Pronouncing the Year

There’s nothing more annoying than having people mispronounce the year.  It started in 2010 when people actually said out loud, “Two Thousand and Ten” to identify the year.  It’s even worse this year when people say, “Two Thousand and Eleven.”  Here is the correct way to pronounce those years:  “Twenty Ten” and “Twenty Eleven.”  This “proper year pronunciation” is such a big problem that fellow WordPress.com-er Gus Pearcy created a blog — SAY Twenty Eleven — just to set people right; and I have borrowed one of Gus’ images to help spread the appropriate learning meme:

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Proper Pronunciation to You, Horrid Abomination to Me

I was walking home from the train this evening and I heard a woman speaking with someone on her mobile phone. She was talking about some restaurant and how much she enjoyed their food. She then proclaimed that they had absolutely delicious “fill-ehh mean-yawn.” I shuddered right there on the street. A complete and full ripple through my body. I was completely and utterly disgusted. What is wrong with me?

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New Jersey Pronunciation Guide

As a native Nebraskan I grew up in the Midwest where the accent is to have no accent. Most of the national news anchors come from the Midwest because you can’t discern a strong regional accent in their speech pattern and that is effective, the networks claim, because the anchors can easily be understood by a wide viewing population.

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