During his reign over the great US of A of the second president Bush, we were introduced to a number of interesting examples of that “king’s” English.
He was know for:
adding syllables.
misunderestimate
subliminable
hispanically
dropping syllables
unceptable
straight out mispronunciation
nucular
terrist
folksy pronunciation
comin’
fella
‘merican
Unfortunately one of his more folksy pronunciations has oozed into common usage even here north of the 45th/49th (kind of depends where you are).
The simple word “to” has the same pronunciation as two and too. Geo W. pronounced it as tuh. “I’d like tuh thank you.”
To my ear, Canadian English is pretty well the common well understood blandly pronounced common version of our language. Most top news announcers actually sound like us. Unfortunately, I’m now hearing some of our talking heads start to use tuh for to.
“We’re trying tuh get so and so on the program to answer that … ”.
[Note: it’s try “to” because there is some doubt, not try “and” which means the outcome is certain. Another irksome misuse of the language that is becoming all to common.]
It’s time tuh stop the GW slippage – Drat!
The Plaidneck