Ronald Rutherford comments on the Noam Chomsky excerpt I put up yesterday:

Tell me.
Does any Libtard know how Jimmy Carter pronounced Nuclear?
And what job did he have in the Navy?

I feel pretty sure that we libtards in his speechwriting office would have noticed (and bitched about it to no avail) if President Carter said nukular. But what the hell, I don’t even remember yesterday, let alone the 70s. Why do you ask? Do you have audio of him mispronunciating? If so, lay the link on us.

My feeling about the matter is that nuclear is in the process of being displaced by nukular, due to the slow but inevitable workings of linguistic evolution toward sound sequences easier to pronounce. Thus February has become Febyoowary and library has turned into liberry. Jewelry to joolery, familiar to firmilyar, hundreds to hunderds. More examples will be appreciated. I collect these things.

This evolution, which has been extensively documented by linguists, is neither good nor bad. It is what it is. The only meaningful point to consider is the one made by my stepfather years ago, when I was a teenager and my stepbrother Ralph was a little boy slurping up iced tea through a straw.

“Don’t slurp your tea,” Ralph senior said.

“Jerry does,” Ralphie said.

“That’s different,” Big Ralph said. “He knows it’s wrong.”

Posted by Jerome Doolittle at October 09, 2008 12:09 PM

Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):