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.