WINS anchors mispronouncing words

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:28:50 -0400, A Joseph Ross <joe@attorneyross.com> said:

> I wonder if it's a difference in regional pronunciation.  Is "nukular" a 
> standard Southern pronunciation?

Not necessarily.  My dictionary doesn't give it as an alternative
pronunciation, but the OED has the following note:

: The colloquial pronunciation Brit.  /?nju?kj?l?/ , U.S.
: /?n(j)ukj?l?r/ (freq. rendered in written form as nucular ; compare
: nucular adj.2) has been criticized in usage guides since at least
: the mid 20th cent. (see for example Webster (1961) at cited word),
: although it is now commonly given as a variant in modern
: dictionaries. See Webster's Dict. Eng. Usage (1989) 673/1 for a
: discussion of possible origins of the pronunciation.

It's simply a very common nonstandard pronunciation.  It's common
enough that it can't legitimately be described as "wrong", but it's
certainly the wrong *register* for something that claims to be a
serious newscast.

-GAWollman