I've heard that before, about it being "southern." I grew up in Charlotte, NC. I learned how to say 'nuclear' from my tarheel Daddy who could read the letters in the word. I now have a friend from Savannah GA who's got a heavy southern accent and she doesn't say 'nukewler,' and neither does anyone in her family, and they think Bush doing it is funny. (You know, it may be a family thing more than a regional thing. What did Bush Sr. say, do you know?)
You often hear NYers say 'nukewler' too. They aren't setting nukewler policy, so it doesn't strike one as so, well, surreal.
I wonder if Carter kept doing it after it was pointed out to him.
Not long after Bush started having to use the word publicly, he started pronouncing the word correctly, ie precisely as it looks and is spelled. But it was obviously too hard for him -- he kept lapsing. Clearly a decision has been made that it's better to brazen it out and let him keep mispronouncing the word than to watch him switch back and forth with that hapless Fool Me Once look on his face, thus appearing ineducable; and to claim that in the south that's the way everybody says it.
It's not important in itself, I'm aware. But it's almost touching to me that people are able to make themselves believe that the decisions being made are the product of Bush's cognition instead of his managers.
Well, whoever's making them, let's hope they're thinking clearly. |
