An Open Letter to Mispronouncers of Plain and Reasonably Phonetic English Words

Dear English Language Offenders:

It has recently come to my attention that there is a vast conspiracy. Of you. Against me.

Me: hapless word nerd, fighting the good but apparently fruitless fight for correct pronunciation. You (surprisingly): white, middle-to-upper-middle class, native English-speakers with at least a two-year college degree. Many of you, indeed, are of even higher socioeconomic status and hold even more advanced degrees, and should therefore know better. And yet, the offense continues.

Why do you torment me? Why do you insist upon drinking "melk" -- or "myilk," or, heaven forbid, "malk" -- in your "expresso" and setting off "nookyaler" bombs in countries "acrost" the world and sending your children off to "kinnygarden" and eating "donits" covered with "peanits" (and please do be careful with that one)? One might even say the list goes on, "excetra, excetra."

It is as though there is a toggle switch in my brain, the opposite ends labeled "mental homeostasis" and "murderous rage." And every time one of you says the word "samwich," I can feel a finger on that switch. Waiting. Waiting.

Ebonics and other American cultural linguistic phenomena aside, I remain baffled. I do not speak today of mistakes in grammar, punctuation or syntax. Nor do I speak of regional dialects (though they mystify me as well, what with some of you putting "earl" in the engine, using the "terlet" in the men's room and "pahking" the "cah"). These are not words of freshly foreign origin; they are not new to this part of the world. No one is asking you to stand up and represent in the face of such linguistic hurdles as "Quetzalcoatl" or "schadenfreude" or "trompe l'oeil." This is plain English, people.

And it's not even tricky plain English, like that I Love Lucy episode in which Ricky, in a comically stereotypical non-native-English-speaker way, stumbles over "rough," "through," and "bough" as he is reading a bedtime story to Little Ricky, his fiery Cuban hackles raised at the absurdity of three different pronunciations of the same letter grouping. You should all know better. You should.

What's more, I think you do know better, and I think you are just waiting to see how much more I can take before I snap.

So I have an idea. I will fight back. I will foil you by re-educating your offspring. My Center for the Proper Pronunciation of Childhood Dining Delicacies will eliminate this growing problem by rehabilitating our nation's youth who have been taught, whether by encouragement or by simple lack of correction, to describe a popular pasta dish as "puh-sketti." While the Center does not yet have funding, I am certain to receive adequate financial support from John Malkovich, who was tragically forced to abandon his birth name of Milkovich when, as a young actor, he bowed to the pressure of the mispronouncing masses. Oh, yes. Our dream lives on, and someday we will prevail.

And from that day forward, you will never again pierce my eardrums -- and my soul -- with your torturous word mangling.

Viva la Revolucion,

Jenny