January 28, 2005
A Day of Learning
I learned a whole lotta things yesterday. I feel 1.3% smarter. And taller.
1. I learned that Merriam-Webster has listed "nuke-you-ler" as an accepted pronunciation of "nuclear" since 1961. It's a variant, but such a widespread variant that they threw in the towel and listed it. They say that it has "been found in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least one U.S. president and one vice president." When I sputtered about the degradation of the language, someone pointed out some things: Wednesday. February. Who says "Wed-nes-day" or "Feb-ru-ary"?
Huh. Well then. I still think a certain U.S. president is stupid.
2. Which leads to this: in the dictionary, when they include a little ÷ next to a pronunciation guide, it means that the pronunciation is a widespread variant "used in educated speech" that some experts find to be incorrect. As Michael Caine would say, "A lot of people don't know that."
3. I learned that saying "axe" for "ask" dates as far back as the 14th century. Chaucer said "I axe, why the fyfte man Was nought housband to the Samaritan?" Again, huh.
4. I learned how to play Go, the ancient Japanese board game. And I won! I kicked someone's ass the first game, 58-11! (And then he beat me three games in a row by a wide margin.) And then I won the last game, a hard-fought 35-32 victory!
Posted by mike, January 28, 2005 1:13 PMI always thought that harping on Bush because of his mispronunciation of "nuclear" was kind of nit-picking for the sake of nit-picking. "If he can't pronounce stuff right, how can he do a good job being President?" I heard some comments like that. That is a REALLY weak argument. If it was our guy, we'd let it slide and THEY would be picking about it.
Still, it was fun. And he choked on a pretzel. :-P
In the end, language is an evolving thing. Heck, I have even pronounced nuclear incorrectly. A lot of words that we pronounce or spell or use "correctly" came to be pronounced that way after formerly being used quite differently. Language changes, sometimes for better or for worse. I remember my teacher in second grade telling me that "ain't" isn't in the dictionary. Well, it is now, ain't it?
I wonder where the origin of the nu-cu-lar pronunciation came from? That is definitely one of those that doesn't seem to have a logical follow through. Anyone know?
Posted by: shane at January 28, 2005 1:36 PMSomeone said this in the Metafilter thread I learned this fun fact in:
'nuclear' is the adjectival form of 'nucleus', which comes from the Latin 'nuculeus', from 'nucula' the diminutive of 'nux', meaning 'nut'. So the at some point the 'u' between the 'c' and 'l' was dropped (and at that point would have probably been considered a mispronunciation).
Now I doubt that's the reason people say it, but it's funny that it's closer to the Latin than our current "correct" pronunciation is.
Posted by: mike at January 28, 2005 2:11 PMThat IS really interesting. Language is weird.
Posted by: shane at January 28, 2005 2:40 PMI was just reading an article today--can't remember where--linking nucular to "molecular" and "particular" as a "folk etymology" (which I'm sure I just spelled incorrectly).
As a physicist, this peeves me more than many errors. The guy in charge of the nuclear weapons should know how to say it right.
Somebody listen the next time he says "nuclear family." I'll be he gets it right then. (Actually, that was in the article I read too.)
Stevis
"Nuclear Physics--better than the old, clouded kind."
Posted by: Stevis at January 28, 2005 2:45 PMAnd what REALLY pisses me off is having to read this crap over and over because it is time for a new post! :-P
Posted by: shane at February 10, 2005 9:32 AM