesthetics - estetics

  • Funny, the same people manage to say athletics, not atletics, so I know they can say the “th” sound. Pathetic.

• especially - expecially

  • Just no. And also not “specially” in lieu thereof

  • See the word for very strong coffee below; can we have a prisoner exchange?

• vulnerable - vunerable

  • I will freaking BUY a letter “L” if they promise to use it.

• frustrated - fustrated

  • Oh, yes, I am, very much so.

  • Same offer to purchase a letter, in this case an extra “R”

• espresso - expresso

  • see “especially” above

• petted - pet

I am not sure when and why this kind of sentence slithered into our speech:

“Some cats don’t like to be pet.”

Hello? Do you mean they don’t want to BE pets anymore? Or that they don’t want you to put your ignorant hands all over their intelligent coats? I don’t blame them.

And what happened to poor Ted? Nope, only pet. Just chopped -ted right off the word.

And some pretty public people decided that dogs like to be pet on their chests. What a dog is going to do with a pet on his chest, I have no clue. And it would look very odd.

Seriously. Kate want scream, bang spoon on shiny pot, make big noise.

• nuclear - nuke yeller

Here is an entire post about this one!

It's Wednesday—time for Peeves Unleashed!

The French Disconnection Section

• challis - chalice

  • I went shopping before the last supper and found a beautiful wool chalice scarf with a grail pattern.

• coup de grace - coopdy grah

  • There is no relation to any kind of cooperative or bird enclosure. Just the sound of doves cooing. Coo.

  • Also, grace rhymes with floss. Grah (gras) belongs with Mardi and foie.

• faux pas - fox pass

  • Is that in the Andes or the Rockies?

• Le Creuset - lay crew say

  • Ok, this can be tricky, so I’ve suggested to those interested in the real stuff to say, “Look! Roo zay!” (Imagine Piglet, Pooh, or Rabbit pointing at baby Roo as he says something momentous in baby Roo speak).

• pas de deux - does not rhyme with “Hawdy Do” or have anything to do with a potty

  • Again, this one can take practice. Here is Julien, who can help me learn how to say absolutely anything, any time:

* For more on my intolerance of English abuse by people in positions of leadership and responsibility who need to do much better, see:

There is a morale to this antidote

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Thank you for persevering at the Verbihund Café

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1. If I were prescriptive, I would not loll about loosely with “…people who generally ought to know better—meaning it is their job” because they don’t all share one job. I’d torture that sentence around until everyone was in agreement, whatever the cost to my mental health and your ease of reading. But I won’t. So perhaps mildly prescriptivish is closer to the truth.