Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Snooty? Snotty.

It's fair to say that I get made fun of on a daily basis for the way I pronounce certain words. (Anyone from Pennsylvania will identify with what I'm talking about here). For example, 'horrible' is 'harrible'; 'orange' is 'ahrange'; 'forehead' is 'farhead', etc etc. My crowning glory is 'wood-er' (water).

Whenever I use any of these words at work, a co-worker will immediately stop and say, "What's wood-er?" My typical response is, "Oh, I'm sorry. Waaaaahhhhhhhhhter." Sigh. Eye roll. It drags out a lot of conversations.

I'm so tired of being "corrected" and I'm so arrogant that I called into a morning radio show to correct the on-air host for her pronunciation of "Reading Railroad", a la Monopoly. Unfortunately, instead of sounding educated, I sounded just plain pompous.

"Um, hiiii. I was just calling to tell you that it's pronounced Redding? Not Reading Railroad? Yeeeeah. It was originally the Philadelphia and Redding railroad, before the Redding company split off in the 1920's?....yeah, and there's a city in Pennsylvania named Redding, and there's even a baseball team called the Redding Phillies.... I'm from there? So, you know....yeah."

I am such an ass.

5 comments:

Jackie said...

But it needed to be said. And I thank you for saying it.

I have a snotty Pennsylvania side that comes out every time someone tries to sell a Philly Cheesesteak (of a "Philly Steak Sub" or something gay) anywhere outside the commonwealth, because PUH-LEASE!!

andi said...

But what a nice ass you are. She was probably thanking you for the sincere correction :)

LecNessMonster said...

How about RADIATOR ("RAD-e-a-ter" instead of "RAID-e-a-ter")? I always get flack for that one...

Anonymous said...

The Reading thing makes me really angry. I usually tell people, "It is Reading Rainbow and Reading Railroad, not the other way around."

And they kind of just look at me...

Nothing wrong with the way we say things. And certainly nothing wrong with using the word "awhile" in what I'm told are to be inappropriate places.

hizznizzle said...

wood-er!

Gold.

Gold.

Philly huh? I thought maybe backwooder West Virginia.