Aino Minako-chan

Sorry, but christ on a cracker, this article made me steaming mad. In case you can't read it, some woman goes off about 10 mispronunciations that annoy her, such as realtor being pronounced as "real-uh-ter", nuclear being pronounced as "nu-cu-lar", and supposed to being pronouced as "suppose to". She claims that she may be more sensitive than most people due to her "unnatural affinity for linguistics" in college, but her reasoning is so incredibly idiotic and so amazingly lacking in linguistic understanding that it makes me want to strangle her. Most modern linguists would agree that spoken language and the way that people actually use langauge are more important than written or prescribed forms, but author Bowers throws this out the window and appears to think that her (possibly 50 year old) grammar textbook and spelling (SPELLING!) have it all right. Okay, you know what? I'm so mad that I'm going to talk about her points one at a time:


Long story short, I appreciate good grammar and general pronunciation rules for their ability to make sure that other people know what you're talking about. (It's like, say, the rules of poker. If everyone knows the rules to Texas Hold 'em, things go much smoother and it means that anyone can come and go from your poker table and still have a good time. But if you have a group of friends who like to play, say, 13 card poker with 7's high and using the Jokers as non-wild cards, and you weren't really planning to invite casual gamers to your game anyway, I say go for it.)

However I hate grammar nazis. Grammar nazis who claim to be "linguists" make me want to throw something. Here's a basic rule for you: If you treat your prescribed rules as unshakable law, you are not a linguist. You are an English major. Simple as that.