Many years ago, I worked as a paralegal and it wasn’t until I’d been at it for about 3 months that I first heard someone else utter the word “antecedent” out loud. Of course it’s not a word in common usage but it’s VERY common in legal jargon, and I’d used it for one reason or another in writing probably every day until then. I had invented my own incorrect pronunciation and stress, and it took me a while to realise that this had been the topic of some laughter in the office.

The way it is spelled bears very little indication of how to pronounce it correctly and although I was well educated and informed (both generally and technically), I could still get it wrong.

On a different scale, I have a unique way of pronouncing “worry” which has been the subject of a great deal of leg-pulling throughout my adult life – sometimes I manage to correct myself but more often than not, I come out with this strange sound that does not fit in with the rest of my speech patterns and frankly, makes me sound a bit stupid. But that’s the result of many years of linguistic abuse, not lack of knowledge how to pronounce it properly.

The beauty of English to me is that it’s a language of many languages, and variations in pronunciation are part of that. The poem is clever and a lovely celebration of this, not a contest.

I AM wondering if there can possibly be a “correct” pronunciation of a word like “Terpsichore,” given that it’s an anglicization of Ancient Greek? It’s utterly fatuous to claim that the way one pronounces “Oedipus” is a sign of how well one speaks ENGLISH!!!