Colin McEnroe Show: "Alphabetter Juice" With Roy Blount Jr.
The joy of text!
In reading somebody else's pet peeves about the state of the English language, it is impossible not to think of one's own. But here I must pause and say that Roy Blount Jr.'s "Alphabetterjuice" seems to address every eventuality, including the question of pet peeves. Blount reports:
Recently a mailing from the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals put this question to me: “Would your pet like to become a blood donor?” In case my pet would, the mailing provided a number in Boston to call.
"Snowpaw, would you like to become a blood donor?"
"Rrrrrrrr."
"OK, I'm just asking because --"
"Rrrrrrr."
My own pet peeves include the corruption of "beg the question" and the word bemused. And those are just the bes. I'm also puzzled as to the sudden vogue for beginning statements with the word "so." We'll talk about all of the above with Roy today if it's ok with Snowpaw.
(Chion Wolf joins us in the third segment to read your emails on our mailbag segment, The Sack!)
Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
***This episode originally aired August 16, 2011.***
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Comments
E-mail from Cynthia
My pet peeve is the use of the abbreviated phrase, "In addition" instead of "in addition to…." or "additionally" This is now common usage everywhere!
E-mail from James
Stroke used to be (probably still is) a US military term. Forms, serial numbers and like would always be read aloud as "AC stroke 99" (hmmm, the AC would probably be apple, charlie).
Another great show.
E-mail from Georg
One "word" I hear a lot of lately is woken.
I always thought is was awakened or awoken? What happened?
glad to hear "oxymoron" ...
... used by Roy Blount Jr and pronounced correctly. During the OJ Simpson trial, Marsha Clark mispronounced it memorably as "ox-SIM-a-ron." I suspected self-censorship was at work whenever she determined that was the way to pronounce it.
Some NPR reporters and announcers annoy me mightily when they mispronounce "heinous," saying "HEE-nus" instead of "HAY-nus." I am tempted to send them an email saying, "It's HAY-nus -- rhymes with "anus"-- not HEE-nus, rhymes with "penis." But they'd probably just get the mnemonic wrong.
Jack
Could ...
a turtle with a sense of humor be called a wry cooter?
Bill
E-mail from Frank
During my Texas years I adopted “Y’all” as easily as if I’d been born there.... as in, “how y’all doin’...” One of my native born Texas buddies told me he’d always thought “Y’all” was singular, and the plural was, “All y’all...”
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