speech

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.

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 that word. It’s not an accent. It’s not “the way we say it here”. It’s not anything other than wrong. You disagree. I know you do. So, Mr. Political Analyst, imagine this: If you and I were engaged in a conversation about Obama and I pronounced his name Orbama, would you correct me? I think you would. If I said, “Oh, that’s just the way I say it,” what would you think? Good day, sir.

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 like that. Apparently grammar is not one of the subjects that Sylvan covers. How does a company that claims to help educate children manage to let a commercial with such an egregious grammatical error get all the way to the television screen? There must not be any English majors working in the marketing department over at ol’ Sylvan.

Fast is an adjective. You don’t do things “fast”. You do things quickly.

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 should have. Say it again. Aloud, damn you. “Height” rhymes with “might”.

Think for a second. When you say it, does it sound like “hythe”? If it does, do you realize that you sound like an idiot whenever you say it?

No, it’s not “slang”.
No, it’s not “an accent”.
No, it’s not “just the way we say it here”.
No, it’s not “the same thing”.
The word is h-e-i-g-h-t. It rhymes with “tight”. If you say it any other way, it doesn’t mean you are being eloquent, or fashionable, or rebellious, or cool, or anything other than ignorant.

Unless you have a lisp. If you have a lisp, then you are excused and I’m sorry for making you feel dumb. People with lisps aren’t dumb. People who don’t have lisps but pronounce the word “height” as if they had a lisp are dumb. Are we clear on that?

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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 called him Eed, I think at some point someone would say something to me. Hell, I think it would only take me about five seconds to notice that everyone else calls him Ed. I wonder if she thinks that everyone else is saying it incorrectly. She can’t possibly not notice, right? I mean … she’s a television news anchor! This is Los Angeles, y’know? It’s not like we’re in Nowheresville. There are millions of people listening to her every night. She must notice …

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Not words:

• acrost, irregardless, nucular, supposably, nother, alot, alright

Not verbs:

• interface, input, impact, itch

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 child, and women will thus have a greater affinity for him.”

This is one of several fascinating essays at Senseless Theories on Inane Topics. Others include:

• Why Nomar Garciaparra is the Best Player in the History of Baseball
• Saurkraut, and its Implications on our National Identity, and
• Nickels, and Why They Suck

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.”

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 25 years ago. When speaking in this way, people turn statements into questions and avoid direct commands. They use the conditional form of verbs, such as “might”, “may” and “should”, to weaken the impact of what they are saying. They also hedge everything with phrases such as “kind of” and use inflections more appropriate to questions.”

You can imagine how stupid I felt when I called someone an “invalid” in high school. As if they weren’t valid. And don’t even get me started on “epitome”. ehp-ih-tohm. Fark this farking language! Drives me nutty sometimes, it does.