In the 21st Century, I have seen on TV, that some people in Australia have copied the George Bush and Scott Morrison's, incorrect pronunciation, of “nuclear”. Here I explain why the correct pronunciation is “new-clear”. The article in this this letter is taken from “The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations” by Charles Harrington Esler.
Barry Marshall 2023
Twitter: @barjammar
In summary, for “nuclear”, please say: “new-clear”
For practise, please say: new-clear three more times...
new-clear
new-clear
new-clear
From Esler’s Book
nuclear N(Y)OO-klee-ur. For Pete's sake, don't say NOO-kyuh-lur.
In his introduction to the fourth edition of the NBC
Handbook of Pronunciation
(1984),
veteran broadcaster
and
language
commentator
Edwin Newman remarks that when the nuclear age began in August 1945, so did the nucular
age
as well.
Ever since nuclear entered the national vocabulary (a hundred years after entering English in the 1840s) it has been mispronounced by millions
of educated and otherwise careful speakers, including scientists, lawyers, professors, and presidents of the United States. According
to Newman, Dwight D. Eisenhower "could not get it right"; Jimmy Carter, who had been an officer aboard
nuclear-powered submarines, pronounced it NOO kee-ur; and Walter Mondale,
in his 1984 bid for the presidency, repeatedly said NOO-kyuh-lur. "The word, correctly pronounced," writes Newman, "somehow is too much for a fair part of the population, and education and experience seem to have nothing to do with it." In The
Diabolical Dictionary of Modern English,
R. W. Jackson dryly echoes that sentiment
by defining nuclear simply as "nucyaler."
Newman's and Jackson's cynicism reminds me of a debate I once heard between William F. Buckley, Jr., and the philosopher Mortimer Adler on whether everyone is inherently "educable," or whether
some people, by
nature or by circumstance, are "ineducable." Of course, Adler,
as a teacher, was of the former opinion, and Buckley, who
earns his
living trying
to make
his ideological opponents look hopelessly dull and impervious to illumination, was of the latter.
I choose to believe that anyone in possession of physiologically normal organs of speech
and at least
half a brain is capable of pronouncing nuclear correctly. As R. W. Burchfield (1996) points out, "the spectacular blunder of pronouncing [nuclear] as if it were spelled nuc-u-lar' is
the result
of a tempting misassociation with the many words ending in -ular (circular, particular, cellular, secular, molecular, jocular, avuncular, etc.). This error is one of the ear and eye more than the tongue, and it has
persisted not because it is too difficult for some to say N(Y)OO-klee-ur but because they do not heed the spelling and hear the difference between
the proper and improper pronunciations ---which brings us to the matter
of correction.
Those who do hear the
mispronunciation and who say the word right (still
a substantial
majority of us, I think) are understandably reluctant to
correct those who do not. Can you imagine, as Edwin Newman puts it, "how other and lesser members of the Carter administration found it tactful to pronounce [ nuclear ] during Cabinet meetings," when President Carter and Vice
President Mondale were mangling the word, albeit unwittingly,
at every turn?*see footnote In Shaw's Pygmalion, the
arrogant dialectician Henry Higgins "experiments" without the slightest compunction
on his social inferior, the "guttersnipe" Liza Doolittle, teaching her to speak
Received Standard English so he can win a bet. But
who else feels comfortable correcting the pronunciation
of anyone but a child without being asked to do so? It
is a tricky matter even to correct
family members and friends, and so with
a neighbor, acquaintance, or
coworker, most of us will not - and should not - presume to offer an unsolicited opinion. (Writing
a book on the subject is different, for a book lays open
its opinions only to those who freely
choose to read it, and who are equally free to accept
or reject the advice it contains without
compromising their dignity.)
On the other
hand, we should and do reserve the right, in matters of
language, to speak as we see fit, to decide for ourselves
what is acceptable and unacceptable, and to pass tacit judgment on our peers. When
I began writing this book nearly every
person with whom I discussed its contents
asked (and
in some cases implored)
me to decry NOO-kyuh-lur, which
made me wonder whether it might be
the Most Disdained and Detestable
Beastly Mispronunciation in the
language.
People who care at all
about how words are pronounced (with the exception
of linguists and lexicographers)
seem to reserve their most vehement antipathy for NOO-kyuh-lur, and it comes as no
surprise to me that a whopping 99 percent of the usage panel of Morris & Morris's
Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (1985) condemned it. In usage notes
devoted to a lame defense
of the mispronunciation, M-W 10 (1993) and RHWC (1997) both admit that NOO-kyuh-lur is "disapproved of by many,"
yet by just how many it is impossible
to determine. On behalf of the indeterminate many who pronounce the word correctly, then, I appeal to the inadvertent
many who do not: listen, and be errant no longer. Molecular comes from molecule, and particular comes from particle, but
there is no nucule to support nucular. Nuclear comes from nucleus- N(Y)OO-klee-ys -which is almost never mispronounced. If you can say nucleus and you can say nuke (the informal verb meaning to attack with nuclear weapons or, humorously, to microwave), then the proper pronun ciation of nuclear is but a suffix away.
For more on correcting others' pronunciation, see gondola. Also see arctic, cupola, diminution, February, irrelevant, jewelry, Realtor.
*footnote:
* In I Must Say (1988), Newman writes, "Those who make it nucular must
hear themselves saying it and must hear others who don't. How do they account
for the difference? Do they think the others are wrong, and are they too polite
to correct them? Evidently they never
look up the word in a dictionary. Maybe
the word 'muscular' leads them astray, or 'circular' or 'molecular.' Only a fiend would distribute a circular
written by a molecular biologist and recommending a muscular nuclear policy. It is embarrassing to hear Russians and other
foreigners snapping off the word as it should be when so many Americans cannot
manage it"
