The Nucular List–Words we love to misfronounce

A new list that we will be working on over the holidays.  Words that we mispronounce.  Maybe it’s one your dad mispronounces or almost everyone.  Give me your suggestions.  Top 10 best mispronounced words.

Some questions about the alphabet

I don’t know why I think about these things, but I have some questions about our alphabet.   Typically I would google such things, but I decided I would just ramble and rant a little bit and let people who know stuff or want to google provide the answers.  I’ll write it out so that we will have a reference:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

ay bee cee dee ee eff gee aich(?) i jay kay el em en o pee queue (?) arr ess tee yoo vee double-yoo eks why(?) zee

1) We will start with the most obvious of questions.  Why is ‘w’ called a double u?  If you were to put two u’s together, it would sound like an extended u, it wouldn’t make a wuh sound.  Furthermore, it is shaped like two v’s, wouldn’t double-v be more appropriate?  Why not just go with what seems to be the primary pattern of pronunciation and go with wee.

(Sidenote, do not reference the alphabet song as a reason or answer for the questions.  Pretty sure that the song was created to fit the alphabet, not the opposite)

2) Speaking of “wee,” what is the pattern as to whether or not we pronounce the name of the letter with vowels before or after the consonant sound? (What are you talkng about?) For example, el versus bee.  Why is it not lee or ebb?  At a minimum, those should be the only two choices.  Suddenly for no good reason we have jay and kay.  I guess they make it jay to not get it confused with gee.  But why kay?  Did they not want jay to get lonely?  Don’t even get me started on h.  How do you come up with that?  I imagine a group of people coming up with the names for our letters and someone says, “OK, next we have hee.”  Then someone with my sense of humor says, “No, no, no.  Let’s have fun and name it something that is completely unrelated to the sound it makes.  How about aich?”  I’m sure that was the same guy that came up with double-u.  Wouldn’t it be simpler if we had named all of the consonants with the sound followed by ee?  I understand that there would be some problems with that, most of them minor.  We would have a hard time prounouncing xee differently than zee.  We would just have to work harder.  We would have to make an exception for Q since you can’t have an ee sound immediately after a q.  It would have to be quee, pronounced kwee.  I’m fine with that.  Also, g would have to be pronounced with a hard g, like ghee so it doesn’t get confused with jee.  The biggest problem would be ess and cee.  That would make them both pronounced cee.  This leads to another question:

3) Can’t we just get rid of C?  It’s primary duties are already being shouldered by two other letters.  If it is a hard c, k is working fine.  If it is a soft c, s is doing great.  Unless, I’m missing something (how is that possible?), the only problem is with the digraph ch. (I almost called this a dipthong, thanks as always, Google.  A digraph is different than a blend.  Did you know that? You do now)  This presents us with an opportunity to replace cee with the newer, much cooler chee.  While we still have 26 letters, some of our writing is simpler in that we now have one letter instead of two. Imagine how cool chee would be if we got to design it. It could be even cooler than the ampersand (&) which is, I will have to admit, pretty cool.

In conclusion, I am willing to make an exception on the consonant change for R and Y.  I can make the exception for Y because it is a consonant and sometimes a vowel, so it can be its own category.  Does anyone else remember growing up that we used to be taught the vowels were a e i o and u and sometimes Wand y?  They stopped doing that after a while.  I think mostly because no one knew under what circumstances w was a vowel.  It certainly never makes a vowel sound.  NERD ALERT! I figured it out in seminary while I was studying Hebrew.  It involves open and closed syllables and how that affects long and short vowel pronunciations.  If you want to know more about that, holler at me. 

I am willing to make an exception for R, because saying it makes you sound like a pirate, and well, pirates are cool.

Best Movie Villains

Post your comments here on the latest list, Best Movie Villains

http://www.cloften.com/?page_id=106

Best Movie Villains

Ok, we’ve all got Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader and the Joker on the list.  Who else ya got?  Let me know here.

Words That Aren’t Words

Here it is.  The list of non-words.  http://www.cloften.com/?page_id=61 Let me know what you think.  Post your comments on this page below.

Thanks,

Cloften

The “Ain’t” List

This week’s list that we will create are the best words that aren’t words. Post your suggestions here and we’ll make a top 10 list.  Clearly “ain’t” is at or near the top of the list. What have you got?

2 thoughts on the LSU/Arkansas debacle

This is two thoughts out of 100.

The first is one that I have shared before.  I wish I didn’t care so much.  I wish that I could have just gone to bed.  I wish that there hadn’t been a giant knot in my stomach.  I know in my head that it doesn’t really effect my life in any tangible way, but that doesn’t seem to translate into normal behavior.  It’s not that I enjoy being crazy.  It is what I am.  What’s worse is that I have turned my wife into the same kind of crazy.  She was just as mad (almost) as I was.

Second, I think that it is too easy to blame the kicker, Tejada.  This is what we do as sports fans.  We blame the person who messed up last.  “Tejada lost the game for us.”  Really? His 3 made field goals and 3 extra points are one of the reasons that we made it to overtime.  How many more missed opportunities were there?  How many passes could have been completed that would have given us more points?  Any of LSU’s drives could have been stopped, most notably the last one before regulation.  What we remember is who did something wrong last.  Had we won it would have been as a team.  We lost as a team.  (Did you notice that I said “we”?  What did I do?  I think this is just further evidence of point #1. I am too emotionally invested in this.  Don’t plan on this changing any time soon.)

Best Movies

Check out the lists tab for new lists of all sorts of stuff.  For now, all there is best movies.  Let me know what you think.

http://www.cloften.com/?page_id=32

Test Video and Coke Zero

This is both a test and an example of my own brand of randomness.

Lie to Me

Lie to Me is the best show on TV that you are probably not watching.  It is a show about a group of deception experts that get hired to solve various cases where they are trying to determine who’s lying and why.  It is clever, smart and funny and Tim Roth is great.

Anyway, the downside to this show is that you start using what you’re learning.  They talk about ways that people mask lies and then you’re hanging out with your friends and you see them do some of those things.  (If you start watching the show, this is your warning.  Do not use your new knowledge on your friends and family)  The classic one that people use all the time is this one.  You ask them a yes/no question and they want the answer to be yes, but really they are thinking no.  For example, “how was your visit with your family last week?”  They then make this face:

Then they start nodding their head and in high pitch voice, they say, “good. . . It was good.”

I just want you to know that if you pull that on me, I know you’re lying.  I won’t necessarily call you out.  It depends on how well I know you.  You need to practice not making that face and going with the high pitch voice.  It’s a dead give away.

Again, I don’t mean to use this on you, but I just can’t help it.  Lie to Me:  It’s fun and educational.

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