Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Trickling In

Finally, another of those mispronounced words that tells you the speaker has no idea how the word is actually spelled.

"Wheelbarrel."



(I'll add the link to the original post later.)

7 comments:

argotnaut said...

Oh, some phonetic explanation of this, blah blah blah -- I have it but I'm too tired.

liz said...

Oh, I've seen the explanations (bridegome/bridegroom). And I don't care. Darn it.

It's just wrong, wrong, wrong!

argotnaut said...

And anyway, writing is meant to convey speech, not the other way around.

Nonetheless, one thing I keep seeing that's driving me nuts is "persay."

Arrrr! It's drivin' me nuts!

liz said...

You know, your insistence on being kindly and reasonable is throwing a big wet blanket over my compulsive fault-finding!

argotnaut said...

I'm not being kindly and reasonable -- it's just that my indoctrination as a linguist has given me a new perspective. There are some things that still annoy me no matter how I try to ignore them, but most things don't bother me like they used to, now that I understand the mechanisms.

Anonymous said...

I'm hearing a lot of interesting non-words/misused words at my new job.

"She can't keep using it as a clutch. She's gonna have to learn to deal with it." (clutch/crutch)

"I did stupid sh*t like that when I was a kid. But, I can't condole my kid doing it." (condole/condone)

liz said...

Now that "clutch" one is stuck in my head!