This is a rant about various abuses and mispronunciations of the English language that cause me to cringe inside so much that I have to consciously restrain myself from screaming out loud. I know that even writing about this stuff is going to be testing my nervous system to its limits.
1. Mischievious
...is NOT a word! The word is MISCHIEVOUS! If you can't spot the difference, look harder. You don't say "that boy is getting up to a lot of mis-CHEEF", so why do you say "mis-cheev-ious" as if it rhymes with "devious"? There is NO "i" in the suffix of the word, it has three syllables and the accent is on the first part of the word!
2. Mispronounciation
...is NOT a word, and makes you look really stupid when you're complaining about other people's mispronunciation.
3. Klu Klux Klan
...should be Ku Klux Klan, people. And Americans should really know this.
4. Nucular
Rrrrnghnghnghngh, ANGER!!!!! New-clear. New-clear. New-clear. It's not hard!
5. I heart...
Why the hell has this become so trendy? What's wrong with I love, for Christ's sake? Was it just that movie, I heart Huckabees? Or something else?
6. Mother and baby
...as in "mother and baby are fine". I guess this is a genuine phrase in itself and not really an abuse of the language, but taking out the 'the' before 'baby' (or should it be before 'mother'?) makes me shudder every time I hear it. There's something really unnatural about it.
7. Schedule
This one doesn't really cause me to cringe, and it's one that will provoke some disagreement, but I have always found its pronunciation of 'shed-jil' to be bizarre and unnecessarily complex for the mouth. I'm with the Americans on this one, with 'sked-jil'. Looking up the dictionary, I can find only one other common 'sch' word that is pronounced 'sh' (excluding Germanic words): schist, as opposed to school, scholar, schizophrenic, schooner, scheme etc etc etc. Perhaps schist should be changed too.
8. Less
...when fewer is correct; as in, "there are less people in Dunedin than in Wellington". It's really not hard to learn that fewer goes with the plural, and less goes with the singular.
As far as American pronunciation goes, I've spent so much time over here that I've adjusted to many of the strange words, but some of them still make me twitch a little. Here are a few of those words which I don't think I can ever bring myself to say the American way with a straight face:
• oregano, with the accent on the second syllable
• garage, as though rhyming with mirage (although this is actually more French, which is appropriate)
• advertisement, with the accent on the first syllable. This one's easily resolved, though, by just saying ad.
• glacier, pronounced 'glay-shuh'
• vase, to rhyme with lace
• coupon, as if it has a y after the c.
• apricot, with the first syllable rhyming with map
• Aussie, with an s sound in the middle, rather than a z sound
If I eventually think of some more good ones, I'll add them in later. While writing this blog, I actually found an interesting page on wikipedia about the linguistic differences between American and British English. It's quite interesting - check it out!
And now, I humbly submit this blog and await with interest the people who point out all the mistakes I've made within it's sentences.
Love the provocation of your last sentence ;)
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