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?
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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.
English is much less standardized than French and we don’t have strict pronunciations on a lot of things.
Yes, in some regional accents a lot of people say nucular. It’s not that far off the standard pronunciation.
Some Americans also mispronounce “realtor” as “realitor”. Don’t know why.
That was A-A-Rawn and he’s always mispronouncing things!
Most Americans don’t mispronounce “nuclear.” But plenty do.
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.
All Americans say things the same way all the time.
Some do.
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.
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.
[https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/09/why-does-bush-go-nucular.html](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/09/why-does-bush-go-nucular.html)
Here ya go buddy. Bush is a great example of this.
Wait til you hear about ask and aks
I don’t know the correct way to pronounce it because of George W. Bush.
Some do. My wife and George W. Bush, at the very least.
Yes that is a common mispronunciation. It’s not universal though of course. The linguistic phenomenon is called metathesis.
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.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucular](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucular)
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”.
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
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
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.
I say nuclear, but certain people say it the other way. It’s less of a mispronunciation and more of a dialect thing.
Brits do it, too. Here is English actor Matt Berry repeatedly saying “nucular.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8xliaDUPwg
A Canadian podcast I was recently listening today nucular
C’est ce qu’on appelle la « métathèse ». Voici quelques exemples en français : [https://vitrinelinguistique.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/24506/la-prononciation/phenomenes-phonetiques/la-metathese-et-linterversion](https://vitrinelinguistique.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/24506/la-prononciation/phenomenes-phonetiques/la-metathese-et-linterversion)
No, that would only be you know who – George bush jr
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.
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.
Laughing at and denigrating a stranger who’s different than you is one approach I guess. Here’s a bit more context regarding the variability in its pronunciation within the English language:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucular
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.
Almost everyone I know adds that extra U pronunciation. Personally I find it very difficult to say it “correctly.”
How and why would anyone make up such a rumor?
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.
“Nuke-lee” and somewhere between “-ar” and “-er.”
Invent the bomb and you can dictate the pronunciation
Bro, we invented it. It’s our word. Get over it.
You’d have a heart attack with the amount of words Americans purposely mispronounce
George Bush did.
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.
Some people say it that way in certain parts of the country, but it’s generally considered uneducated or incorrect.
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.
Some do. And some of us cringe when we hear it.
Some yes. Most no.
Bush did
The right way to say it is “noo-qu-lar”. Don’t care what language you speak; please update accordingly.