PSA

[jaina]

Dear government and military officials,

The word you're looking for is NUCLEAR. NUKE-LEE-ER. Not, I repeat, NOT, nook-you-lar. Please learn to pronounce it properly, because you sound like a FUCKING MORON. The fact that you are in charge of anything remotely nuclear-weapon-related when you can't even say it right *terrifies* me.

Jeebus.

Comments

[tristmasjedi.livejournal.com]

We had a big argument over this in my suite a couple years ago. There was one Westerner advocating "nookyouler," but we dismissed that out of hand as totally ridiculous on the basis that there's no vowel between the c and the l. That left, I think, one person advocating noo-klee-er, which also sounds weird to me but at least makes a miniscule amount of phonetic sense, and a couple people who liked my favored noo-kleer.

As one guy so eloquently put it, "You got the 'new'... and you got the 'clear.' The 'new'... and the 'clear.' Nuclear."

[jainamsolo.livejournal.com]

The thing though, is that "nuclear" comes from "nucleus." Nucleus has three syllables, so therefore its adjective should too, at least to my mind. That's why "noo-kleer" doesn't really work for me.