Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Kiddie Confusion

I remember the very first time I came across the word "photographer" in text. I'd heard the word, and I knew what a photographer was, but I had never seen it written down. I was in the third grade, and I was reading something aloud to my mom when I came across it. I pronounced it as "photo-graph-er" making it sound like the words that it is comprised of.

My mom said, "No, that's photographer, not photo-graph-er." I am not exactly sure why, but the pronunciation of this word made me irrevocably angry. (Well, actually, I was probably angry because I considered reading my forte and I didn't like to be wrong.)

"Well," I said, "it's the word photo and the word graph with 'er' at the end, it should be photo-graph-er."

She responded with, "You wouldn't say 'lack' for 'lake,' would you? That's just how it's pronounced." This only pissed me off more, because who would pronounce lake as lack? The logistics were totally different.

To this day, whenever I come across the word photographer in any text, I can't help but hold a grudge against it.

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