Interesting pronunciation glitch

[rhu]

We all mocked Presidents Carter and Bush for their inability to pronounce "nuclear" correctly. (And Carter was even a nuclear submariner!) Of course, they're hardly alone; the "nucular" club has many members.

What I find interesting is that Tani has developed the opposite problem. "Particular" is pronounced "particlear", "molecular" is "moleclear", and "circular" is "circlear".

I don't think it's hypercorrection, because we generally let the kids work these things out on their own. But I suspect that whatever causes people to conflate the "-cle-ar" and "-cu-lar" patterns has happened with my son, he just happened to learn "nuclear" first.

In any case, I wonder (hey, tahnan, you're the linguist here!) how common that is.

Comments

[sethg]

My eight-year-old has somehow picked up the idea that the English hard “ch”, in words like “high-tech” and “stomach”, is pronounced /x/, like Hebrew chet or Scottish loch.

Maybe if I don’t correct him, it will become trendy.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

High-\TeX is a powerful macro language for typesetting, right?

[autotruezone.livejournal.com]

My recollection is that Carter said "nukear" (i.e. almost correct but without the "L"), not "nucular". I've verified this, thanks to Google and Youtube. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhwBLE2bpnw starting at about 2:00.

In any case, I think "nucular" a regionalism, rather than an individualized reading disability. See also http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2010/02/18/bush-and-carters-nuclear-pronunciation-might-be-right

[autotruezone.livejournal.com]

One mispronunciation that bugs me almost as much as "nucular", and is heard much more frequently, is when weather forecasters omit several letters from the word "temperature" and say "tempichur".

[violetcheetah.livejournal.com]

I remember going to the Boston airport via the subway many years ago. As we pulled into the "Aquarium" station, the conductor announced it with one syllable: "Querm!" It seemed quite efficient.

I tend to think of "tempichur" as being a contraction, not really a mispronunciation, but then I probably do it myself, or at least "temperchur." One that I don't understand, but grew up with in rural Kentucky, was the shortening of "comfortable" to "cumpterbull." I think I was in third grade before I realized the root word was "comfort," because no one ever pronounced it that way.