Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

self-deluding armchair linguist

It all started on All Hallowed Eve morning when somebody on the radio pronounced somhain as rhyming with some pain. That got me to thinking about the pronunciations of flaccid and to err. (And don't even get me started about Caitlin.) Still, whenever I hear somebody say "to air is human," I think indeed. But, I've stopped saying anything about it. I know what they're trying to say. Why just yesterday morning I listened as Alistair Cooke pronounced intelligentsia not once but several times with a velar stop rather than a palatal affricate. So smug was I, until I realized that when we borrowed the word from Russian that was close to how it was pronounced back then. Language changes. I've written it often enough, here and elsewhere. When did Chaucer's parfit get transmogrified into perfect? (I'm sure Caxton had something to do with it; him and his etymologizing orthographic rules.) And when did that 'd' sneak into admiral? Why do I still flinch when somebody says between you and I? It long ago ceased being ironic or humorous, but it still causes me pain. Within every soi disant descriptivist is a prescriptivist dying to drop all the pretense and nonsense and correct somebody. Hard and with passion.