Attachment 19267
Last night, I was watching a science documentary on YouTube, on which one of the reporters was an American in his twenties. He pronounced the English word "abode" [[meaning, of course, "place of residence"), as: "ahh-bo-Daayyyy". That demonstrates very well how The English language is degrading in utility, by losing vocabulary. Maybe he got it confused with the adopted Spanish word "adobe". An American who probably finished all 12 years of public school, and likely finished 4 years of undergraduate university, and as a narrator on a history documentary, probably also has a masters degree, never heard of "a silent "E"?????? I understand that a LOT of people HATE the idea of learning rules of grammar. But, someone who narrates academic documentary films???? And how does someone reside in USA for more than a few weeks and not learn the difference in meaning between the word "to" and "too"???? - Especially when it's ones own native language and he's attended 14-16 years of education there, and never been anywhere else with a different language to confuse him? It's IMPOSSIBLE!
Similarly, I've noticed several American narrators on history documentaries pronouncing the word "hegemony" as "Hedj-ehh-Mohnneee" [[Upper case letters indicate the stressed accent points). In the 1940s and 1950s in Canada, we pronounced that word as "hedj-EHH-monee", and I would swear that Americans did as well. I'm not positive about The Brits at that time, because they often use weird pronunciation [[weird to us, but I concede that it was THEIR language first-so who are WE to correct them). About half The Brits on YouTube history documentaries use the incorrect North American pronunciation, and the other half use the standard North American pronunciation. My official [[British) Oxford Universal Dictionary of The English Language from 1932 says that the official way to pronounce the word coined in 1567, based on the Greek word, Hegemon, is hegg-ehh-Monee [[using a hard "G", and stress on the "M" 2nd to last syllable). But, I contend that it is ridiculous for a 24 year old Ohioan to use an incorrect British pronunciation, rather than the official US pronunciation, especially when all THE OTHER 4,000 of the words that person uses are NOT pronounced The British way.