Homestead mailing list

[SJC <indexer AT localnet.com>]

Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

> > > The 'mispronounce' bit is regional or cultural elitism.
> > >
> > >       
Not too regional.  Or too cultural.   I have lived and taught in both 
public and private schools and tutored homeschool students, all where 
German was the first language and in public and private schools where 
English was the first language, in northern Canada, the Canadian 
maritimes, the midwest and the north and south east parts of this 
country.   I was born and raised in Indiana but since English is not my 
first language I've all my life been listening.... One of the words I've 
most commonly heard corrected is the word in question:  nuclear.  The 
pronunciation Bush uses certainly seems to me to simply be a 
common-across-the-board mispronunciation.  And obviously it grates on 
the ears of many, in numerous regions and cultures, from Inuit to 
Virginia watermen.

It's a totally different pronunciation from what my next door neighbor 
in southern Virginia (bred and born and raised in western Virginia and 
lived all adult life in Tidewater) called "southern slushtalk".    If 
you listen to Bush himself pronounce it you'll hear what he says.  
Doesn't sound southern.  Or northern.  Or anything else.  Just sounds 
like he needs to go look up how the word is spelled.

Susan Jane, in Maine