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Originally Posted by dlavery
- And my all-time favorite: "Nuclear" is pronounced "nu kli Er." It is NOT pronounced "nu kU ler." When you use this pronunciation, no matter how smart you may actually be, you sound like an illiterate dolt (are you listening, Mr. Bush?).
-dave
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I have to say, this thread is cracking me up.
Especially the above post by Dave, because I am a HUGE offender. I tend to take the position, however, that since I worked for 8.5 years on Naval nuclear propulsion plants, I can say it any way I please.
There are many words in the English language that acquire regional pronunciations: wash vs. warsh, roof vs. ruff, car vs. cah, to name just a few. For some reason nuclear seems to draw the most criticism. One could argue that the dictionary only offers one pronunciation option for nuclear (actually there's two, but the alternate isn't germane), but the same argument is true for the other examples I presented. Believe it or not, different parts of the country pronounce different words differently (my redundant statement of the obvious). Without exaggerating, it has been my experience that the people that tend to get the most upset about how certain words are pronounced hail from the part of the country where eating "mahs bahs" in their "cah" is perfectly acceptable. In my younger Navy years, while stationed in Connecticut, some locals actually wanted to FIGHT because I said "Hey! How are y'all doin?" Response: "Y'all? Y'all? Where the <bleeeepin> <bleep> <bleep> are you from?"
It STILL blows my mind!
So a polite request: Please don't criticize pronunciations that are regionally derived.
Now the issue of spelling/grammar/punctuation is a different matter. It would be nice if we all spent a little time to organize our thoughts before we post and present them in a legible manner. Sometimes I read a post and have absolutely no idea what the poster is trying to say. If you are going to take the time to express an idea by posting, then at least take the time to consider what it looks like to someone else who is reading it!
Chatspeak/abbreviations/LOLs/etc. I'm not sure, but I presume all of these little acronyms came about during the not so distant past when bandwidth and storage was fairly costly. I remember my first e-mail account I ever had charged by the kilobyte! The same thing was true for Usenet groups (the original forums). Thus people adopted shortcuts to save money. Through the years these habits have carried on and been expanded, even though gigabyte storage is cheap and nearly everyone has access to broadband internet. So while the "chatisms" are no longer necessary, they are understandable.
Y'all have a good day!