Nu-cyu-lar, dammit!

[nancylebov]

While the accent I learned growing up in the middle class in northern Delaware is generally considered respectable, there's one deviation, and it seems to get worse as the years go by. Somehow (no doubt as a proof of intellectual inferiority), I got the impression that the adjective for the stuff in the middle of atoms is pronounced nu-cyu-lar rather than nuke-cle-ar. So small, and yet so important.....

So far as I can tell, as recently as twenty years ago and maybe less, this was no big deal. And then, for no reason I can see, a pronunciation which still seems entirely normal to me became proof of stupidity.

Suppose I pronounce it nuke-clee-ar....does that mean I've actually know more about protons, neutrons, and the details of their time with each other?

Does anyone know the history of how this got to be such an important marker of whatever it's a marker of?

And yes, when I think of this I count myself very fortunate that it's one word rather than my whole accent.

For a small casual study about the pronunciation of this crucial word, check out The Duck of Minerva, a blog I'm definitely going to be following.

Blog clue thanks to richardthinks.

Comments

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Geoffrey Nunberg discusses the question here (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=673) on Language Log, and in somewhat more depth in the title essay of his Going Nucular.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Oh - the original "Going Nucular" essay is archived here (http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/nucular.html).

[avram]

I think the Bush presidency is to blame for a lot of it. A lot of intellectual liberals (or even those who aren't very intellectual, but like to think they are) feel a lot of resentment that an obviously anti-intellectual, and apparently stupid, candidate did so well against a bright intellectual in 2000. Bush's use of the "nuculer" pronunciation has become a symbol of this resentment.

Bill Clinton would occasionally use that pronunciation too, but nobody remarked on it because he wasn't an anti-intellectual.

The first nationally notable person to use the "nuculer" pronunciation was Dwight Eisenhower, who beat Adlai Stevenson out in the 1952 election on a similar anti-intellectual campaign.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the history.

The Bush presidency is to blame for the damage it's done, but it's not entirely on the hook for people's stupid reactions to it.

[jimtbari.livejournal.com]

I recall Jimmy Carter's being mocked for that pronunciation (and Wikipedia agrees with me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucular) that he (and Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton) used it at least), so that's about thirty years ago.

Your link didn't show up; looks like you didn't have anything between the <a ... > part and the </a> part.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Fixed. It was a slightly different error (the name and an extra close tag outside the link tags) with the same effect.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

When I hear Carter say it, it sounds like he's saying "nucl'ar" -- eliding the penultimate vowel. Since he used to work with the stuff, I figured he was entitled.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"Nu-ku-lar" is wrong. The people who say "nukular" instead of "new-clear" are the people who not only don't know how to pronounce it, but don't know anything about it, either.

It's not that by pronouncing it correctly that you know more about protons, neutrons, and half-lives. It's that by pronouncing it *incorrectly* you trumpet your association with those who *don't* know anything about it.

It's like using "kind" instead of "species" or "pro-life" instead of "anti-woman" or turning purple in the presence of pthenolthaline. It's an indicator.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

"Nu-ku-lar" is wrong. The people who say "nukular" instead of "new-clear" are the people who not only don't know how to pronounce it, but don't know anything about it, either.

It's not that by pronouncing it correctly that you know more about protons, neutrons, and half-lives. It's that by pronouncing it *incorrectly* you trumpet your association with those who *don't* know anything about it.

Sorry, that turns out not to be the case.

I've been sitting in the audience of hundreds of scientific and policy seminars for over thirty years.

Quite a number of scientists and policy professionals pronounce "nuclear" incorrectly. They are, fortunately, not a majority. But they are not stupid or ignorant, where nuclear phenomena are concerned.

Take a look at The Duck of Minerva posting linked above. Her findings are consistent with my experience.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

If you read the thread from Language Log, you'll find that it simply isn't true that only people who are ignorant of physics say nucular.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Sorry but "newkewlar" bugs me the same way "lyberry" does. It's spelled "nuclear" (or "library") and that's how it's pronounced. Maybe that's being snobby, but that's just how I was brought up.

-- Steve thinks we have few enough English words spelt they way they're pronounced that they're worth preserving. Think of the ESL children!

[avram]

How are you on people who say "Feb-you-ary" or "cumf-ter-bul"?

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

I grew up saying 'lie-berry', 'feb-you-ary', 'cumf-ter-bul', 'nu-kyu-ler', 'poim', 'chil-qun' - children - where q is a glottal stop, yall - which i still use, among many other standard-for-where-i-grew-up but non-standard-in-the-prestige-dialect usages. In our early years of school, and notably in grade 3, it was very much stressed to us that we ought not write as we speak, unless writing in dialect, with *shudder* Samuel Clemens, as Mark Twain, was held up as a good example of such.

Much as i dislike most of Twain's works, yes, they demonstrate the good use of Southern dialect in literature.

"We say yall, but must write 'you all', with or without a hyphen" was a point driven home to the point of beating a dead horse at us. They taught is that 'yon' and 'yonder' are not used in 'standard American', and that 'pun-kin' inexplicable had an 'mp' in the middle. These stick out in my mind because it took me years to wrap my head around those concepts.

Reading had taught us that English is written as spoken, but years was spent teaching us that English is not written as we spoke it, unless aiming for local color.

I couldn't say /ch/ nor /k/ as a child, and spent years in speach therapy, during which my accent was mostly, but by all menas not entirely, levelled to a fairly generic-ish Mid-Atlantic dialect. It's part of why i enunciate better than most, and the reason i can do announcer voice so well. *sigh*

[avram]

I like yon and yonder, and kinda wish they were part of standard English. Though if I get the usage right, they presume that the speaker and audience are in the same physical space, which makes it hard to get them into phone and online discourse.

[fallenpegasus]

My own southern dialect comes back on it's own whenever I'm speaking to someone who has one, or if I've been spending any time in a region where it is common.

Looking down on those having a southern accent is one of the only "Acceptable Bigotries" left that "proper intellectual progressives" blindly wallow in, and I'm constantly annoyed by the hyporcracy of it.

Even now that I usually speak with a standard northwest accent, I still use y'all, because it's a perfectly good word, with a meaning that this missing from Standard English, and is certaintly better sounding than its competition from the upper midwest, "Yous'n's".

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My impression was that the prejudice against southern accents faded somewhat with Jimmy Carter, and that at least some liberals have become aware of their regional prejudices as a problem. Have you noticed any changes?

[fallenpegasus]

I'm not seeing any improvement.

If a "good progressive" wants to affect a ignorant outlook to ridicule some statement, what do they do when they quote the statement to ridicule it? Often, by saying it with a souther n or texan accent.

[avram]

Yeah, I hear this a lot too.

BTW, are Texan accents not southern? I mean, I'm aware that each part of the south has its own accent (heck, the different boros of NYC have different accents, and we've probably all seen My Fair Lady, as well as that video where a woman does 21 different accents, starting with three very distinct different London accents), but the way you phrased it implies some sort of separation there.

[fallenpegasus]

Of course there is a seperation. There are several different Texan accents, and an even larger several different Southern regional and class accents.

Heck, there are 3 regional accents in just Utah. And I can hear them all, and can mimic two of them. (Well, "mimic" isnt the right term, one of them is one of my native accents.)

[fallenpegasus]

Ah. I see what you mean.

The question as to whether "Texas" is part of "The South", well, the answer to that is strongly "no", and strongly "yes", and which side you stand one depends largely on whether you are from either place, or from some remove away...

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

February mispronounced bugs me too... either folks around me don't mangle comfortable or I miss it, though.

-- Steve wishes he was perfectly consistent, but realises he's probably not.

[boxofdelights]

When you say they "don't mangle comfortable", do you mean that they pronounce it with four syllables, or that you don't mind the three-syllable version?

[fallenpegasus]

The people who consider it a mark of stupidity, are stupid.

They tend to be the same people who like to make quips like "a language is a dialect with an army" and who are freezingly contempuious of ethnic prejudice.

Except for their own hatreds, of course. Those are entirely reasonable and ok.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I realize you said "tend to". I do believe a language is a dialect with an army, and believe that enjoying or ignoring ethnic prejudice is a serious problem. (The subject has recently gotten more complicated.)

I try to apply that standard in all directions.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Do you find the right as annoying as the left, and if not, why not?

[fallenpegasus]

Just as annoying. Just in different ways.

I don't feel the need so much to join the online chorus of all the other people being annoyed by the right, because that would just be joining a large chorus.

[avram]

The very person from whom I first heard that saying about languages and dialects agrees with me that "nuculer" is just a dialectical difference that doesn't imply ignorance or stupidity.

[fallenpegasus]

It's wonderful to see a refreshing lack of hypocracy on that point.

It's surprisingly rare.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I find the "nu-cyu-lar" pronunciation irritating, and have often complained about it.

But I love you anyway.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Say what you will, people are prone to assume that well-spoken people with large vocabularies are much smarter than they actually are. (God knows I've benefited a lot from this prejudice over the course of my life so far.) Pronunciation is part of this perception--a large vocabulary used badly (e.g., with "incorrect" pronunciation) can give the impression that the person is just attempting to fool people into thinking he/she's smart--and people are really harsh to those who appear to be trying to fool them.

But in this particular case, I don't think that the problem is with the word "nuclear" per se. It's with the fact that "everyone" think "nuke-clea-ar" is the correct pronunciation--and then George W. Bush pronounced it the other way in public. I suspect that the identification of this particular usage with Bush, and the detestation of his policies in general, has tarred the prounciation "nu-cyu-lar" with a worse taint of perceived stupidity and wrongness than would otherwise be the case.

Whether this phenomenon provides one with yet another reason to hate Bush, or serves as an example of when not to make snap judgments of a person because of particular attributes, I leave as an exercise for the reader.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I've tried to tone down my status reactions to dialect. I'm not sure how successful I've been, but what spooks me about the species I'm stuck in is that when I talk about this and explain that I'm concerned that I might discount something I'd rather hear because of status considerations, people react as though I'm being weirdly idealistic rather than practical.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

You work very hard on evaluating people and ideas rationally, so I can see why you're distressed that so many of your fellow humans do not.

I suspect you get the reaction you're troubled by because most people intuitively understand how tough it is to override snap judgments based on dialect, and intuitively downgrade their expectations of their fellow humans' behavior accordingly. That doesn't mean you should change *your* expectations, though--somebody has to hold the rest of us to a higher standard. :-)

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

For a random data point, I remember seeing a cartoon in a National Lampoon that showed a chain link fence with a sign: "NOBODY WHO SAYS 'NUCULAR' PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT."

And since I have that issue open, there was also one of a picnicking couple, and the wife is saying, "Harold, pick up your Twinkie wrapper! There's an Indian crying over there!" (which there is).

[landley.livejournal.com]

Back in 1998 the Simpsons had an episode where Homer wound up in charge of a nuclear submarine, and stopped and "corrected" the pronunciation of the crew as a running gag:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson_Tide

The word is spelled nuclear, and comes from the "nucleus" of an atom which is never pronounced "the nukulus of an atom" by anybody with any actual technical knowledge in the area. The incorrect pronunciation has basically been a clear sign that the speaker doesn't know where the word comes from, and for somebody with actual access to the technology to say it is outright creepy.

If you can't pronounce "nuclear", you shouldn't have your finger on the button.

Rob

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Did you follow the Duck of Minerva and Language Log links? There are actual nuclear physicists who pronounce it "nukular". Language is influenced by etymology and spelling, but not ruled by them.

I see it as a changing consensus, and people who think their taste in propriety has moral force are definitely part of the story. This doesn't mean they win reliably, or should.

[captain-button.livejournal.com]

Did you follow the Duck of Minerva and Language Log links?

This is the Internet, where actually reading the primary source is bad form.

< /snark>

[landley.livejournal.com]

> Did you follow the Duck of Minerva and Language Log links?

Yup. I also grew up on KMR, Kwajalein Missile Range, where my father worked designing intercontinental ballistic missile guidance and tracking systems. My parents met when my father and my mother's father worked together on the Apollo program in Florida. I grew up with the people who _did_ nuclear missiles, and none of them said "nucular". At the time I was under the impression that one famous southern politician had gotten it wrong but that the mispronunciation had died out around the time of the McCarthy witch hunts. (Heck, even Checkov in Star Trek 4 only pronounced "Wessels" wrong, he got the "Nuclear" part just fine.)

Then along comes El Shrubbo with his "dumb is good, smart people are evil, evolution didn't happen" crowd repopularizing the mispronunciation. And it had to be intentional: the guy was playing dumb to pander to his base. (He also _is_ stupid, but he hams it up as part of his "Texan hick" character when the was born in connecticut and went to Yale.) The guy spent eight years doing politically motivated firings, and doing things like trying to get Nasa to officially deny global warming. I'm not at all surprised that people funded by him took up the mispronunciation as a way of brown nosing.

I don't ordinarily care about the pronunciation of words, but this is a bushism. The _only_ reason for the resurgence of this pronunciation is because of Bush's crowd.

Rob

[(Anonymous)]

It seems very important to me, if it's actually true, that pentagon folk say "nucular missiles" and "nuclear families." I'm not sure what to conclude, though, probably that it has jumped from being about regional accents to being a shibboleth, probably on both sides. Those whose accents don't match their allies' are punished for not paying enough attention to these games.