Mangled words confuse the message

‘Aks’ for ask? And ‘artic’ for Arctic? Heavens!

With North Korea once again in the headlines, it’s likely we’re going to hear the word “nuclear” mangled and mispronounced once again by politicians and journalists everywhere.

Fortunately, U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say the word correctly. So do, by the way, their predecessors Barack Obama and Stephen Harper. But George W. Bush favours “nu-CUE-lar” rather than the correct “nu-CLEE-ar,” although some say he knows better and did it to sound folksy.

Jimmy Carter was another offender, and Bill Clinton says it correctly only sometimes. They, along with learned scientists and not-solearned actors (and Homer Simpson, likely ironically), are among the many who infuriate grammarians everywhere.

The widespread mispronunciation of “nuclear” remains well ensconced, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. English is rife with mispro- nounced words.

Once, newspaper journalists wouldn’t worry about this, but in today’s digital world, when video and audio are everywhere, pronunciation is more important than ever.

I’m not talking about potato (poeTAY-toe) versus (poe-TAH-toe). Both are correct.

There are many such differences in pronunciation, especially between Americans and the British. Canadians are often caught in the middle.

Is it route (root) or route (rahout)? Herb (herb) or herb (erb), leisure (like measure) or leisure (leesure) ...

And I give a pass to words such as aluminum, which the British pronounce “aluminium,” but at least they have had the decency to spell it that way too.

Nor am I talking about such words as “produce,” which can be pronounced “PRO-duce” if you are making something, or “PRAH-duce” if it describes vegetables at a market.

And I’m not even fussed about zoology, which is correctly pronounced ZOE-ology, but mostly pronounced they way you usually hear it.

What really bugs me are words pronounced differently than they are spelled, such as nuclear, or espresso, regularly pronounced as “expresso,” which is not a word. And how exactly do you get “aks” from ask? Or “artic” from Arctic? Or “excetera” from et cetera? “Jewlery” is not a word. Jewelry is, and it should be pronounced that way.

Equally as bad is “annabiotics,” which is somehow a common mispronunciation of antibiotics, especially in the United States.

I expect readers by now will be divided into two groups: Some will agree that proper pronunciation is important because miscommunication can be disastrous; the other will say: Chill out, it’s not big deal.

After all, there are all kinds of difficult words with silent letters or even syllables, such as “vegetable,” which has a silent “e” and only three syllables, even though it looks like four, or “comfortable,” or “Wednesday,” which for mysterious reasons are not pronounced how they look.

Ditto for words with a silent “l” like salmon, almond, half, talk, could ...

And where did words such as “gnome” and “knife” and “tough” come from?

Perhaps such difficult and — let’s face it — nonsensical pronunciations resulted from mispronunciations becoming so common they are now acceptable.

English, always a crazy language, continues to get crazier.

Paul Berton is editor-in-chief of The Hamilton Spectator and thespec.com. You can reach him at 905-526-3482 or pberton@thespec.com