Pedants' Paradise

[Serial_Apologist]

We've thought far ages that this would be a simpule solution.

It5's another example, isn't it, of the creeping Americanisation in our culture I've often been on about. If like me you watch postwar British films (movies!) you begin to see it happening there: "criminal types" using expressions such as "beat it" and "chick" in place of our polite "go away". "Subliminals". At the time it was understandable - the supposed attraction of including American actors coupled to Marshall aid to get trade back off the ground and help counter growing indigenous socialistic tendencies. In the sixties the influence went in the opposite direction, epitomised by the Beatles and the Stones introducing America to its own disowned musics, and the popularity of British working class accents, but only for a time when "we" unlike Americans, believed in mixed economics. It all makes sense: there should be a PhD on this!

[french frank]

I never cease to be amazed at how many broadcasters, interviewees and generally educated people cannot say the word 'nuclear'.

It5's another example, isn't it, of the creeping Americanisation in our culture

That's an interesting couple of comments, and since this is Pedants' Paradise … 1) difficulty in pronouncing the consonantal group 'cl' and 2) cultural influences affecting pronunciation.

Consonantal groups of which the second sound is 'l' have long given rise to different developments: e.g. 'bl' Vulgar Latin blancu (white) gives It. bianco, Port. branco, Sp. blanco. Whereas Sp. can manage bl (blanco, blondo v It. bianco biondo), it alters pl (plenu > lleno), cl (clamare, clave > Sp. llamar, llave) and so on.

I first recall nucular being noted as used by Geo W Bush which would be a cultural development.

[gurnemanz]

The standard British "new clear" pronunciation is itself a slight distortion. The root noun 'nucleus' has three syllables and I would have thought that the adjective derived from it strictly speaking also has three syllables: 'nu', 'cle' and 'ar'. It has nothing to do with the single-syllable word 'clear' and should arguably be pronounced more like 'new-clee-er'. The Germans, precise as usual, say 'noo-clay-aar.

[Pulcinella]

The standard British "new clear" pronunciation is itself a slight distortion. The root noun 'nucleus' has three syllables and I would have thought that the adjective derived from it strictly speaking also has three syllables: 'nu', 'cle' and 'ar'. It has nothing to do with the single-syllable word 'clear' and should arguably be pronounced more like 'new-clee-er'. The Germans, precise as usual, say 'noo-clay-aar.

Is "new clear" really standard British?
Part of my undergraduate life was (mis?)spent in the Metallurgy department labs in Oxford, next door to what is now called the Denys Wilkinson Building.
This is from Wiki:

The building houses the astrophysics and particle physics sub-departments of the Department of Physics at Oxford University, plus the undergraduate teaching laboratories. It was originally built for the then Department of Nuclear Physics and named the Nuclear Physics Laboratory. In 2001, the building was renamed as the Denys Wilkinson Building, in honour of the British nuclear physicist Sir Denys Wilkinson (1922–2016), who was involved in its original creation.

Even in the posh (for me, a northern lad) south, I think it was always called the 'new-clee-er' Physics lab.
I certainly called it that!

[Bryn]

Is "new clear" really standard British?
Part of my undergraduate life was (mis?)spent in the Metallurgy department labs in Oxford, next door to what is now called the Denys Wilkinson Building.
This is from Wiki:

Even in the posh (for me, a northern lad) south, I think it was always called the 'new-clee-er' Physics lab.
I certainly called it that!

Ouch! "New clear" was intended as a closer approximation than "nucular", surely it should be "new-clee-ar". Still, to "er" is human, I suppose.

[Pulcinella]

Ouch! "New clear" was intended as a closer approximation than "nucular", surely it should be "new-clee-ar". Still, to "er" is human, I suppose.

Or new-clee-uh, which is probably more like how I say it!

[ardcarp]

If I listen carefully to myself saying 'clear' there is definitely a bit of 'uh' at the end. It's affected 'royalty-speak' which ends with 'ah' surely? RP avoids affectation. But are we getting off the 'nucular' (or should I say nuculuh) debate?

[kernelbogey]

I never cease to be amazed at how many broadcasters, interviewees and generally educated people cannot say the word 'nuclear'.

It certainly is a peculiar proununciation.

[gurnemanz]

If I listen carefully to myself saying 'clear' there is definitely a bit of 'uh' at the end.

That's the second part of the diphthong 'ɪə'

[Pulcinella]

A few more nuclear observations.
I can't do the phonetic transliterations, and the different dictionaries use different symbols anyway, but I thought that the entries in the dictionaries I have to hand were all quite interesting.

Concise Oxford: no syllable breakdown, no pronunciation. Presumably the clever folk there (mentioned above) know intuitively how to pronounce the word because of the Nuclear Physics Laboratory.
Collins: split into three syllables as nu+cle·ar (the + signifies the preferred hyphenation split point)
Chambers: split into three syllables, similarly to Collins
Merriam-Webster: split into three syllables, with three pronunciations given: nü-, nyü-, and a third with a symbol that 'indicates that many regard as unacceptable the pronunciation variant immediately following'; no surprise that it's the contentious one here (can't reproduce the symbols)
Random House: three syllables, two pronunciation options (as the first two in Meriam-Webster, though using different symbols)

PS: A private message from a fellow forumite has pointed me to this wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucular

[french frank]

That's the second part of the diphthong 'ɪə'

Indeed. The second element is the famous English 'schwa' which is an indeterminate unstressed vowel. You may read an 'a' in nu-cle.ar, but you don't hear a full 'a' sound. If you did it would sound like nu-cle.aah (with final r unpronounced at the end of a syllable).

[ardcarp]

...then there's the Devpn pronunciation: noo-clrrr

[Serial_Apologist]

I heard the word "prefacing" pronounced "pree-facing" on the radio this morning, instead of as "preffasing", short e, which I had always been taught. Despite this I've decided I think I prefer it with the long e. This is not the only occasion where I've gone along with an apparent mispronunciation: I remember Alvar Liddel (the famous WW2 newsreader who went on to provide announcements on Radio 3 in the 1960s) pronouncing "denigration" as "dee-nigh-gration" with the stress on the first syllable, and have always used it since.

[french frank]

I heard the word "prefacing" pronounced "pree-facing" on the radio this morning, instead of as "preffasing", short e, which I had always been taught. Despite this I've decided I think I prefer it with the long e.

Pree-fissing? Or pree-faycing? OED only gives Brit.ˈprɛfᵻs, U.S. ˈprɛfəs (in fact Brit. and US sounded the same to me.) What about the noun - PREE-fiss or PREE-fayce?

... I remember Alvar Liddel (the famous WW2 newsreader who went on to provide announcements on Radio 3 in the 1960s) pronouncing "denigration" as "dee-nigh-gration" with the stress on the first syllable, and have always used it since.

Definitely not RP from AL, which is surprising (although, come to think of it, he was foreign, wasn't he?). No alternative pronunciations from OED: DEN-nigrate [ˈdɛnɪɡreɪt]

Is preference all? Or should it be preeference?

[ardcarp]

Someone on R3 this morning (who should have known better) pronounced the word 'timbre' wrongly, i.e. TOMbrUH. It seems to have crept in quite widely of late. It's difficult to give an accurate English rendition of the French 'i' vowel (as in timbre) but I suppose the nearest we can get is 'a' as in 'can'. As for the UH at the end, well in French the 're' ending is almost lost somewhere in the rear upper palate. As most of my French conversation was (until a couple of years ago) conducted with pêcheurs bretons, I'm sure ff will oblige with more exact phonetic terminology.

This is a minor thing compared with the almost universal description of lingerie as LONJERAY. I suppose if everyone says it, it becomes past of the Anglophone lexicon.