I, the Language Nazi
Friday, August 01, 2008
I, the Language Nazi
Well, not exactly, at least that is what the purists would say. I am not a complete language Nazi, that title goes to April. I am a language Nazi, sometimes. There are aspects of language that I let slide, maybe because of good moods or perhaps I deemed the situation as being completely hopeless and irreversible. The latter of the reasons, applies to me. I am my worst teacher and the worst judge, I can never edit my own papers or essays, and the same probably applies to a lot of people out there who has ever written a paper or an essay. Simply put, we usually can't forgive others what we can easily forgive ourselves. It's a fact, go look it up. You are going to find a fine collection of grammatical mistakes on this page of the blog alone, sometimes even spelling mistakes too. I let them slide, not because I don't know about them, but because I am usually too lazy to go back and edit. It's not an academic paper, nobody is going to be grading this page. It's just a blog, give me a break. However, mistakes made by others don't sit very well with me most of the time, especially verbal mistakes that are just blatantly wrong and common. We know of those common mistakes people make (to-may-to and to-mah-to isn't a mistake), and some of them really gets on my nerves, especially when it has to do with pronunciations.
Well, not exactly, at least that is what the purists would say. I am not a complete language Nazi, that title goes to April. I am a language Nazi, sometimes. There are aspects of language that I let slide, maybe because of good moods or perhaps I deemed the situation as being completely hopeless and irreversible. The latter of the reasons, applies to me. I am my worst teacher and the worst judge, I can never edit my own papers or essays, and the same probably applies to a lot of people out there who has ever written a paper or an essay. Simply put, we usually can't forgive others what we can easily forgive ourselves. It's a fact, go look it up. You are going to find a fine collection of grammatical mistakes on this page of the blog alone, sometimes even spelling mistakes too. I let them slide, not because I don't know about them, but because I am usually too lazy to go back and edit. It's not an academic paper, nobody is going to be grading this page. It's just a blog, give me a break. However, mistakes made by others don't sit very well with me most of the time, especially verbal mistakes that are just blatantly wrong and common. We know of those common mistakes people make (to-may-to and to-mah-to isn't a mistake), and some of them really gets on my nerves, especially when it has to do with pronunciations.
It is not even the accent that is bothering me, but it's the way that a lot of Singaporeans, in general, can't master their so-called "first language". Of course, there are a lot of Singaporeans out there with masterful command of the language, April being one of them. Still, it is not difficult to find someone who is going to pronounce "film" as "flim" in Singapore. It is one of my top peeves about mispronunciations, and it is completely baseless too. I don't even understand why people pronounce "film" as "flim" in the first place, when the placement of the letters in the word clearly speaks otherwise. I understand if you are going to think that you have to pronounce a silent "H", like in "New Delhi". My platoon sergeant in the army used to pronounce "New Delhi" as "New Del-hee". While it helps with the spelling, it certainly sounds very strange and comical, somehow. To me, it was funny for some time until it became a gum chewed too many times. It became stale, but it's not like I could correct him either, it'd be weird. Anyway, that is a mistake that I, however uncomfortable I feel about it, understand. "Film" and "Flim" is a mistake that I simply cannot "let slide". It's kind of like crashing into lamp post in the middle of nowhere on a bright and sunny day, it's unforgivable.
While "New Delhi" can scrape through in the mistakes department, another mistake under the same category simply cannot go unnoticed. The word "compromise" has been bastardized into something like "com-promise" before. I know, words like "computer" and "comfortable" are pronounced as "com-puter" and "com-fortable". But the same rules do not apply too every single word out there. In fact, there is nothing as a "fixed rule" in the English language as far as I am concerned, except perhaps the placement of the full-stop at the end of every sentence (but think about it, the end of a sentence is also another sentence's beginning. So technically that rule isn't really fixed, either). You know, rules like how you cannot add an "ed" to the end of the word "understood", if the past tense of a word is completely different from the word in present tense. However, "founded" isn't a mistake at all, there are legitimate reasons to add "ed" behind "found". For example, "This school was founded in 1844". So, now you know. But don't go around shouting "understooded", either.
Anyway, "compromise", it's a mistake of biblical proportion. The first time anybody sees the word, they are probably going to go "Well, we have a 'com' and we have a 'promise', it probably sounds like putting those two words together". That was probably how "com-promise" came about, someone reading the word as two separate words. The first time I heard this strange method of pronunciation was also through the same platoon sergeant I mentioned above. So, as you might have already guessed, this platoon sergeant doesn't have a very high level of education, and that is the truth. He rose to his ranks because of his abilities in doing the "tai-chi", or pushing responsibilities to others in the army. He was capable in his own rights, and signed on with the army because he didn't have anywhere else to go in the real world. The last I heard, he finished his contrast with the army and was unemployed for a long time. Anyway, the last straw came when he mispronounced "New Delhi" and "compromise" in the very same sentence. It went something like "I know most of you probably don't like the idea of going to 'New Del-hee', but 'com-promise' a bit". Yeah, I freaked inside, and died a little.
People are also lazy with the "th" sound. It kind of sound like the "F" sound, but not really. It was one of those difficult pronunciations that I had a problem with when I was younger, since I didn't get the idea of putting my tongue in between my teeth and blow. I always ended up looking rather spastic trying to do so, but I eventually got the hang of it anyway. However, most people are still rather lazy with the sound, most of them not only pronounces the "F" sound instead, they throw it out of the window together. You know, a lot of people out there cannot count from one to three properly - it's true. They usually count it like that," One, two, tree!" Wait a minute, what tree? Where is the tree, do you mean that there are two trees? Then shouldn't it be "One, two, trees" with the "S"? Oh, it was a mispronunciation, I get it. You are lazy with the "th", I get it. But seriously, people don't like that "th" very much, the same with pronouncing "that". They go "dat", and "there" as "dare". The list goes on, but none as irritating as the way most Taiwanese would pronounce "birthday". They go "Happy Birsday!" at surprise parties. Out goes the "F" and here comes the "S". Great.
There is something about the number three, or anything associated with the number three that a lot of people cannot pronounce somehow. If someone cannot count from one to three, you shouldn't expect that person to count from Monday to Wednesday either. "Wednesday" is supposed to have two syllables, and phonetically it looks like "Whens-day". Some people take the word on surface value and go ahead and pronounce it with three syllables, like "Wed-ness-day". Just when you think that people are lazy to pronounce the "th" sound, they seem pretty enthusiastic to pronounce extra syllables now. I guess laziness does not translate very well all the time, but I guess there isn't a fixed rule to laziness either. That is a common mistake, but not the most ridiculous. My economics teacher used to pronounce "Wednesday" as "Wetness Day". I swear, the whole lecture hall laughed, and she didn't even know why. I guess she didn't realize how suggestive to tell everyone about her very, well, private bodily function that happens every Wednesday. I still laugh over it, at times. For the more innocent-minded readers, let's just take it that she predicted rain.
We go on to another common mistake, "Monopoly" and "Tribute". Now, it pretty much goes under the same category as "compromise", only the second word "Tribute" doesn't make much sense at all. People saw the word "Monopoly" and decided to piece two words together and pronounce them as "mono" and "poly". Fine, I get that. I don't understand how people can pronounce "tribute" as "tri-bute", like "tri-angle" though. It is pronounced as "tri" as in "tri-angle" when you have three (three, again) things involved. In the case of "triangle", we have three angles involved in the geometric shape. In "tri-band", they are mobile phones that support three different frequencies. Thus, the "tri", like "try". A "tribute", however, has nothing in it that might point to the number three. I have heard it pronounced as "try-bute", what's up with that? It is equally strange and confusing when I hear people pronouncing "ethics" as "ee-thics", with the dragged "E". What's up with that? Why is it "ethnic" and not "ee-thnic" when you pronounce it, doesn't it seem odd?
This is when mispronunciation really gets on my nerves. When someone goes "Jer-pen-nese" or "jer-pi-nese" instead of "ja-per-nese" for "japanese", I explode. Where did the "jer" sound come from anyway, it is nowhere to be found. The latter mispronunciation sounds suggestively like "jerk penis", which is disturbing. This is definitely something that ticks me off, like how the mispronunciation of "dove". "Dove" is supposed to be pronounced like "love", but with the "D". A lot of people seem to pronounce the word as "douf", like a "loaf" of bread with a "D" instead? It is really irritating, especially when people are talking about the brand of shampoo. The word keeps popping up, and you can't help but correct them that it is "dove" like "love", not "loaf" like in bread. But nothing ever beats the following mispronunciation, which I find to be the most ridiculous mispronunciation I have heard, ever, ever.
You know, words like "cliche" are supposed to be accented, like "cafe". A lot of words in the English language are derived from other languages, like the word "rendezvous". It is French, and it is pronounced, phonetically, as "run-day-vu". Not "ran-days-vus", please. Speaking of other French words in the English dictionary, we also have the word "lingerie", which is pronounced, phonetically, as "lawn-che-ray", not "ling-ger-ree". I remember being at Isetan when I was in high school when we passed by the lingerie section, and one of the boys who happened to be with me at that time, suggested that we should "push Samuel into the 'ling-ger-ree" section. It's "lawn-che-ray" idiot, and grow up while you grow a brain. I know, I am making myself sound very anal, but then it just goes to show how people can seriously make a fool out of themselves sometimes. I am OK if you mispronounce words like "vinyl", in fact I just found out about that one myself. If you don't know how a word is pronounced, ask. It really isn't very embarrassing, it's how you learn for languages anyway.
There are probably a dozen other language peeves that I missed, perhaps there might be a part two to this entry in the days to come. Who knows, people talk all the time, and more mistakes are made everyday. More often than not, they are going to be the above mentioned mistakes, but you never know where the human mind can take you with a hint of stupidity and ignorance sometimes. So, contribute your most hated mispronunciations, and we might have a sequel to this entry coming to a computer near you, very soon. In the mean time, watch out for an entry about the horrors of Singlish very soon. No, "leh" and "lah" are fine with me, even "liao" is cool. But not "bah" or "le". It's disgusting, it really is. Stay tuned.
P.S. The word "touche" is accented too. It is not pronounced as "touchy". Take note.
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