It's only Getting Worse!
/It was nearly seven years ago that I entered the Speakeasy and attempted to set the record straight regarding the correct pronunciation of the smallest word in our American English language: “a.” Yes, that little one-letter word, a plain, old indefinite article that can refer to just about anything at all. It’s humble; it does not try to call attention to itself – nor should it.
At that time I was observing a ridiculous trend toward elevating that little article by pronouncing it as “ay” rather than as “uh,” inflating its importance, making it sound as significant as the thing to which it pointed. I was hearing references to:
“ay temper tantrum”
“ay drivers license”
“ay meeting of the committee”
I sought to correct that nonsensical aberration, so painful to the ears, with my original article, The Word is a (uh), not a (ay). I thought my work was finished. In fact, that article has received vastly more attention than any other in the history of the Speakeasy, well over 9000 reads over the years – mostly from foreign nations. I figured: At least folks in other countries are trying to pronounce American English correctly. Unfortunately, when it comes to little old “a,” Americans clearly haven’t got the message – and it’s only getting worse!
As annoying as this trend had become, I wasn’t going to do a doggoned thing about it (except scream at the TV), until, just the other day, I received this message from a retired Wisconsin college professor (not a communications professional):
“I'm just wondering why there aren't more current comments added to your blog titled, "The word is a (uh), not a (ay)", from 2015. This speaking problem has gotten so much worse since then, yet I saw no additional criticisms of this mispronunciation updated for 2022. Am I missing something?
Plus, the same "sin" can be said of the word "the", often pronounced "thee" before a consonant sound, which was mentioned in the blog, but it too has become so commonplace. People are also neglecting to use the word "an" before a vowel sound as was mentioned, and I find it also very egregious, hard on my ears, and hard on my brain. Those rules made our American standard English language easier on both the mouth and the ears. Such rules also occur in other spoken languages, such as French and Spanish, to soften word edges, to make speaking smoother, etc.
As a language learner myself, I want to hear native speakers using their native tongues properly, barring slang and figures of speech. I look to their media and their educated persons as role models for correctly spoken and enunciated languages so that I can understand them and communicate with them better. So many learners of American English as a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th language must be totally confused when they are trying to learn the rules of spoken American English, but rarely hear it used in the way they are learning to speak and write it correctly in their lessons.”
Can you imagine how thrilled I was to receive such support after all these years? SOMEONE ELSE HEARS IT TOO! I’d never heard of this woman; her message came to Tamarack Communication out of the blue. [Yes, she needs to learn that, when closing a quotation, no matter how short (even one word), the comma or period always goes inside the closing quotation mark. The Brits do it her way, but she’s an American.] But here was an educated professional close to my own age, cringing in front of her radio (she doesn’t do TV), feeling her blood pressure go up over the smallest word in the English language – just like me! Furthermore, she was challenging me to do something about it.
I liked her! Oh, Lord, how I liked her!
Our email exchange quickly turned toward understanding why more and more people in the media are mispronouncing “a” as “ay” instead of the correct “uh,” and I think I have the answer. I dealt with the issue in my recent book, To Hell in a Handbasket, but I’m going to reprise it here, and – wait for it… the issue involves more than our one little word. I’ve noticed a strange tendency toward misuse of three ordinary words that, I believe, all result from the same twenty-first-century communication phenomenon. The three words in question are:
A
Fulsome
Utilize
And the recent phenomenon? The easy accessibility to a listening audience! So many people with no professional training in communication now have access to the microphones behind screens and podcasts and videos! Suddenly everyone’s a “public speaker.” The assumption seems to be that, if you’re smart enough to have something worthwhile to say, you’ll say it correctly.
Well, now, I admit that I’m old. I admit that I had my own professional communication training long ago, from the iconic professor of speech, the late Grace Walsh, for whom speech tournaments and a forensics scholarship at University of Wisconsin Eau Claire have been named and whose “papers 1931 – 1994” are archived in the Speech department. It was in the late sixties that Professor Grace Walsh took me aside after I’d given a speech in my mandatory introductory speech class and confided to me: “I’m going to make you a national champion. First you have to get rid of that annoying speech pattern, but you will. We need a winning orator here. I want to coach you.”
I’ve had some lucky interventions in my life; surely you’d agree that was one of them. Grace was a comical figure, nearly as big around as she was tall. Her glasses slipped down on her nose, and she squinted and cocked her head, struggling to see. But she could hear! Oh, I could tell stories of those fun days on the UWEC forensics team, traveling the country under the mentorship of Grace Walsh, but we’ll save that for another day. I want to share just one critical piece of advice that Grace gave me, as she shepherded me from contest to contest, whispering in my ear about the strengths and weaknesses of my competitors: “You must be conversational.”
My funny coach, who made people laugh (but only behind her back, because she was revered as the maker of champion orators) made it clear to me, consistently, that you must be well researched, knowledgeable, practiced and prepared – and then you must be conversational! We’d sit together in an auditorium, listening to my competitors speak to the very audience I’d soon be addressing, and she’d point out the conversational tone of some orators. She urged me to learn to speak to each individual in the room, to view my time on the stage as a conversation rather than a “speech.” I listened to her, and she did make me a national champion. Interestingly, twenty years later, when I hosted a little (very little) daily TV talk show (not in prime time!), my coach’s advice to speak naturally stayed with me. And I’m sure I never pronounced “a” as “ay” to sound important or authoritative.
But we’re no longer talking about a handful of well-trained orators with hours of practice and coaching, taking the stage at a well-planned event. We’re talking about nearly anybody talking about pretty much anything at any time and, very importantly, vying for air time! They need to sound important. They need to establish themselves as authorities not to be missed. And so they say the darnedest things!
They over-enunciate “a” because, I suppose, they believe it makes their whole sentence sound more important, authoritative, urgent. And they dismiss the perfectly good little word, “use,” in favor of the more grandiose “utilize,” although the two words are not the same in meaning. And some of them have now elevated their efforts to dazzle by choosing (oh, so very incorrectly!) to say “fulsome” when they simply mean “full.” [Note: “Fulsome” means disgusting, annoying or over-abundant.] And so we hear garbage like this:
“I urge you to utilize your fulsome powers to effect ay treaty with ay known bully,” when what was really meant was “I urge you to use your full powers to effect a treaty with a known bully.”
“He displayed ay flat tire, ay coffee cup, and ay wrench in an attempt to utilize all available evidence for ay fulsome statement,” when what was really meant was “He displayed a flat tire, a coffee cup, and a wrench in an attempt to use all available evidence for a full statement.”
My newfound friend hears this stuff on the radio and on TV news streamed to her computer, and she wants to scream. I hear this stuff on TV and podcasts, and I want to scream. It is, in my humble opinion, an attempt by untrained speakers to outdo each other, to sound important, to capture an audience… and it makes me want to cry as our language suffers from the very abuse Grace Walsh would never have allowed. Ah, but it’s the twenty-first century now, so “yakkety, yakkety, yak.”