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The words or not never follow the word whether. That’s it. That’s the rule. Whether implies or not. You don’t ever need to say both of them. The words or not should never be spoken. (They should certainly never be written.) Whether implies “or not”. Get it?
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There was a story this morning about gay marriage on LA’s 89.3 KPCC. I was infinitely more offended by the fact that reporter Kelly Wilkinson pronounced the word “rural” as “rurl” and the word “unfamiliar” as “unfermiliar” than I was about any part of the gay rights argument.
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To the political analyst who discussed Obama’s campaign this morning on NPR: I’m sorry to say that you lost whatever shred of credibility you had the moment you said that something was furmaliar. Nothing is furmaliar. Lots and lots of things are familiar. There is no r in the middle of [...]
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Recently I saw a commercial for Sylvan Learning Centers. This is a company that is selling products to help your children do well in school. The ad showed a teenage girl gabbing on the telephone. The voice-over said, “Sally sure can talk fast. We can help her read fast,” or something [...]
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I want you to stop what you’re doing. I want you to look at the word below. I want you to speak it aloud.
height
How did it sound? Say it again. Did it rhyme with “right”? It should have. Say it again. Did it rhyme with “byte”? It [...]
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The female anchor on the local NBC affiliate continues to pronounce Taliban as tal-EE-ban – with the ‘tal’ sounding like ‘pal’. The male anchor pronounces it the way everyone else does. I don’t understand this. There’s a guy in my office named Ed. If I came to work every day and [...]
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Not words:
acrost, irregardless, nucular, supposably, nother, alot, alright
Not verbs:
interface, input, impact, itch
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Boston Accents, and Why They’re Sexy
“Women are drawn to young and developing children because they appeal to our maternal instincts. Boston accents mimic a child’s speech and thus also appeal to our maternal instincts. Therefore, women find Boston accents to be cute. Consequently, a male who has a Boston accent is sub-consciously associated with a [...]
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On Speaking Goodly
“When it happens, it can be very misconcerting,” Gayle says. “I understand Bushonics. I was one. But under full analyzation, it’s really just an excuse to stay stupider.”
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I’m much more interested in how this particular speech pattern became known as “the female register” than I am in the legal aspects of this discussion.
“Once they have been arrested, even the toughest thugs turn to jelly. More precisely, Ainsworth says suspects lapse into a deferential mode called the female register, identified in women’s speech [...]
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