hard to think that fabric, florist, thug, legend and fragile
Professor Wells also knows enough to realise that if all
were “words of doubtful pronunciation”, but there they
the world says ski or kil'ometre, there is nothing that can
are. Would we now agree, though, with the
be done about it. That will not stop us all playing the
pronunciations represented by 'pomgrannat, 'vaitamin,
game of spotting our least favourite pronunciations and
swayve, shee (for ski), kwaaf (for quaff), 'flaksid (for
perhaps subjecting the perpetrators to excoriating (or
flaccid), 'gibberish with a hard g, 'cundit (for conduit),
coruscating as people say by mistake) criticism.
arti'san or 'teenet (for tenet)?
For my taste, the Mrs Grundies of the Queen’s English
I have never met anyone who pronounces ski as shee. If
Society, for example, protest too much. But language is
someone did, interlocutors might be puzzled. On the
there to be played with, and a game is not worth playing
without rules.
Taken from The Telegraph, by
Christopher Howse, 29 Oct
2010
other hand, most people pronounce flaccid as flassid,
and they ought not to. These things matter.
That is why some listeners to Today yesterday morning
detected a certain trahison des clercs in the moderate
opinions of Professor John Wells, the successor of
Daniel Jones (alias Henry Higgins) at University College,
London. He wouldn’t say kil'ometre himself, he admitted,
but that was because he was getting on a bit. (He is 71.)
He knew better than to say mischievious, but he
breathed no word of criticism of those who did.