People say things

...unless they are deaf-mutes who communicate through writing, drawing, or sign language. Talking is one of the first things people learn to do. Most of the time they don't stop doing it until they are dead.

I do not mean to be crass or insensitive, just factual. How people talk is our subject today.

I don't mean how different sounds are formed with the mouth, nose, lips, and tongue (there's a whole branch of science that deals with that) or the different ways people pronounce the same word in various English-speaking countries (ZEE-bra vs. ZEH-bra; DEB-ree vs. duh-BREE; uh-LOO-mih-num vs. al-yew-MIN-ee-um; good day, mate vs. g'digh, might; and so forth) because, friends, that way madness lies. Instead, we will confine ourselves to a couple of things I have heard with my own ears. One of them is charming and one of them is infuriating.

I know a woman in Cumming, Georgia, who says Sayrah instead of Sarah and Mayry instead of Mary. I find it charming, something I thought only a few older women in Georgia said. But a young man from Sylacauga, Alabama, called my son Cayry (his name is Cary, which rhymes with carry, marry, tarry, Harry, Larry). So it must be at least a Georgia-Alabama thing and it might even be a remnant of speech in the Old South, which you thought had gone with the wind. It hasn't.

What I find infuriating is hearing people on radio and television say Fentanol, rhyming it with "alcohol". The drug's name is Fentanyl, not Fentanol, and its final syllable should be unaccented, what peope in phonetics call the "schwa E" sound. The word ends with the same spelling and the same sound as "vinyl". People don't say vinol and they shouldn't say Fentanol either. It's about to drive me crazy.

Tell the truth now. You thought I was already there, didn't you?

P.S. - August has started off with a bang, blogging-wise. I have published three posts in four days. I don't want to be Debbie Downer, but I doubt that I will be able to keep up the pace. Time will tell. As the man who jumped off the top of the Empire State Building was heard to say as he passed the 50th floor, "So far, so good."