Verbs

“Pronounciation”

Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns, Verbs

I frequently hear this and occasionally see this.

Problem:
“Pronounciation” is a misspelling and mispronunciation that makes the writer or speaker sound dumb.

Explanation:
“Pronounciation” is an ignorant conversion of the verb “pronounce” into a noun.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “pronunciation” — 20,700,000 matches
  • “pronounciation” — 1,130,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the correct word vs. the incorrect word by a ratio of 18.3-to-1, which is not good, especially given more than a million matches for the incorrect word.

Solution:
“Pronunciation”

“I thought that the ask of me was …”

Devolution toward Simpler, Nouns, Verbs

I heard this in a conference call yesterday.

Problem:
The word “ask” is not a noun, except when capitalized, in which case it means something different.

Explanation:
Except for the capitalized form “Ask” — spelled CAPITAL-A-S-K — which refers in Scandinavian mythology to the first man, who was made from an ash tree by the Scandinavian gods, the word “ask” is a verb, not a noun.

The person who said “I thought that the ask of me was …” was referring to a request that someone had made to him. This gives us the solution.

Unfortunately, I increasingly hear Americans misuse “ask” as a substitute for the noun “request”. I believe that this is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to say the one-syllable “ask” than to say the two-syllable “request”.

Solution:
“I thought that the request to me was …”

“Pronunciate”

Verbs

I occasionally hear this.

Problem:
“Pronunciate” is a slang verb that makes the speaker sound dumb.

Explanation:
“Pronunciate” is a back-formation of the noun “pronunciation”.

Maybe some people who use “pronunciate” know that the noun “obligation” and the verb “obligate” go together and therefore believe that “pronunciation” and “pronunciate” go together.

I have heard “pronunciate” or one of its ‘conjugations’ in sentences such as these:

  • “She did not pronunciate well.”
  • “I was repeatedly pronunciating it to the telphone operator.”
  • “He pronunciated the words with a Californian accent.”

At least in my experience, it seems as if some of those who say “pronunciate” are trying to sound more intelligent than those who are listening to them. After all, “pronunciate” is longer than “pronounce”, so the former must be a “fancier” word than the latter (or at least that’s their reasoning).

Whatever the reason, “pronunciate” makes the speaker sound dumb.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “pronounce” — 11,700,000 matches
  • “pronunciate” — 817,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the correct word vs. the incorrect word by a ratio of 14.3-to-1, which is not good, especially given nearly a million matches for the incorrect word.

Solution:
“Pronounce”