USE GOOD PRONUNCIATION. It's Your Doody!

I actually had a ceramics teacher in high school who insisted on saying "kil" instead of "kiln" because it was The Correct Way.

He remained alone in his choice of pronunciations.

Clinging to a silly pronunciation because some "authority" somewhere decrees that It Must Be So when the whole rest of the world has moved on to a different mode is, frankly, pointless and pathetic. Latin may have headed off to the taxidermist a long time ago, but English is still a living language -- ain't no dust on it yet.

And who the hell puts a silent N at the end of a word, anyway? Can anybody think of another example of this?

Well, depends, as while spoken English is a living language alright, literary English, while still very well in active use, has become rather stagnant grammatically and stylistically, and many aspects of it are effectively frozen in time, having died out in active use in many dialects, but being still preserved in formal writing. For example, here in the US, in formal writing the modal constructs generally used in speech are not used, while at the same time, the use of the bare subjunctive *without* the use of subordinating conjunctions in conditional statements is still used in writing, when it is not encountered in most speech here today. While the vocabulary of literary English has expanded and changed, with new words being created or borrowed, other words falling out of general use or changing in meaning, and different word choices and usages being favored, the grammar of literary English is for the most part not that different from that of such two hundred years ago, with a few relatively minor changes such as the use of "whom" becoming no longer obligatory.

The way words are pronounced and spelled is not a big problem for communication in most cases. The rate at which the meanings of words change in popular NAE causes real problems in hospitals and other serious settings.

I COMPLETELY understand the message you are conveying, but I don't agree that something should be done about it. Unless one grows up in an ultra-educated household, with immaculate English speaking parents, it is impossible to remember the "correct" pronounciations of several English words. Don't get me wrong, there are many words any self-proclaimed educated person ought to never to mispronounce - precedence is one, mischievous is another.

But you must realize that most people, even the most educated of us, cannot avoid speaking in colloquialisms if that is all we hear; even then most people will criticize you, or not understand what you are saying at all, if you speak "perfect" English...

For instance, in Tucson, Arizona last summer I went to a rather ritzy part of town and stopped by a Kinkos to buy an envelope or rather an ON-veh-lope. I asked for an On-veh-lope not once, twice, but three times, finally I exasperatingly said, and I remember as clear as day that it felt like a light bulb went off in my head: "I want an N-veh-lope." The clerk's eyes lit up as he realized what I was trying to say, but the condescending look he gave me suggested he thought it was "me" that couldn't prounounce the word right. See what I mean? Lose-lose situation.

Actually, I take one of those words back: precedence. I looked in the dictionary and it shows that two pronounciations of precedence are valid.

Mischievous, however, ought never to be mispronounced. Words like forte, at least according to the "authoriative" Usage panel, receives 74% acceptance when pronounced the alleged wrong way, for-tay, the two syllable version.

....and I don't mean to brag, but I pronounce most of the words on that list correctly, at least 70-90% of them; though sometimes I consciously turn off a switch which contains my "special" knowledge when speaking with most Americans; and I turn on that switch when I'm reading which, quite oddly, is a British voice that pronounces all the words correctly (I'm an American).

In fact, now I remember thoroughly that in highschool I was made fun of for speaking "perfect" English and was accused of being condescending, mocked for putting on airs and criticized for loving the British. It's better to fit in some times. "TIME TO EGG-ZIT!"

For instance, in Tucson, Arizona last summer I went to a rather ritzy part of town and stopped by a Kinkos to buy an envelope or rather an ON-veh-lope. I asked for an On-veh-lope not once, twice, but three times, finally I exasperatingly said, and I remember as clear as day that it felt like a light bulb went off in my head: "I want an N-veh-lope."

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?dict=CALD&key=25949&ph=on

On-velope is more frequent in US English, [just like EEther]
N-velope is more frequent in UK English [just like EYEther]
but both are possible in two dialects

''and I turn on that switch when I'm reading which, quite oddly, is a British voice that pronounces all the words correctly (I'm an American). ''

there is no ''correct pronunciation''

People from the Great Lakes area pronounce the word ADOPT the same way Californians (and other people in the West) pronounce the word ADAPT.
People from one part of the US pronounce BUSES the same way people from some other part of the US pronounce the word BOSSES (listen to the Mr Labov's interview ;) ) Many people in the South pronounce LAWYER and LIAR in the same way: [lAj@r]
Australian pronunciation of SUCK is close to InlandNorth [US] pronunciation of SOCK. [lAst] is LAST in RP, but LOST in WesternGeneral American and Northern Shifted accents...[last] is LAST in Canadian and Californian vowel shifts, but LOST in severely Northern cities shifted accents...

and there's visa/greasy/translation/chromosome pronunciation with [s] and/or [z]...
for people from Chicago EYES and ICE are both [ais], LICE and LIES are both [lais]...

You can tell the CC[un]merged person by the way s/he pronounces HOT DOG...If the pronunciation is [hAt dAg] or [hQt dQg] s/he is merged; if the pronunciation is [hAt dQg] or [hat dQg] or [hAEt dag] s/he is unmerged...

>>Australian pronunciation of SUCK is close to InlandNorth [US] pronunciation of SOCK. [lAst] is LAST in RP, but LOST in WesternGeneral American and Northern Shifted accents...[last] is LAST in Canadian and Californian vowel shifts, but LOST in severely Northern cities shifted accents...<<

"Lost" in NCVS-affected dialect is not something like [last]. Remember that such dialects hare pronunciations affected by the lot-cloth split, and hence would historically have had /O:/ present, not /Q/ > /A:/. In modern dialects in the Upper Midwest prior to the NCVS, they would have had [O] or [Q] present in "lost". With the NCVS, some of these dialects, generally the more progressive ones, would have shifted such to [A], but many NCVS-affected dialects still preserve the rounding of historical /O:/ and thus still have [Q]. That said, I have never heard of an NCVS-affected dialect shifting such all the way to [a], which is rather the usual realization of historical /A:/ in most positions in such dialects (even though some very progressive dialects may have [{] for such).

>>and there's visa/greasy/translation/chromosome pronunciation with [s] and/or [z]...
for people from Chicago EYES and ICE are both [ais], LICE and LIES are both [lais]...<<

That is not true. Note that final devoicing in Upper Midwestern dialects that have it is not at the phonemic level and does not affect vowel length allophony and Canadian Raising. For instance, I myself have

"eyes" ["a:Is]
"ice" ["@Is]
"lies" ["L\a:Is]
"lice" ["L\@Is]

The main matter is that most native speakers of North American English are not aware of vowel length in it, and thus tend to ignore differences in vowel length in English dialects which do have distinctive vowel length (whether or not such is actually phonemic being another story).

"there is no 'correct pronunciation'" - hess

There is certain words that must never be mispronounced such as mischievous.

If you read my posts carefully, if at all, you would realized that I'm against people that claim we must all speak "perfect english"

Oops - ain't nobody perfect.

There are certain words that must never be mispronounced.

>>There are certain words that must never be mispronounced.<<

Why, and what do you exactly mean by "mispronounced" here (as such can include things from prescriptivist views of nonstandard pronunciations in dialects to things like non-native pronunciations that do not fit whatever standard or dialect the speaker in question is trying to speak)?

(If you mean that there are certain words which can be rather, well, embarrasing if pronounced in certain ways so as to sound like certain other words, I would have to say that such cases do exist.)

Calm down Travis

You can't pronounce mischievous, mischeeveeous. Words like that. calm down.

But that's the thing - even if there are no English dialects which natively have [i] in the second syllable of "mischievous", you can still definitely have variation in its pronunciation. For starters, some dialects have [@] while other dialects have [I] in the last syllable of "mischievous". Likewise, while some dialects have [stS] in "mischievous", others may have [StS] for such. This variation may seem negligible, but it is still variation nonetheless.

Travis

Whatever Travis. Even then, I normally wouldn't blink or think less of anyone if they said mischeeeveeous. :)

''You can't pronounce mischievous, mischeeveeous.''

Can't I pronounce BURY to rhyme it with CURRY?