Reply #11: Typo vs. "thinko"

[frustrated_lefty]

Interesting read:
Going Nucular

"There are two kinds of linguistic missteps, the typos and the thinkos. Typos are the processing glitches that intercede between a thought and its expression. They can make you look foolish, but they aren't really the signs of an intellectual or ethical deficiency, the way thinkos are. It's the difference between a sentence that expresses an idea badly and a sentence that expresses a bad idea."

<snip>

"On the face of things, "nucular" is a typo par excellence. People sometimes talk about Bush "stumbling" over the word, as if this were the same kind of articulatory problem that turns February into "febyooary." But nuclear isn't a hard word to pronounce the way February is -- try saying each of them three times fast. Phonetically, in fact, nuclear is pretty much the same as likelier, and nobody ever gets that one wrong. ("The first outcome was likular than the second"? ) That "nucular" pronunciation is really what linguists call a folk etymology, where the unfamiliar word nuclear is treated as if it had the same suffix as words like molecular and particular. It's the same sort of process that turns lackadaisical into "laxadaisical" and chaise longue into chaise lounge."

<snip>

"But which of these stories explains why Bush says "nucular"? Most people seem to assume he's just one of those bubbas who don't know any better. But that's hard to credit. After all, Bush didn't have to learn the word nuclear in middle age, the way Eisenhower did. He must have heard it said correctly thousands of times when he was growing up -- not just at Andover, Yale, and Harvard, but from his own father, who never seems to have had any trouble with the word. But if Bush's "nucular" is a deliberate choice, is it something he picked up from the Pentagon wise guys? Or is it a faux-bubba pronunciation, the sort of thing he might have started doing at Yale by way of playing the Texas yahoo to all those earnest Eastern dweebs?"

"Actually, there would be an easy way to tell -- just see how Bush pronounces nuclear in phrases like nuclear family and nuclear medicine. If he says "nucular" all the time, then it's most likely a faux-bubba thing. But if he only says "nucular" for weapons, it's probably a bit of borrowed Pentagon swagger. I'll be keeping my ears peeled."