I was clicking around the New York Times site just now and came across a short piece discussing Sarah Palin's accent and speaking style, and it pointed out that pronouncing 'nuclear' as 'nucular' is an instance of a phenomenon (called metathesis) common among the world's languages and that it's no different than when someone pronounces 'iron' as 'eye-ern' rather than 'eye-ren.' And I got all excited because OMG! A layperson in the mainstream media who actually did some linguistics homework instead of spouting untenable prescriptivist crap!
And then I scrolled up to see who the writer was, and it was Steven Pinker. As in, the MIT linguist Steven Pinker.
Doh.
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1 comment:
weird. I just read (and thought) the same thing about 15 minutes ago. The article I read was on slate form 2002, but had the same example. I also thought that it was unusual that a non-linguist would mention metathesis.
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