One small piece of business-speak grates my ears everytime I hear it. The word is processes. For some reason, supposedly intelligent business people are often reduced to pronouncing this word as if its root was an imaginary Greek word, processis. That is, they pronounce the last syllable of the plural as “EEZ.”
Unfortunately, like aks, nucular, and irregardless, “incorrect” pronunciations are used often enough by educated individuals that they become “accepted” or “acceptable” pronunciations.
This follows the general trends of language and dialect transformation throughout history, so I guess I can’t complain too much. Language is fluid.
Related links:
* Dictionary.com entry for “process”
* Top 100 most often mispronounced words
* History of the English language
Update: I swear this is just a coincidence. George W. Bush mangled English again today when he used the word disassemble (and defined the word incorrectly) when he meant dissemble (which happened to be Monday’s word of the day at Dictionary.com). Here’s the White House press transcript.
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