| 词组 | nuclear |
| 释义 | nuclear In many recent usage books the reader is admonished to say \\ ü-klē-ǝr\\\\, not \\ ü-kyǝ-lǝr\\\\, and never mind what President Eisenhower used to say. We wish first to confront a more interesting question. Why, when the pronunciation problems of nuclear are so well known that they are a continuing source of national wrath and mirth, do so many educated people—and especially members of Congress—persist in the condemned pronunciation? Why did \\ ü-kyǝ-lǝr\\\\ arise in the first place? Since \\ ü-kyǝ-lǝr\\\\ is not a spelling pronunciation, it must have originated phonologically as a deviation from the target of \\ ü-klē-ǝr\\\\. The transformation is reminiscent of but cannot strictly be described as metathesis (which see); in any event metathesis is a label for a phenomenon, not an explanation. That the target pronunciation presents some articulatory difficulties is suggested by two other variants that may more clearly be seen as simplifications: the occasional \\ ü-kyir\\\\ and the fairly common \\ ü-klir\\\\ (which we have attested respectively from former President Jimmy Carter and from his mother, among others). But besides any inherent difficulty involved in saying \\ ü-klē-ǝr\\\\, the pronunciation \\ ü-kyǝ-lǝr\\\\ was probably engendered by a process that functions in folk etymology as well: the replacement of a relatively less familiar sequence of sounds with one relatively more familiar. Now, there is no other common word in English that ends in \\\\klē-ǝr\\\\, and just one uncommon one (cochlear). But there are several that end in \\\\-kyǝ-lǝr\\\\ or \\\\-kyù-lǝr\\\\: particular, spectacular, molecular, secular, oracular, vernacular. So we believe that nuclear became \\ ü-kyǝ-lǝr\\\\ for the same reason that et cetera became \\\\ek-'set-ǝ-rǝ\\\\ (see etc.): speakers have succumbed to the gravitational tug of a far more prevalent pattern. This explanation is further bolstered by the case of similar, percolator, and escalator, which the less educated often pronounce respectively \\\\sim-yǝ-lǝr\\\\, \\\\pǝr-kyǝ-lāt-ǝr\\\\, and \\\\es-kyǝ-lāt-ǝr\\\\. Here the vague explanation that the folk version is "simpler" will not hold water, because the folk version arises by adding & sound, \\\\y\\\\. What actually happens is that when saying similar, percolator, and escalator, some speakers conform to the more familiar pattern (stop consonant plus \\\\yal\\\\ plus vowel) that shows up in such words as fabulous, cellular, ridiculous, angular, populated, and masculine. A number of other pronunciation variants that go against the spelling of a word—the common \\ ǝp-shǝ-wel\\\\ for nuptial (compare words like conceptual and voluptuous) and the less common \\\\,dim-yə-'nish-ǝn\\\\ for diminution, for example—can be explained along similar lines. Returning to the status of \\ ü-kyǝ-lǝr\\\\, we must make several points. First, it is a minority pronunciation; \\ ü-klē-ǝr\\\\ is still much more common among educated speakers. Second, it is nonetheless a common pronunciation among the educated. Most of our evidence for it is from prominent political figures and journalists, but we have also recorded it from the mouths of college professors in a variety of academic disciplines. Third, if it is your natural pronunciation and you choose to continue with it, you will have a lot of distinguished company, but you are also likely to draw some unfriendly attention from those who consider it an error. |
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