![]() ![]() The current dictionary preference will be short-lived. (It is impossible for a man wearing a tie to try this experiment.) Professor Turaj's view of vowels snuggling up to preceding consonants is illustrated by ''woman'': The original ''woe-man'' changed to ''wuman'' because it is easier to pronounce, as did the plural ''woemen'' to ''wimen.'' So that's why it will be ''kee-mo-therapy,'' Keemosabe. Why?įrank Turaj, dean of arts and sciences at American University, holds that ''the preceding consonant alters the vowel that follows in favor of the sound that is most natural to pronounce.'' He says that ''kee-mo'' is easier to pronounce than ''kem-o.'' You must set the back of your throat to make the ''k'' and then open your jaw a bit more to make the ''eh'' sound than to make the ''ee'' sound. Is it ''kem-o,'' as in ''chemist,'' or ''kee-mo,'' as in the endearment that Tonto used to direct at the Lone Ranger? Logic suggests ''kem-o'' dictionaries prefer it it is ''correct.'' Yet most people I know, including doctors, pronounce the word coined by Paul Ehrlich in 1907 as ''keemo'' curious. Which brings us to the Great Chemotherapy Debate. Like ''processees.'' The plural of ''process,'' a vogue word in diplomacy, ought to be ''processes,'' pronounced ''PRAH-cessuz.'' (British is ''PRO-cessuz,'' but the first syllable is not what's bugging me.) For no good reason, language snobs have been pronouncing the last syllable ''ease,'' as if on the analogy of ''crisis'' and its plural, ''crises.'' ''The same is true fo r 'emphasis,' 'diagnosis,' 'prosthesis' and many other words ending in ' is,' '' writes Dene Walters, M.D., in The Journal of the American Medical Association, ''but not for process, or for abscess either two of them are abscesses, not 'absces-sees.' '' Although some la idback lexicographers may accept anything, I stand with this Wilm ington, Del., physician, who correctly points out that while the p lural of ''basis'' is ''base-eez,'' the plural of ''base'' remains ''baseuz.'' In the same way, elitist newscasters knock the ''she'' out of ''negotiate'' in their chi-chi pronunciation, ''negosee-ations.'' ''She'' is right ''see'' is incorrect and an affectation. Neumetzger of Newburgh, N.Y., finds abrasive. ![]() Phil Donahue, the Moral Majority's least favored sex therapist, pronounces ''controversial'' as ''contro-ver-seeul,'' rather than ''controvershul,'' which Mrs. In another development, the ''see-for-she'' substitution is rampant on television. As a result, punloving headline writers have given up on ''radical sheik'' and turned instead to ''fair sheik.'' In recent years, Americans have been adopting the British pronunciation, which is closer to the Arabic (though the Brits don't go for that little ''kh'' fricasee at the end). (The Arabic word has a scraping sound at the end, called a voiceless velar fricative, which we can safely ignore.) Hyland's note - if it were supposed to be pronounced ''sheek,'' it would be spelled ''shiek,'' like ''shriek.'' But it is spelled ''sheik,'' from the Arabic shaikh, pronounced ''shake,'' which the British have been doing all along. In American use, ''sheek'' was the standard pronunciation, as any singer of ''The Sheik of Araby'' will tell you. Other pronunciation queries and ukases: ''On the spoken word -when did 'shake' replace 'sheek' for pronouncing the oily one: shiek?'' asks Vi Hyland of Nassau County, N.Y. While isking around, we should take care to preserve the vanishing ''s'' in ''asterisk.'' The little typographical flower that sends you down to the footnote is not, as some say, an ''asterick.'' People who say that also say ''ek cetera,'' as they bunk into each other. ![]()
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