[OT] The Apocalypse is Officially Upon Us

[Tom Lento]

[Q]Jacob '06 Wrote:

It also has nucular as an accepted pronunciation for nuclear. The wonderful things our president does for our speaking skills.[/q]

Wouldn't be the first time.  Ever say normalcy instead of normality?  You can thank Warren G. Harding for that one.

Maybe it'll be different, since it's 8 years instead of 4, but GHW Bush's mangling of the word "harrassment" during the Clarence Thomas hearings seems like it's fallen out of common usage, even though just about every newscaster started mispronouncing it.  Seems like they've stopped, but maybe there haven't been as many sexual harrassment cases in the news lately.

Am I the only one who thinks of Homer Simpson every time Bush says nucular?  "Nucular, Lisa.  It's pronounced nucular."

[nyc94]

[Q]Tom Lento Wrote:
Am I the only one who thinks of Homer Simpson every time Bush says nucular?  "Nucular, Lisa.  It's pronounced nucular."[/q]

And Marge saying to Lisa, "It doesn't take a nucular scientist to pronounce foilage."

[Trotsky]

People who insist on correct pronunciation are giving comfort to the enemy and hate America.

[Rosey]

[Q]
It also has nucular as an accepted pronunciation for nuclear. The wonderful things our president does for our speaking skills.[/q]
"Nucular" as a pronunciation long predates Bush's presidency.  I recall my grandmother using it at least 15 years ago.  It doesn't even seem to be a southern thing, since she was from Long Island.

Kyle

[min]

krose is right. I recall hearing on NPR sometime ago that president Eisenhower also pronounced "nucular." I guess Dubya is not the first president to say nucular, and likely not to be the last.... :-P

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]min Wrote:

 krose is right. I recall hearing on NPR sometime ago that president Eisenhower also pronounced "nucular." I guess Dubya is not the first president to say nucular, and likely not to be the last....  [/q]

Didn't Carter say it as well?

[min]

yes, but with a georgia accent.  read the npr commentary here:

http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/nucular.html

[Tom Lento]

[Q]krose Wrote:
"Nucular" as a pronunciation long predates Bush's presidency.  I recall my grandmother using it at least 15 years ago.  It doesn't even seem to be a southern thing, since she was from Long Island.
[/q]

I wonder if that pronounciation started with an earlier president, or if it's just a scattered regional pronounciation - like coupon (koo-pon vs que-pon - sorry, I don't know a better way to write that out).  

Normalcy for normality definitely started with Harding, but something like nucular/nuclear is harder to pin down.  I'm not at all surprised it predates GW Bush, since the Simpsons episodes in question were before his presidency.

[ninian '72]

Jimmy Carter also used this pronunciation, even more surprising, given his background:

"Carter began his career as a naval engineer after receiving a B.S. degree from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946. In 1950 the navy decided to build its first ship since the end of World War II and Lt. Carter, who had become a submariner, was assigned to represent the navy with the precommissioning engineering for a new type of submarine. After the navy decided to build two nuclear submarines, he was selected for this service. He was assigned first to the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C, then to Schenectady, N.Y. as senior officer of the crew of the "Sea Wolf," which was under construction. He took graduate work from Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics, supervised the training of the crew, and assisted with the construction of the power plant."

(from: http://www.engology.com/engpg5ajimmycarter.htm)

[Trotsky]

[Q]ninian '72 Wrote:
 Jimmy Carter also used this pronunciation, even more surprising, given his background[/q]

Not really "surprising," since the pronunciation is regional and doesn't connote ignorance (in the same way that Cantabs can't pronounce "Harvard" correctly, and residents of the state of Washington throw an "r" in).

Saying Bush is a moron because he can't pronounce "nuclear" is like saying Stalin was evil because he had a moustache.  The assessment is correct, but the given reason is irrelevant.

[KeithK]

May the Lord bless me such that some day I am half as moronically successful in life...

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

May the Lord forgive you for using that success to cause American soldiers to die for a misplaced ideology or for outright corporate greed.

[Erica]

It obviously didn't start with GWB. There are plenty of people that pronounce nuclear like that. It seems like just a lazy pronuciation stemming from dialect.  People brush it off as just being his accent, but the reason why it bothers me is because it's completely random. If you reverse the n and the u, you have unclear. Have you ever heard anyone pronounce that "uncular."  It's just the word "nuclear" that the accent seems to affect, and it seems like a lazy thing more than anything.

[David Harding]

Hmm.  There is no mention of anything special on either team's web site account of the game.
http://www.flyersbaseball.com/game_stories/archive_details.asp?ID=288
http://ism.infinityprosports.com/Uploads/68//NewsManager/Notes/GameNotes.7.17.05.pdf

[Jordan 04]

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cs-050628flyersitem,1,372812.story?coll=cs-home-headlines