Mark D. Lew wrote:
Same goes for those who kvetch about pronouncing "nuclear" like "nucular".
There's a logical explanation for "nucular"? If it truly exists, I would love to hear it.
------------- Brad Beyenhof
While I myself look down on folks who say "nucular," there is indeed a good reason for the pronunciation:
"Nuclear" is pretty much unique in ending with a weak [EMAIL PROTECTED], but there are a great many words that end in -cular: molecular, particular, vernacular, spectacular, jocular, etc. For an English speaker, therefore, "nuclear" is hard to wrap the tongue around, and it is easy to fall back on a familiar sound pattern that differs from the correct one only by the transposition of two sounds.
"Nucular" is so widely used, even by highly educated and/or powerful persons (Hubert Humphrey? Dubya?) that it may well become an accepted pronunciation (much as AFfluent overtook afFLUent in the 1940s)--but it isn't, yet.
My feeling is that it is most often used by those who have little call to speak such related words as nucleus and enucleation, which are much less often mispronounced.
-- Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
