"... when america ist devastated and laid to waste by nucular holocaust, these are the skills that are going to save them. not fingerpainting or home economics or "what is the capitol of texas?" ..."
i thought only airforce generals, wwII-era-presidents and homer simpson use the word nucular?
George W. Bush isn't a WII-era president. Also, I hear international affairs commentator and NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman say it a lot.
shareLol, yeah I head that too. It kinda bugs me every time I hear it.
shareI also recall Robin Williams pronouncing it nucular in his Live at the Met show. It's not really incorrect, it's just an accent/dialect thing. Quite a few people say it like that. Probably all of texas...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucular
No, it's not an accent, it's incorrect pronunciation. And I'm pretty sure Harrison Ford is saying it that way on purpose, as just one of many subtle signs of Allie's hypocrisy.
http://moviesonthemind.blogspot.com/
I agree with mrliteral. I got the impression that the actor was intentionally mispronouncing the word "nuclear," although I wasn't sure what was behind it.
shareIt's an accent. I one hundred percent guarantee it. It's like the people who say diabetes as Diabetus. Just because it's not how you say it doesn't mean it's wrong.
share[deleted]
no, its certainly not an accent. it started out as an error, but it was used by so many well known personalities since the beginning of the nuclear age, around WWII, in media, politics, military, ... that it has become somewhat accepted nowadays.
sharePretty sure Harrison pronounces it "nucular" in Six Days Seven Nights too, the line being something like "They could find a nucular explosion if they were lookin' for it."
shareMake it 3/3 then because Harrison also pronounces it "nuculear" in Indy 4. I think we have the makings of a classic youtube video now.
shareSeveral of my coworkers pronounce heighth, it gives me the creeps, like a slithery misplaced lisp. It is no more correct to pronounce nucular, it's all speech laziness.
***So I've seen 4 movies/wk in theatre for a 1/4 century, call me crazy?**
That "heighth" thing used to bug me too but I got over it. Languages evolve this way. They are, after all, applying (wrongly I suppose) the "gth" rule (length, width). "Nuclear" is a weird sort of word for English anyway. But there are plenty of words that aren't pronounced much at all like are spelled. Try "colonel" for example.
shareIt is not just an accent/dialect thing. It is incorrect. It is a mispronunciation. It is a demonstration of one's ignorance. If all of Texas says it that way then..... what does that say about what they're displaying when they do?
The accent/dialect thing is why Texans pronounce 'worse' as 'wuss' and 'purse' as 'puss' and 'horse' as 'hoss'. Texans are not the only ones in the world to completely disregard the letter r and change the sounds of vowels. That is what happens in an accent/dialect thing.
What happens with ignoramuses and the word 'nuclear', however, is NOT a matter of accent, or dialect. It is nothing short of the demonstration of a person's ignorance on the matter. It comes from learning to read not by learning how to sound out a word from the letters used to make up a word, but by learning to read by "that's how somebody else said it when I first learned how to say it, and I ain't got no reason not to be a complete copycat".
Inserting an entire syllable between the c and the l of nuclear and disregarding the entire syllable which comes from the letter e of the same word is nothing short of a lack of correct intelligence.
Luckily for Harrison Ford, as an actor, he could potentially blame his mispronunciation on the script. As for Texans, however..... those who cannot already should probably learn to read better.
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>**Dash the Neighbors! And, dash the expense!"
So what exactly is the difference between a regional dialect and incorrect pronunciation?
The english language is full of words that originally were prononced differently or evolved out of another language's pronunciation. Language changes and evolves, and so does the way we express it. If one evolution is to pronounce "nuclear" as "nucular", why is that any more wrong than the hundreds of other words we say day to day which don't match thier original pronunciation?
Yup.
There is for example aluminium, which the americans pronounce aluminum and this has spread to Canada.
... and Dubya!
... but Allie Fox was a practical man; he wouldn't have been interested in the theory of how language is used, as long as he could communicate effectively to finish whatever job he felt needed completing... This linguistic mistake fit his character, and was probably intentional.
"I've been turned down more times than the beds at the Holiday Inn; I still try"