Speaking proper: does it matter if we can't pronounce mispronunciation?

Do you say 'expresso' or 'nucular'? Have you ever been confident about how you say bruschetta? Don't worry about it – arguments over pronunciation are mostly proxies for snobbery and class one-upmanshipFor years, I used to think the film reviewer's genre term "biopic" was stressed on the second syllable. You know, like bionic? Only when I at last heard it spoken on the radio as "bio-pic" did I make the connection: oh right, it's a portmanteau of "biographical picture"! Everyone's word-wrangling life is littered with such faintly embarrassing misunderstandings. My erudite dad used to think "misled", meaning deceived, was pronounced "MIZZuld". (We don't have a verb "to misle", but we surely need one.) You can go a long time seeing a word in print, and even using it yourself in writing, without ever hearing it said out loud. So such mistakes are perfectly natural in our neverending struggle to speak proper.Naturally, we forgive ourselves our own lovable errors, but get very annoyed about other people's. To say "nuclear" as "nucular" invites instant diagnosis as a clodhopping ignoramus. (It doesn't help that this was George W Bush's preferred style of blurting the word.) And heaven help you if you order an "expresso" in front of some dullard who is always going on about his favourite cafe in Rome, and will instantly hiss: "ESpresso!". Possibly the most amusingly disastrous is the mispronunciation of "pronunciation" as "pronOUNCEiation", which hurls the sensitive listener into a...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: The Guardian Society Language Features Life and style Science Source Type: news