Dear You: Pronounce That Correctly!

I should start by saying that I am not the grammar police.  I don't usually correct anyone unless it is funny or just bugs me to the point of no return.  I can over look a lot of the mistakes I read online, as I am so used to them at this stage.  There are just a few things that really bother me.

Let me start off by asking why people cannot pronounce the word "Car-A-Mel" ???  It has an A between Car and Mel, and it is intended to be pronounced.  I hear way too many people saying "car-mel" as if the A isn't there.  That A should get more respect!

Another one is Puerto Rico.  It's not Porter Rico, and it's not Porto Rico.  It's Pu-air-toe Rico.  Pu-Air-Toe.  How hard is this to say?  I mean it's a US territory, we should at least be pronouncing it correctly.

One that I hear mispronounced quite a bit as a sports fan is athlete.  It's two syllables: Ath-lete.  It is NOT Ath-e-lete!

A few quick hits of mispronounciation are: FeBRUary(not Febuary), et cetera(Not ex cetera) and fo-li-age(not foil-age).  A phrase that gets misspoken a lot is "For granted"(not For Granite).

Off the top of my head, yet another word that comes to my mind is "Anyway."  You might say, "Wait, who can't pronounce 'anyway' ???"  Well, most people mess this word up.  It is Anyway, not Anyways.  There is no S on this word.

I could go on and on but it would be frivolous to do so.  I could bring up the hundreds of ridiculous words that exist because of rap culture.  That could be a hundred page blog post alone.  It's not axe, it's not "why you be...", "how you be..." or "I be..." anything.  Didn't we learn correct forms of "to be" in 1st grade English?

Changing S's to Z's in words doesn't make you look awesome, nor does changing I's to Y's, or O's to AW's, etc.  I realize this happens in a lot more settings than rap culture, and it's no less ridiculous when it is being done by anyone else.  Also giving your kid a really awkward spelling of a basic name doesn't make you look cool, it makes you look illiterate.  For example, taking the name Jacob and making it Jaykob.  Other names I see spelled in ridiculous ways include Raechell, Payge, or Kymberli.

I'm not an English teacher or a grammar nazi or the grammar police, but please learn to pronounce and spell basic words and phrases correctly.  It would make the day just a little bit more bright and tolerable.  Thank you, that is all.