Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Please say "new clear" when you read "nuclear"

 

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

See YouTube examples here

In summary, for “nuclear”, please say: “new-clear”
For practise, please say: new-clear three more times...

new-clear

new-clear

new-clear

From Eslers 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"

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