Revisionist Pronunciation

Since the tsunami tragedy last week, I keep hearing people bobble the name of the Phuket province in Thailand. Some people ("talk radio for men!" and twelve year olds) seem to enjoy the pronunciation that sounds like "F*** it". I have heard several other pronunciations as well. In fact, two lexicons I looked at give "pOO'kit" as the correct way to say it. . .which is how I've heard it on the national news. Local radio, of course, is all over the map on this one.

This made me think. When you order the Hanoi Beef Noodle Soup (Pho) at a Vietnamese restaurant, most Americans pronounce it "Foe," whereas the actual pronunication is "fuh," a word many people are not comfortable with.

Uranus is now, often, pronounced "yoo'-run-uhs" instead of the former "yoo-ray'-nuhs" with both the pronunciation and accented syllable changed to sound less like the exhaust chute of the human body.

In 1999 there was a huge flap over an aide to Washington Mayor Williams who resigned after using the word "niggardly" (a word meaning "stingy") in a speech. This one, too, was political correctness run amok. The aide was (rightly) reinstated after all the pushback and noise subsided.

What's next? Are there other words that have been popularly corrected in the last few years? /jack
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