LanguageHat deconstructs Dr. Language’s list of supposedly “mispronounced” words:
… this list is useless, because its few worthwhile nuggets … are easily found elsewhere and are drowned in a sea of natural variants whose subtle difference easily escapes notice…, perfectly normal dialectal forms …, bullshit forms reminiscent of those “Kids say the darndest things!” pseudo-mistakes some people e-mail lists of …, and (most annoying of all) perfectly good pronunciations that “Dr. Language” … doesn’t happen to like.
But who is Dr. Language? Mark Liberman of LanguageLog says it is Dr. Robert Beard, CEO of yourDictionary.com. After drawing Dr. Beard’s attention to errors in other such lists on the site, he received a reply from Dr. Beard, which he posted to LanguageLog, along with some comments of his own.
