IT'S A READER'S THING

Dear Fellow Readers,

I have a confession to make. Pronunciation, sadly, has always been a problem for me. I know I'm not alone because on the phone with Tiffany the other day, we were talking about what birthday present we were going to get for a mutual friend, when she says, "I was thinking a magazine subscription. Maybe The Economist or something." Except instead of saying "ee-CON-o-mist," she pronounces it "eh-con-NOM-ist," like you would for "Economics." Most recently, I was summarizing a book to a friend and let it slip that parts of the narrative was very "phil-LOS-siphical" instead of "philo-SOPH-icle."

A coworker turned around and asked me if I knew what "analogous" meant not too long ago. I started saying no, but then it sunk in and I said "Oh, is it spelled a-n-a- (etc.)?" He looked at me oddly, said yes, and I gave him the definition. I'd like to think that it's a "reader's thing" - that since we spend more of our time reading than say, making speeches, that our vocabulary knowledge is based visually rather than phonetically. I think most of the time, we'll catch ourselves mid-word and try to correct it. Keyword TRY - 'cause your (non-reader) friend will most likely have corrected you already, equal parts smug and amused.

Don't ask me to pronounce these...but put me in a spelling bee: asterisk, chameleon, spurious, margarine, paella, comparable, ignominious, and one from an earlier post: gratuitous

Sigh,
Claire