MMeM, Vol.9 Issue 3 – Pronunciations

I‘ve noticed over the last few years that there have been a lot of new pronunciations of words that had been said certain ways for decades. Now, I guess it’s not a big deal or anything, I’m just curious as to why this happens all of a sudden sometimes.

I mean aren’t there other things to put effort into for getting wide popular culture acceptance and adoption?

I give you the most observed re-occurrance of one of these episodes, the Poinsett-IAS. For the majority of my life, everyone called these holiday plants Poinsett-AS, done. Now, apparently someone has started a movement of proper pronunciation of common words. At first I thought, well a word like Poinsettia seems hispanic possibly. So, as more Gringos learn Spanish (or try to) they pay attention to pronouncing words ending like that. Maybe the Poinsettia family has been offended all of these years!

No. That, could NOT have been more wrong. This plant was brought back to the U.S. from Mexico by one Joel Roberts Poinsett who was the U.S. Secretary of War 1837-1841.

It caught on in the states and was coined with Joel’s name, the origin of the “ia” is unknown.

Of course before all of that, the flower, much like the “Native Americans” already had a couple of names.

It was known as the “Flor de Noche Buena” (Christmas Eve flower) in Mexico proper. And, the Aztecs referred to this winter-blooming plant as cuetlaxochitl. Poinsett, was an avid amateur botanist. By 1836, the plant was known as the PoinsettIA in the U.S.

The Maya were unavailable for comment, as they have been since about 1542.