Endangered syllables

Ozone layer, polar ice cap … lions, tigers, and bears. Dwindling natural resources get news coverage and organizations raise money to protect them. But there’s a little-known crisis right under our noses and no one is doing a thing about it.

I’m talking about the noble syllable (usually an a or an o), just sitting there in the middle of a word. Trying to do its job. We spell them for the most part, because Spellchecker and Autocorrect warn us if we leave them out. Unfortunately, those devices don’t work on speech.

Children grow up watching television, so they hear statements like this one:

“I’m your Channel 42 meterologist. This storm is deteriating,

so maybe in a few days we’ll have comftorble tempachers.”

How is a child supposed to know it should be:

meteorologist  (mee-tee-or-OL-o-gist)  six syllables

deteriorating  (dee-TEER-ee-or-ate-ing)  six syllables

comfortable  (COME-for-tah-bul)  four syllables

temperatures  (TEM-pur-a-choors)  four syllables

TV weather people could at least learn the words of their trade. There aren’t that many to know. You can forgive hockey announcers for getting a few Russian, French, and Eastern European names wrong, but – really – weather? Even hockey announcers don’t leave syllables out of their words … skate, ice, hat, trick, puck, goal, stick, fight. OK, those are all one-syllable words, but you get my point.

I know. You’re asking, “What can I do to help?”

First of all, you can be vigilant about innocent, abused, and forgotten syllables that deserve to be pronounced. Second, you can avoid wasting syllables in words where they don’t belong. Such as athalete, realator, and mischievious.

Once uttered, extra syllables cannot be recycled and inserted into words that need them. They just die a slow and senseless death, littering the verbal landscape with their carcasses. So be a conscientious custodian of the syllables you have. If we waste those entrusted to our care, future generations will not even remember when syllables roamed wild and free. Our descendants will be forced to communicate with cryptic nonsense.

 

 

 

 

I just hope it’s not too late.

Like TextCPR on Facebook !