[HPFGU-OTChatter] chaise longue and nuclear (new-kew-lar as our you-know-who says it)

[Random832]

Marti L. wrote:
> However, GWB's "new-kew-lar" makes my skin crawl. Say it once, 
> OK, but don't keep making the same error over and over again, 
> Mr. President. A few presidents have said it that way, but it 
> was a slip and they didn't consistently make the same mistake. 

Actually, I think this is recall bias. Bush is the only one who gets 
attention for it, since he's the only president who's gotten significant 
attention, media play, etc, for his various actual malapropisms. But 
it's actually a common dialect variation. This kind of variation 
actually happens all the time - "Iron" used to be pronounced as it's 
spelled, and "ask" used to be pronounced "aks" (and is trending that way 
again in some dialects). Many people think nothing of of pronouncing 
"comfortable" as "comftorble", or "introduce" as "interduce" - I 
pronounce those last two that way, and so does everyone else I know. 
Long ago, "bird" was pronounced (and, spelled, such that spelling 
existed at the time) as "bryd". I don't like Bush, and he is an idiot, 
but this is simply NOT an example of his idiocy.

> Why make an easy-to-pronounce word difficult with such a manner 
> of speaking?