The pronunciation of words is a pedants playground. Neether, nyether, eether, eyether, potato, potahto: A slew of words (all words?) have several different ways they can be pronounced. Most people think there is a right way and a wrong way; but language is not mathematics. Words are not rocks.

All languages and the words that make them have evolved in a fashion that is best described as organic. Proto-language, the predecessor of the estimated 6500 languages currently spoken around the globe, provided the raw material and use created the many variations.

‘Niche,’ for example, is usually pronounced ‘neesh’ by French men and women. Americans are more likely to say ‘nitch.’ A third possibility is ‘neetch.’ All are correct. If more professors and students at Harvard say ‘nitch,’ that pronunciation is liable to become the ‘correct’ way to say the word. You will be corrected if you don’t play the game. Harvard cannot possibly be in err.

Spelling goes hand in hand with pronunciation. Yer gonna get put down like a mangy dawg if’n yer spellins bad and ya caint even speak human. Read Shakespeare. His English is Elizabethan. Spelling and pronunciation were far more fluid then than they are now.

Time and space molds language. Everything is in flux. Right and wrong don’t exist. Mark Twain and Henry James are both recognized as great writers. Twain spun yarns using colloquialisms, plain talking. James crafted his stories with formal precision, grammar and syntax just so. Both writers were marked by their styles, both praised and criticised.

I suggested to my students that versatility was a virtue. When hangin with their buddies, be Twain. When interviewing for a new job, perhaps James would better serve. Always a good thing to be yerself.

Kinda fun to crank off a formal essay, too. Good to have more than just a hammer in the old toolbox.