Remember: Ya Read It First Rah Cheer

Most readers have responded with censure or reservations to my comment on “There Is No Zoo in Zoology,” by Charles Harrington Elster, an admittedly “opinionated” guide to correct pronunciation.

Mostly, as I said, I mentioned words that I myself had evidently been mispronouncing, according to Elster’s dicta, among them aqua, coupon, daiquiri, guillotine and piquant .

I have always said AWK-wa, not AK-wa, as recommended by Elster; KYOO-pahn, not KOO-pahn; DAK-uh-ree, not DY-kuh-ree; GEE-uh-teen, not GIL-uh-teen; and pee-KHANT, not PEE-kint.

Bill Dekle of Sherman Oaks says that if Elster hopes to homogenize the English language he won’t succeed. “Thank goodness it’ll never happen. What a boring place it would be.”

Elster, of course, realizes that pronunciation varies according to class, region and other factors, but he has sought to validate the pronunciations agreed on by most dictionaries and other authorities.

That Kennedy said Cuber did not make it right; that Eisenhower said nucular did not make it right.

Daniel Burnham of Bishop expresses disappointment in me for appearing to agree with Elster. “In more interesting and adventurous times,” he says, “everyone was his own arbiter in matters of spelling and pronunciation. Now, unfortunately, we’re all at the mercy of professional tastemakers and intellectual storm troopers.”

I think Burnham’s alarm is unfounded. Listen to any broadcast or talk show and you must conclude that the language is in anarchy.

Patrick Groff, professor at San Diego State, reports that his Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1983) permits AKH-wa, DAK-uh-ree, GEE-u-teen, pee-KHANT, VAL-ay and for-TAY.

One of Elster’s sources, by the way, was the Random House, but his choices evidently were based on a consensus. Some readers seem to have misunderstood Elster on valet . His point was that valet had long since been Anglicized into VAL-it, which is correct; but that to pronounce it VAL-it would seem pedantic, since VAL-ay is so entrenched. I said I would continue to say VAL-it, since I considered VAL-ay an affectation.

D. G. Bradford wonders, if Elster thinks VAL-it is correct, whether we should also pronounce bouquet as boo-KWET, sachet as sash-ET, filet as fil-ET, and gourmet as gour-MET. Oddly, she notes, we have anglicized banquet . Fil-et is also heard.

David P. Lewis of Sherman Oaks scoffs at Elster’s AK-wa for aqua . “I have been around for 70-plus years, have lived in four major American regions and have visited every state in the Union except Alaska, and I can assure him and you that the overwhelming majority of Americans say AHK-wuh, and will continue to do so.” (Me, too.)

Lewis also thinks people will go on saying for-TAY, for forte , because it is not ambiguous. “We know when we hear for-TAY that the speaker isn’t referring to a rampart of some kind.”

Dan Block agrees that forte pronounced as one syllable “would be thought of as a place to hide from the Indians. Eventually, forte will be accepted as a two-syllable word, even by pedants.”

Charles M. Cobb of Agoura Hills says Elster may have wit and opinion, but little scholarship. “Every linguist knows that language is dynamic and flexible and that pronunciation is a function of space and time, not of something called ‘correctness.’ A dictionary is not a lawgiver; it is a reporter.”

Our language might be more colorful if one of Elster’s sources had been “How to Talk Pure Ozark,” by Dale Freeman, a glossary of the language as spoken in the southern highlands.

In this hardy dialect, bag is used as in “He bagged her to marry up with him”; banch as in “scrubs sit on the banch”; dork , what it gets when the sun goes down; flar , a rose is about the prettiest flar there is; hern , it ain’t hern, it’s hisn; jav , did you have? keeyow , a farm animal; oral , your car needs two quarts of oral; rah cheer , he was born rah cheer; retch , as in “If I’d knowed it was you I’d have retch out and wove.”

Ozark evidently has no words for aqua, valet and piquant.