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ImageSMART TALK

by Dr. Winton "Windy" Prolix




INTEL: No, we're not concerned with spy slang here at the Center for English as a First Language. We just want speakers to pronounce until as if English really were their first language.

No wonder kids can have trouble spelling. If they hear intil or intel, how will they learn that it's pronounced and spelled until? Of course, parents, who are the kids' real teachers, blame the schoolteachers and continue their own bad habits.

Likewise, unless should sound the way it's spelled, not like inless. In this wonderful, crazy language, spelling can mislead our pronunciation, but when it actually helps, let's seize the advantage.

Other words suffer a similar vowel shift, simply because some folks just don't hear themselves. Saying vanella and melk makes kids think vanilla and milk are spelled with E's instead of I's, and that the U in sugar is not really a U, as in "put," but an I, as in "big."

I'll have to ask our staff psychologist, Dr. Viva Palaver, to research the reasons behind this carelessness.

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