STOP! This is a Rebuttal. Read Tom's Argument First.
Firstly, kudos to Tom for reproducing my argument rather accurately. Secondly, I would like to clear up that I was joking when I “corrected” Ryan’s pronunciation of ridiculous because we were both saying it the same way. It seems now that there is only one point of disagreement on this issue: Tom believes in “right’s” and “wrong’s” and I do not. It is his choice and opinion to feel there are “right” and “wrong” ways to say things, while mine is that there is standard (formal, informal, general) English, and nonstandard English. At one point Tom felt I was getting too into semantics, and then I reminded him that’s what the issue has been about all along. As I understand the argument, Tom feels that people can pronounce words in several ways, but not names. There is a flaw in his argument because Americans commonly have several pronunciation for names, regardless of how it is typically pronounced. For example, the name Michelangelo is pronounced two different ways (the American way is to add an a to make it sounds like Michael). Neither pronunciation is “right” or “wrong,” but rather one is more correct or standard if you are in Europe and the other more correct or standard in America. Now, Tom might say, well that’s different because you are talking about another country, but it is the same. The names we have in America come from all around the world, so there are no strictly “American” names. When a group of people decide to say a word or name a particular way it becomes the most “correct” or standard pronunciation for their in-group. Yes there are national standards or more acceptable or recognized pronunciations, but that doesn’t mean there are no alternative pronunciations. As for Tom’s examples, his points might be more valid if he used more applicable examples. Larissa’s hometown affected a close pronunciation to Reese’s by saying Reesie’s. To make his point, Tom continually uses example that are too absurd because they don’t follow the rules of the English language. It is absurd that he would pronounce ridiculous as recockulous because the di sound is never replaced with the co sound. Whereas Larissa’s neighborhood substituted the short e sound at the end of Resse for the long e sound. This has and does happen. Tom needs to clean up his examples and make them more applicable for me to consider them part of his argument. Yes we follow rules; the English language is structured and this is what keeps our language intelligible. Yet, to try and stop relatively logical changes from occurring, like the alternate pronunciation of Reese’s, is preposterous. Changes will happen and they aren’t right or wrong, they just are.
