July 26

Yammering on about words and grammar seems callous, careless and stupid in the light of all that is happening in the world. More deaths, more attacks, more brutality, certainly you are all aware of what is going on, not to mention the political chaos in the United States.

“Man's hope is his capacity for irrelevance.”

I picked up that line from a novel by Aldous Huxley, can’t remember which one, didn't write it down, not in those days. (I was seventeen, taking a novel course in third year university, not too careful.) I guess i’m trying to offer hope with my irrelevant prattle. Right now I’m grateful for it, for prattle. You get bits of news from the world of science or nature, discoveries of some hitherto unknown species or star that add to our knowledge of the universe. A discovery is comforting but most reassuring are the confidence and dedication of the discoverers. They are so focussed. It’s the rest of the world that is irrelevant.

On Sunday, March 8, 1941, Virginia Woolf wrote: “Haddock and sausage meat. I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down”. They gave her a hold on reality and I get that. I grasp reality every week when I write down a grocery list. But you see, the list is irrelevant. That’s the point. What have sausage and haddock to do with terrorist threats? A lot, of course, if the threat becomes a reality and it is impossible to get sausage and haddock, food, that is, to feed one’s family. I think I just contradicted myself. I should stick to easy questions like how to pronounce niche.

I’m sure you understand what I’m trying to say. Every news program on TV concludes with a slice of human interest, some bizarre event that has gone viral, something to ease the anxiety over the daily horrendous news, something that provides some brief respite, in short, something irrelevant.

I sent this yesterday, July 26, but it didn't arrive so I'm posting it again. I'll be back.

See, I have this wonderful library in my office of books of quotations, dictionaries, grammar books and style books, plus lexicographies, etymologies, not to mention sources and provenances plus special interests. So when I was putting back my Dictionary of Newfoundland English the other night my eye fell on “the big book of beastly mispronunciations” by Charles Harrington Esler (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), given me several years ago by an admirer. (Men didn’t give me jewellery, they gave me books, more precious than gold.)

I hadn’t read this one for some time - well, you know, you never finish reading a book like that; you dip and browse. So I perched and read and read, on and on, till another hour or so went by and I was late to bed. Fun, though. So I’ll pass on a few words to you, some pet peeves and some corroboration of my choices.

Number one, for example, is basil, pronounced bazil not baysil. Misguided Americans, including my U.S.-based daughter now, have succeeded in spreading the use of the mispronunciation, but I’ll stick to British tradition. So with cumin, as in comin’ through the rye, not koomin. My favourite peeve is forte (strength), a losing battle. Everyone says for-tay. Wrong,wrong, wrong, but I give up. (It’s like lie and lay, a lost cause.)

I once quit dating a boy because he corrected me incorrectly. I had said something was stultifying and he dared to tell me the word was stuLLifying! I withdrew a piece from a magazine when I was trying to make a (meagre) living as a journalist because the editor put wrong words into my copy - and also changed my slant.

You must have some words you love to hate if they’re mispronounced, like nucular or restauranteur. There’s another one like that, with an added or misplaced letter, but I can’t think of it right now. Someone will tell me.

This book doesn’t offer turmeric or inveigle, but it does have bi-ZAN-tin (Esler’s and my choice) not the commoner BIZ-in-teen. I love kun-SOR-shee-um, not kun-SOR-tee-um.

Which makes me think of the pronunciation of ghoti. Fish.

You know that one, don’t you?