Friday, September 26, 2008

Pronunciation Pet Peeves

There are at least two pronunciation pet peeves that really send me up the wall. Unfortunately, the first is regularly pronounced by the presidential nominee John McCain.



WARshington!


No Mr. McCain, despite all your saber rattling, there is no "r" in Washington.

The second cringe-inducing pronunciation is apparently a favorite of Two-Face Aaron Eckhart, because he used it a few times last night on the Daily Show.



FURtography!

Unless you're talking about some new, tactile imagery, there is no "r" in photography! Get it straight!

3 comments:

Mack Ramer said...

I always had to WARsh my hands before dinner at my grandparents' house. And of course, they lived in WARshington, Indiana.

For some reason my dad did not pick up this part of the Southern Indiana accent, which my grandfather had very heavily.

Jay said...

Most of my friends in RI dropped a lot of their r's (Car = Caa) and then they seemed to show up in new and strange places (idea = idear). I'm not sure why it didn't stick with me; probably because my parents are mid-westerners.

I am partial to the phrase "wicked awesome" though.

SuiginChou said...

I'm pretty sure Grab said "warsh" along with "knowen", but that doesn't bother me too much.

The other day on the radio, I heard a commentator refer to our town as "La Fayette" (lah [pause] fah`YEHT). It struck me as very queer and I couldn't help but snicker as I surmised that the speaker was new to the Lafayette (lah`fee`EHT) area. I listened closely to see how the next speaker would fare, and along came an older country-type man who lah`fee`EHT'ed it all the way home. :)

I then imagined to myself what Japanese grad students (and other foreign students at Purdue, for that matter) must make of "Lafayette." Hard enough to read going from Japanese to English, but probably damning to figure out when you realize the locals are saying it wrong and have been doing so for over 200 years.