My grandmother loved using big words (oh, my, maybe it's genetic) but she was also the mistress of mangling the words with her unique mispronunciations. She would say "in-come-pet-unt" instead of incompetent; "re-seep" instead of recipe; "per-cue-lator" instead of percolator; "heighth" instead of height; and the WORST of all: PRO-NOUNCE-E-ATION" instead of pronunciation!
She told my mother about receiving a government document which had written on it: "Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate" but when she told my mother mutilate came out as "mutt-uh-late".
To this day, whenever we mispronounce a word, someone in the family will say
"mutt-a-late" to bring us back to our senses.
My brother reminded me that I mispronounced "oligarchy" which I did NOT, as it has TWO acceptable pronunciations. Of course, I have been ridiculed about my saying
"POE--tassium" and my friend who says "CEE-ment"!
No comments:
Post a Comment