Thought of the Day 01.25.10

My wife is the smartest woman I know. However, I sometimes fault her because every once in awhile she mispronounces a word. As a late-blooming language snob, I think of this as showing that I am smarter than she, a conclusion I’m not proud of. But the other day I suddenly realized I had it entirely backwards.

See, I grew up around intellectuals. This means I was exposed to a very wide vocabulary, words I learned how to use and how to pronounce by often hearing them. On the other hand, my wife grew up around blue-collar folks, people who were smart but not necessarily in the academic sense. This means she had to acquire her larger vocabulary by reading books. In so doing, she clearly learned the meaning of these words but not necessarily how to say them. Her guesses make sense, but unfortunately this is English, where even rational guesses are likely to be wrong.

Here’s the irony. Whenever she uses a word correctly but with such incorrect pronunciation, it indicates a word she learned on her own. This marker which I had been relying on as evidence of my superiority should actually be a reminder that my education was donated to me whereas hers had to be earned by her own effort. So who’s the smarty-pants now?