Oct 3rd, 2008 at 9:19 am
The “Nuculer” Issue
Moira Whelan calls attention to Sarah Palin’s Bush-esque pronunciation of “nuclear”:
But of course saying words right is elitist. Only East Coast media types do that.
67 Responses to “The “Nuculer” Issue”
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October 3rd, 2008 at 9:26 am
I assumed, as did the people viewing with me, that it was an intentional signal that she’s a good anti-ayleet person like Bush Jr., who ain’t all fancy and pointy-headed like them arugula-eatin’, nukular-pronouncin’ f*****s.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 am
Like dangling participles, “nukular” is so entrenched in the English language that I’m willing to give people a pass for saying it. The correct pronunciation is used when referring to “nuclear physics,” but “nukular” is acceptable when referring to weapons or anything else that would be referred to as “nukes.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:33 am
I could care less about this, but I’m really concerned about the quality of Alaskan education (she’s the child of how many teachers?) when only a fraction of her sentences reach the grammatical standard of “Our children is learning.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:36 am
She isn’t Bush-esqu. She is Bush in 2000. She either doesn’t realize that her positions on major issues deviate greatly from her party’s or she’s lying. Bush, the compassionate conservative in 2000 turned out to be a big fucking liar. She is either dumb as a rock or a narcissitic, cynical liar. I don’t care for either choice.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:37 am
It’s not the mispronouncing the word that bothers me. It’s that I know of a number of conservatives who are proud of the mispronouncing of the word “nuclear,” as if it’s a badge of pride, a sign of non-elite status.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:38 am
Sounded to me like something in between Bush and the standard pronunciation. “nook-ler” only two syllables, but no long “e” sound either. Whatevs.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:39 am
It’s that I know of a number of conservatives who are proud of the mispronouncing of the word “nuclear,” as if it’s a badge of pride, a sign of non-elite status.
The funny thing is that for those conservatives, the ability to get away with speaking with such affectations is a sign of their elite status and privilege. The poor would never be able to be taken seriously by speaking like that and would have to make a concerted effort to ensure that their diction and grammar tightly conforms to prevailing norms in order to get ahead.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:54 am
I am surprised I am the first to mention this, but it was reported at the time of her convention speach that the speach spelled out the word nuclear phoneticly.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
Insisting on a one true pronunciation for this word actually does seem to me to be genuinely elitist prescriptivism. See also Language Log.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:56 am
To be fair, she says something halfway between new-clear and nucular.
It’s funny to think that mispronouncing ‘nuclear’ has become a kind of shibboleth for some on the right. Would they be as enthusiastic if Palin said ‘axe’ instead of ‘ask’?
Finally, Matt is on pretty shaky ground criticizing other people’s use of the language, given his any-homophone-will-do approach to spelling.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:00 am
What about the EYE rack thing – she makes the EYE into an entirely different word.
Would she be annoyed if people started pronouncing it AYlaska?
I bet she would.
Is it so damn hard to pronounce words like the locals? People get pissed if you get the weird local variants in this country wrong – try pronouncing the river that runs through Portland OR sometime.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:04 am
Oh ye of weak spelling, cast not the first stone!
I kid, but I’m also serious.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:07 am
Jimmy Carter said nukular, and he was a nuclear engineer.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 am
Is it so damn hard to pronounce words like the locals?
It’s a balance. Saying Ih-raq is ok and clearly preferable to Eye-Rack. But if you refer to the french capital as “Pa-ree,” or, even worse, use pseudo-local pronunciations like calling the capital of Denmark “Copenhahgen” instead of the conventional “Copenhaygen”, you sound like a pretentious wannabe.
I’m willing to give Palin a pass for a lot of this– many of her linguistic affectations are just artifacts of her local accent and the people she speaks to. That said, taking all of Palin’s lack of knowledge and inability to give informed answers, if she were Sarah Smith applying to work in HR for IBM rather than Sarah Palin applying to be VP, she’d have been rejected out of hand.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 am
according to this, there are two pronunciations
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuclear
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
People from different parts of the country sometimes pronounce words differently. Get over it! Or are you going to imply that somebody is dumb the next time they say “EE-conomics” instead of “EH-conomics”? “Di-VIH-sive” (which, to my ear, is much more grating than “nukular”) instead of “di-VEYE-sive”? Palin/Bush/etc. say a lot of dumb things, but “nukular” is not one of them.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
Haukur:
How do you figure? It’s not elitist or prescriptivist to insist that letters are pronounced in the order they occur. It’s an adorable speech impediment to say ‘nucular’, but there’s no way to justify it. What if I pronounced ‘binoculars’ as ‘binoclears’? Would that be OK too? Does Palin talk about ‘cochular’ implants? This is exactly on a par with the ‘ask’/'axe’ problem.
There is no regional accent that allows you to jumble consonants and vowels together just to make things easier to say. Regional accents may change tones, lengths and emphasis, but not the order of the letters as written. Clearly (cularly?), there is exactly one syllable up to and including the ‘l’ in ‘nuclear’, and either a diphthong or two consecutive vowel sounds after the ‘l’.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:18 am
Like others, I took “nukular” to be something to be between a Rorschach test and a dare – if you point it out, you’re just an elitist liberal nerd.
To be fair, America has a history of taking English words with atrocious spelling or pronunciation and “fixing” them. Nuclear would seem to be a good candidate for this.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 am
People get pissed if you get the weird local variants in this country wrong – try pronouncing the river that runs through Portland OR sometime.
Rhymes with damn it!
I’ve read that the “nucular” pronunciation was orginally associated with Dwight Eisenhower, who was well aware that it was wrong but just couldn’t manage to pronounce the word correctly. His example sort of legitimized the mispronunciation.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:22 am
The spoken language isn’t about pronouncing the individual letters of the written language in the order they occur. The fact is that a lot of people pronounce the word like Palin and Bush do – probably helped by analogy with “molecular”, “vernacular” etc. (again, see the Language Log post).
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:23 am
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/~lancekim/nookyuhlur.html
An illuminating note on the subject.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:23 am
Another point:
The pronunciation ‘nucular’ makes it harder to be literate: it makes it harder to spell ‘nuclear’ correctly, and might incline you to believe in the ‘nuculus’ of the atom.
If this error catches on, and becomes universal, then like a good descriptivist I’ll be forced to concede that the proper pronunciation is ‘nucular’ (for instance ‘bird’ and ‘dirt’ came from the Old English ‘brid’ and Norse ‘drit’, so metathetical variation can creep in over time), but then there should be a spelling reform to reflect that, and another piece of etymology and internal consistency will have been thrown out the window. English is bad enough as it is, why make it worse?
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:25 am
Or are you going to imply that somebody is dumb the next time they say “EE-conomics” instead of “EH-conomics”? “Di-VIH-sive” (which, to my ear, is much more grating than “nukular”) instead of “di-VEYE-sive”? Palin/Bush/etc. say a lot of dumb things, but “nukular” is not one of them.
It is a really small thing, but… it is awfully grating to these ears.
Unlike Eekonomics versus Eckonomics, it’s not a difference in the way a vowel is being pronounced – those are pretty easy to forgive. Instead, they are adding a whole new sounds in wrong places. It’s more like saying “here comes the calvary!” and only slightly less offensive than saying “irregardless.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:26 am
Cartoon take on the debate at:
http://macleodcartoons.blogspot.com/2008/10/unanswered-question-from-debate.html
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:29 am
Regional accents may change tones, lengths and emphasis, but not the order of the letters as written.
There are lots of words pronounced differently by different speakers in ways that don’t involve tones, lengths or emphasis. Do you rail against people who pronounce February differently than you do?
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 am
Now do you liberals realize why the kind of descriptivism that linguistics departments like to peddle is so foolish?
Words are supposed to be pronounced as they are written. Saying ‘nucular’ makes about as much sense as saying ‘axe’ for ‘ask.’ It isn’t elitist to say that there is a right and a wrong way to pronounce a word. It is just common sense.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 am
Oh, for the love of Mike. The word is pronounced a couple of different ways. Give it a rest.
What you ought to be commenting on is how Palin has exaggerated her accent for the national audience. It’s toothache-cloying and completely phony.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:42 am
Do you rail against people who pronounce February differently than you do?
Dropping letters, such as going from Feb-ru-ary, to Feb-u-ary, is really really common. “Course” instead of “Of course,” Balmore/Louville, “librul,” etc etc. (There are still particularly grating examples of this, such as Li-Bary).
To me, saying “nukular” sounds more like if someone were to say “medification.”
And yes, language changes, blah blah blah. But it’s still like nails on a chalkboard.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
I think you all better check your dictionaries before you rush in here and post.
It isn’t elitist to pronounce it “Noo-cle-ar”. But it certainly IS elitist to harp on someone for pronouncing it the other way as millions of people do. And the “millions of people” test is good enough for the lexicographers who made your dictionary.
If you insist on revising all pronunciation according to some arbitrary historical ideal, enjoy attending the “hros races” and doing the “brid dance”, since that’s how our English ancestors said it.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 am
Oh, for the love of Mike. The word is pronounced a couple of different ways. Give it a rest.
Can’t we just have our petty greivances?
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 am
The interesting point is that she said “nucular” on the day the McCain announced her, then said “nuclear” in her convention speech, because the handlers had spelled it out phonetically on the teleprompter. I assumed that was a campaign decision to separate her from Bush. Now she’s back to “nucular”, so has the campaign changed its mind, or did she rebel, or did she just forget?
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:48 am
I assumed that was a campaign decision to separate her from Bush.
Bush said “nuclear” during his convention speech in 2000, probably a decision by his handlers to insulate him from ridicule, but then was allowed to revert to “nukular” once he had been elected.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:53 am
Words are supposed to be pronounced as they are written.
Then I hope you make sure to enunciate the ‘l’ in colonel properly and are careful to distinguish between ‘woman’ and ‘women’ by changing the vowel in the second syllable. It’s just common sense, right?
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:04 am
I’m disappointed in Matt for harping on this. It’s unimportant and makes you sound pathetic. Should we judge your opinions on the typos you make every other post?
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Words are supposed to be pronounced as they are written.
Good night, nurse.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 am
To be even-handed about this, Walter Mondale also said ‘nuculer,’ for instance in the 1984 Presidential debates. (And if Palin had a blog, it probably wouldn’t be rotten with homophonic misspellings.)
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 am
Agreed, it’s a regional pronunciation. Let it be.
HW: It’s not elitist or prescriptivist to insist that letters are pronounced in the order they occur.
What about Wednesday? And as somebody else mentioned, February? Don’t worry, we can learn how to spell words even if we pronounce them funny. English is a wacky language, and we seem to be doing ok in the world despite that. But I pity people who learn it as a second language. And personally, I’d mourn the cultural loss if everybody in this country adopted the accent of the people on the teevee.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:49 am
I’ve read that the “nucular” pronunciation was orginally associated with Dwight Eisenhower, who was well aware that it was wrong but just couldn’t manage to pronounce the word correctly. His example sort of legitimized the mispronunciation.
It is alleged that the major divergence of English-speaking accents between the North American accents and British occurred during the reign of the German-speaking kings George I and George II in which the elite followed the king’s accent and pronunciations while speaking English, leading to the “favored accent” being the one that followed that of the leader.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Saying words correctly is elitist. As is proper use of adverbs.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Apparently it’s an affectation
I couldn’t bear to listen to the debate = that voice is too much like nails down a chalk board – but I’m told she pronounced it correctly later on.
so is this a double bluff to appear more ‘normal’ or did she pick up the right prompt card with New Clear written on it that time?
hard to tell
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Haukur,
I see no reason why we need to bastardize the language of Milton, Blake and Tyndale to cater to the illiteracy of George W. Bush and his friends.
There needs to be a limit to the dumbing-down of America.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Criticizing the use of common alternate pronunciations IS elitist. There’s plenty of substance to criticize in McCain and Palin. Don’t play into the GOP game of painting liberals as snobs.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Haukur,
“Colonel” is pronounced with an R bcause it comes from the Spanish “Coronel”, where it is also spelled with an R.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
LB:
Abbreviations, contractions and elisions don’t (see?) trouble me very much. But there’s a distinction between the normal pronunciation of ‘coxswain’ for instance, and pronouncing ‘ask’ as ‘axe’. Maybe it seems arbitrary to many people, but to me there’s a *big* distinction between elision and permutation. What do you think?
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Joseph Wheeler:
Getting good marks in school is also elitist. Discovering a vaccine for polio is elitist. Pitching a perfect game is elitist. Knowing how to fix an engine is elitist.
‘Elitist’ is a word sorely in need of rehabilitation. What’s wrong with being good at stuff?
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I don’t like the inflexible folks who insist on pronouncing the letters in the order they come.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Haukur:
Don’t get me started on ‘Febuary’ and ‘libary’!
It’s a pet peeve of mine that people so often write people off on account of their accents (particularly a Southern or Appalachian accent), but I can’t see the justification for mispronouncing words. I enjoy the cadences of African-American English, but the ‘ask’/'axe’ pronunciation needs to be called out for what it is: an error. You can’t excuse speech pathologies as mere regional variations.
One exemption I’d make: people should probably be allowed to mangle local proper names and family names as they see fit. What do you think?
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
One exemption I’d make: people should probably be allowed to mangle local proper names and family names as they see fit. What do you think?
No, hw, as soon as you make an exception then they run all over you. It’s no fun being a humorless scold on anything if you have to be flexible.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:04 pm
It’s a pet peeve of mine that people so often write people off on account of their accents (particularly a Southern or Appalachian accent)
Roy Blount (or Roy Blount quoting Dean Rusk) said you could never be president if you pronounced “fingers” as “fangers”.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:41 pm
So it seems like we have the freedom to pronounce words however we see fit. Wonderful. So I guess that means I can start pronouncing ‘Matthew Yglesias’ as “F–ing Idiot.”
Right?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:34 pm
The English language is elastic and forgiving. It evolves as culture evolves and embraces new contributions and innovations. That is natural and it is one of the language’s strengths. Some Shakespeare is very difficult for modern English readers and would be nearly unintelligible to modern ears to hear it spoken as it was in his time. Why? Because we have evolved and progressed. And we are better for it.
Tolerating variations in pronunciation is not the same, as “hw” claims, as being good at things, like getting good grades or making scientific breakthroughs. In fact, intolerance of linguistic variation is contrary to science and progress and achievement. It shows ignorance of history, inflexibility, and blind dogmatism.
The Bush/Palin pronunciation of nuclear is the pronunciation used by many, many people in this country. See wikipedia . The only good reason for objecting to the use, in my opinion, would be if the alternate use caused confusion. But that’s not the case here. And that’s not the case in most cases where language snobs get huffy.
I can’t convey how obnoxious it sounds to hear someone sneer with derision at someone who pronounces a word in a way that is commonly recognized and entirely understandable. It calls into question what kind of perfection the offended listener is seeking. In my experience, there are people who aspire to perfection for the purpose of progress and understanding (e.g., scientists, smart people) and then there are people who aspire to perfection for the purpose of establishing their cultural superiority (e.g., language snobs, elitists).
Is snickering about “nucular” the former or the latter?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I’m going to start caring about “nuculer” when people start saying comfortable instead of comfterbull.
Why are we comfortable with cumfterbull but go nuculer on nuclear?
BFD.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
“Nuclear” really is hard for some people to pronounce. It’s the only word in common English with the oo-kl-ee sequence. That’s quite a bit different from “pricklier”, because the ‘ih’ and ‘ee’ sounds are phonetically a lot more similar than ‘oo’ and ‘ee’.
In fact, in some languages, like Irish, it’s an inherent rule in the language that you can’t have that sequence of adjacent vowel sounds in a stressed/unstressed pattern.
Some years ago I worked with a very bright, articulate, highly educated man who just could not say “nuclear”. He knew “nucular” was “wrong”, but he could not get the word out right unless he said it as two words – new, clear.
In Ms Palin’s case, however, I suspect she says “nucular” because that’s how she learned to say it. She said “new-clear” in her convention speech when it was spelled out for her that way on the teleprompter.
This gets into the thorny issue of dialect and colloquialisms vs standard or formal speech. I tend to come down on the side of tolerance. I mean, we’re liberals, after all, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to demand tolerance of diversity in other areas then get our knickers in a bunch over legitimate regional, class and occupational differences in pronunciation, usage, and grammar.
On the other hand, there’s a generally accepted “standard” for American English, and I’m inclined to think that candidates for national office should speak it. So while I don’t have a problem with the entire village of Wasilla, AK saying “nucular” (if indeed they do), I have a problem with someone who wants to be President (which I assume she does) having so little exposure to the outside world that she has never learned the standard American pronunciation of a common and important word.
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Greylocks,
I’m certainly not a ‘liberal’, so I feel no need to humor the idea that everyone’s lifestyle choices- whether economic, sexual or linguistic- are equally valid.
I mean, really. If Palin can say ‘nucular’ for ‘nuclear’, then why can’t I pronounce “Matthew Yglesias” as “Metrosexual Airhead”?
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I’d like to think that I’ve mostly come to accept that, via linguistic drift, it’s become a valid pronunciation.
And yet, every time she said it, I found myself yelling at my television: “It’s New-CLEAR!”
But that’s just me. You know, one of those people who attributes all of human activity to climate change.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Why are we comfortable with cumfterbull but go nuculer on nuclear?
I don’t like cumfterbull, and I can’t stand “supposably.” I don’t much like nukular, either, but I’m willing to give it a pass, in part because it’s a scientific coinage, and mispronunciation of it falls into the same category as mispronouncing foreign words and phrases like coup de grace. I would prefer that candidates for national office should be held to a higher standard, though.
Also, Hector, there’s a difference between accepting variations in pronunciation, and acquiecing to the use of incorrect/descriptivist grammar. Variations in accents and use of vowels can be accepted and expected without changing the ultimate meaning or mucking up the written language. Grammar, however, exists for the specific purpose of giving rules that provides precise meaning, and accepting misuse of the rules as “valid variations” just makes something imprecise and more difficult to understand. So you can be a prescriptivist about language without getting all stressed about certain variants of pronunciation.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:58 am
I’m willing to bet that it can be explained as a variation on American English. Saying “nucular” is incorrect? According to who?
I’m going to quote an earlier commenter, greylocks:
“This gets into the thorny issue of dialect and colloquialisms vs standard or formal speech. I tend to come down on the side of tolerance. I mean, we’re liberals, after all, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to demand tolerance of diversity in other areas then get our knickers in a bunch over legitimate regional, class and occupational differences in pronunciation, usage, and grammar.”
I mean, this is a completely lame topic. And it’s a waste of time reading about it.
October 4th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I once heard about this blog that was full of typos and was written by someone who admitted to not being a good public speaker. i can’t seem to remember his name, but I am sure that he always pronounced nuclear correctly.
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