{"id":4132,"date":"2015-12-16T12:30:28","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T18:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/?p=4132"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:01","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:01","slug":"seeing-red-over-mispronunciation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/seeing-red-over-mispronunciation\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Red Over Mispronunciation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"poinsettias_top\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bless her.<\/p>\n

Linda has, once again, managed to give our little house a cozy..festive welcoming feel as we await the arrival of family and friends home for the Christmas holiday.\u00a0 Notably missing this year, though, are poinsettia plants. They were usually provided by our daughter who worked in the floral department of Lewis.
\nI don\u2019t know about you but both Linda and I have always pronounced the name of that flower Poin-setta..three syllables.\u00a0 It turns out, though, that much of the world prefers the proper (read that snooty) four syllable pronunciation; Poin-set-ee-ah.
\nMy co-workers at Kelo were always correcting me until I showed them a dictionary that says either pronunciation is acceptable much like Cara-BEE-un and Cah-RIB-ee-un or Feb-YOU-ary and Feb-ROO-ary. Hemmingsen always teased me about saying Feb-YOU-ary until I pointed out that if it was good enough for Walter Cronkite, it was good enough for me.
\nSome say that mispronouncing words is a reflection on one\u2019s intelligence. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true especially after seeing a story on NOVA recently in which an atomic scientist repeatedly said nuke-YOU-lur energy instead of the correct nuke-LEE-ur.
\nSome of my best friends and family members say Nuke-YOU-lur or Real-AH-tor instead of REAL-tor or Pros-STRATE instead of pros-TATE when referring to that little gland that only men have and is so prone to cancer.
\nI do cringe when hearing such language abuses as, \u201cI Could care less,\u201d which is opposite of what you mean. Or, Anyways..with an unnecessary\u00a0\u201cs\u201d at the end.\u00a0Calvary is where Christ was crucified. Cavalry is what Custer was leading when he ran into all those Indians.
\nMispronunciations likely have more to do with where you\u2019re from and how your parents and grandparents spoke..than how bright you are.\u00a0Both Linda and her friend, Joanie, came from different Midwest towns but were\u00a0taught to say WARSH instead of WASH. I don\u2019t know where the extra \u201cR\u201d comes from..probably from people in Maine or Massachusetts who often don\u2019t bother using their \u201cR\u2019s\u201d at all. \u201cThe Hahvad professah sat down to dinnah with his sistah and brothah eating food from the gahden.\u201d
\nMe, I grew up believing that the place where mom kept my socks and underpants was a \u201cchester drawers\u201d and those flowers she had growing alongside the house were Pee-YO-nees and my dad wore over-HAULS to work every day.
\nWhen I first started in TV I was assigned to do a commercial in which I said that Ben Hur Ford\u00a0was having a CLARANCE sale.\u00a0 The director yelled, \u201cWhoa..did you just call it a \u201cclarance\u201d sale..like the cross-eyed lion?\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s when I first discovered that stores have a CLEARance sale because they\u2019re CLEARing out their inventory not just offering bargains to guys\u00a0named Clarance.
\nI spent over 30 years in a profession in which proper pronunciation is not only expected, it\u2019s mandatory. Yet those inaccurate utterances that were planted in my head as a child continued to pop out of my mouth right up until retirement.
\nI was recording a promo for a Keloland special sponsored by a furniture company. I kept saying SlumberLUND until promotional director Paul Farmer\u2019s quiet voice came over the studio loudspeaker, \u201cUh, Doug..I believe that\u2019s SlumberLAND.\u201d
\nOne of my most notable on-air faux pas came during a newscast when, after a story, I turned to Angela Kennecke and said something about it having \u201cgrammarical\u201d errors.\u00a0 She looked at me and said, \u201cDo you mean grammatical, Doug?\u201d
\nWell, I turned as red as a baboon\u2019s butt as we went to commercial.
\nWhen we returned from the break I tried to make light of my blunder blaming everyone from my parents, aunts and uncles to the English teachers at Volga High School.
\nAfter the newscast I got word that the general manager, Mark Antonitis, \u00a0would like to see me in his office. As I entered, he just shook his head and said, \u201cWell, at least you covered yourself nicely.\u201d And that was it.
\nHe\u2019s the one responsible for getting all KELO reporters and anchors to be consistent in the pronunciation of IRAQ. \u201cIt\u2019s not EYE-RACK,\u201dhe said. (Although that\u2019s how a majority of people, including soldiers, say it) It\u2019s either EAR-RACK or EAR-ROCK. After consulting with Qadir Aware of Sioux Falls, a native of the country in question, we settled on EAR-ROCK.
\nIn researching for this blog I\u2019ve come across words and phrases that I continue to screw up such as: Card SHARKS instead of the correct card SHARPS. Tijuana has just three syllables..not four. Silicon is the valley where computers are made. Silicone is what surgeons implant in woman to create bigger valleys.
\nOh, well I guess you can teach an old pundent new tricks.\u00a0Wait a minute..it\u2019s PUNDIT isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bless her. Linda has, once again, managed to give our little house a cozy..festive welcoming feel as we await the arrival of family and friends home for the Christmas holiday.\u00a0 Notably missing this year, though, are poinsettia plants. They were usually provided by our daughter who worked in the floral department of Lewis. I don\u2019t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11550,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4132\/revisions\/11550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}