I'm French, and I've heard before that "nucular" is a common mispronunciation in American English, but kind of discarded it as rumors. In French we say "nucléaire" and I've never heard any deformation.

Recently I was watching a YouTube video and the guy said "nucular" which kind of made me laugh but whatever, errors happen. But then he proceeded to repeat that many times, and even said something along the lines of "nucular fusion is when two nuculi form one single nuculus". To me, it's impossible to say with a straight face, it's like turning "create" into "curate". Is it really that accepted in the US, as an alternative pronunciation? Or is that guy just really really weird?


46 comments

  1. Y’all don’t have common mispronunciations in French?

    English is a pretty casual language, if I know what yer sayin, I don’t particularly care how you say it.

  2. English is much less standardized than French and we don’t have strict pronunciations on a lot of things.

  3. Yes, in some regional accents a lot of people say nucular. It’s not that far off the standard pronunciation.

  4. Some Americans also mispronounce “realtor” as “realitor”. Don’t know why.

  7. There’s a particular regional accent that does that. It’s not common or standard.

    But also, French is notoriously prescriptivist as far as languages go, even to the point of discounting their own foreign French dialects. So, you were probably raised with a different attitude towards pronunciation. 

  10. I never heard anyone say it that way until George Bush. Now I hear it more often, but most people seem to know how to pronounce it correctly.

  11. Yup. We definitely do.

    Wait til you hear about how some people pronounce caught like cot, and it’s totally acceptable (tho I’m not a fan).

    For real tho, we have so many people who pronounce so many words differently, and it’s not a big deal. We’re much less caught up in being formal and fancy and perfect.

  16. Yes that is a common mispronunciation. It’s not universal though of course. The linguistic phenomenon is called metathesis.

  17. I’ll be honest, there’s a 50% chance I pronounced it “nucular” up until Bush was in office and everyone started making fun of him for it. That’s when I made a real effort to pronounce it correctly, but I don’t 100% sure how I pronounced it by default, because I’ve pronounced very deliberately since.

  19. So far as I know, that’s a regionalism. For instance Jimmy Carter, who had a degree in Nuclear Physics and was a nuclear engineer prior to being a politician, pronounced in “nucular”.

  20. On a similar tack, i noticed a lot of the locals in Philadelphia changed the way they said Ask to Aks. I was there for several months several years ago. Always wondered what that was about

  21. My dad is from Massachusetts so I’m very used to people pronouncing words “wrong”. The nuclear one I hardly ever notice tho I guess i just hear them both as acceptable pronunciations

  22. For the most part if I can understand what someone is telling me, I wouldn’t even bother thinking of correcting them. It’s usually not taken well when you correct a complete stranger on pronunciation.

  23. I say nuclear, but certain people say it the other way. It’s less of a mispronunciation and more of a dialect thing.

  28. Some do. The rest of us find it annoying.

    And it isn’t limited to the US. I’ve heard some English people pronounce it that way as well.

  29. We do use “nucular,” though in my case, it’s sort of context-dependent. Atomic fission/fusion weapons can be “nuclear” or “nucular.” Power plants, meanwhile, are almost always “nuclear.” Nowadays, I use “nuclear” more often. It just sounds more like…right…to my ear. And it’s technically the correct pronunciation, so bonus.

  31. I don’t really think English is that picky about pronunciations. Unless someone is mispronouncing every word it’s not that hard to tell what someone is saying.

  32. Almost everyone I know adds that extra U pronunciation. Personally I find it very difficult to say it “correctly.”

  34. Some do, yes. IIRC George W. Bush was known for that.

    And then there are fun words with two pronunciations that are BOTH correct: route and either.

  38. You’d have a heart attack with the amount of words Americans purposely mispronounce

  40. English has a lot of dialectical variation. This particular pronunciation is common in some dialects and not common in others. I can’t really speak towards the broad range of which dialects fall into which categories, but I can say that my dialect (Mid-Atlantic) has “nucular” as the more common pronunciation.

  41. Some people say it that way in certain parts of the country, but it’s generally considered uneducated or incorrect.

  42. This is actually not an exclusively American phenomenon. It shows up in Canadian English as well. Putting that aside though, the point of language is to be understood. But each person speaks slightly differently, even including dialect. So long as they are understood, aren’t they saying the same thing?

    Then again, I cannot pronounce “dog” correctly to save my life.

  46. The right way to say it is “noo-qu-lar”. Don’t care what language you speak; please update accordingly.

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