"It's 'Feb-ru-ary,' Eliza Doolittle"

Dr. Language is both tilting at windmills and knocking down straw men in this fascinating but smug and preachy rundown of the "100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English" - tilting at windmills because there is no way in hell that you are going to get people to pronounce this word "bar+bit+u+rate," and womping on the straws because I have never heard anyone pronounce "Alzheimer's disease" as "Old-timer's disease" - have you?

Sometimes we all talk too fast - that seems to lead to the most common errors, but most people know how to pronounce most these, and some are in the process of changing or have already changed, so get over it.

The linguistically fastidious doctor also lists the "100 Most Often Misspelled Words and Phrases in English."

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Article Author: Eric Olsen

Career media professional Eric Olsen is honored to be the founder and former publisher of Blogcritics.org, and former publisher of Technorati.com, which both rule. He is now editor, co-founder, and CEO of The Morton Report.

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  • 1 - Hal Pawluk

    Mar 10, 2004 at 8:20 pm

    "I have never heard anyone pronounce "Alzheimer's disease" as "Old-timer's disease" - have you?"

    I forget ...

  • 2 - Rao

    Dec 06, 2005 at 9:50 am

    assalam o alaikum

    may ALLAH bless u michael .
    "welcome to islam DIL Say"

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