#720 Enunciate

So the other day I heard some people talking. And they said everything correctly, but they said those things differently than I say them.
And yet I understood them.
That’s what I like most about our language. It’s so flexible. It allows for variation and yet we still manage to communicate pretty well.
Except in marriages and relationships, of course, when the simplest communication seems to be conscientiously misconstrued.
The person I was talking to said she was going back to Lacey via Pacific Avenue. And she said it with the long “e” sound, vee-uh. I replied that I was going back vy-uh Martin Way. At first she looked at me like I was making fun of her, but then let it pass.
Truth is, vee-uh and vy-uh are both perfectly appropriate ways of saying the same thing. So don’t, as someone else said, try to lam-bast me for saying it wrong. I may have to lam-baste you in return.
Now lambaste is a particularly interesting term because you can not only spell it two ways, with or without a silent “e”, you can also pronounce it two ways, with or without a long “a”.
And here’s the really cool part—you can pronounce it with a long “a” even when you spell it without a silent “e”. Or if you choose, pronounce it with a short “a” and spell it with a silent “e”.
Not only that, it’s really cool to lambaste someone, because even though you’re chewing them out, it sounds like you might be buttering them up. Possibly like a lamb you need to keep moist when you put it back into the oven. Lambaste.
At a high temperature. Which, as you can see, I try to pronounce with all the syllables. Temp-er-a-ture. Not, as some do, in the more languid “temp-uh-chure.”
I’m not sure what the temp-uh-chure is outside, but it chure is nice and cumf-ter-bul. I often find myself mumbling the more casual cumf-ter-bul. Even though I prefer com-fort-a-ble with all the syllables enunciated.
That, at least, is one word that hardly ever gets the syllables mushed. Enunciate.
America, you’ve got to love it.