You're mispronouncing a lot of English words and that's OK, David Shariatmadari writes in the Guardian. Words like "apron" and "umpire" lost their initial consonants in a process linguists call "rebracketing." "Metathesis" turned brids into birds and a waps into a wasp. "Today's mistake could be tomorrow's vigorously defended norm," Shariatmadari writes. "There are lots of wonderful examples of alternative pronunciations or missteps that have become standard usage."
April 1, 2014