There is No Zoo in Zoology, and Other Beastly Mispronounciations: An Opinionated Guide for the Well-Spoken

by Charles Harrington Elster

Book Overview

Nearly 400 of the most frequently mispronounced words are arranged alphabetically with witty, enlightening discourses on how each word has been spoken and misspoken. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0020318308
• ISBN13: 9780020318309
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Collier Books
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A great addition to my book collection

This is an old and rare find. An amusing and educational book for any generation.

From a-BER-ant to zoh-AHL-uh-jist

Mr. Elster explains how he was sensitized from a young age to the careful use and pronunciation of words. His special interest led him to produce this book and a sequel ("Is There a Cow in Moscow?). The core of his efforts is an alphabetical guide to selected words that are commonly mispronounced. Each entry provides the preferred pronunciation. Many entries go far beyond this and provide some explanation of the word's origin and evolution, a discussion of alternative pronunciations, and witty chatter or anecdotes about the particular unit of language. The book is worthwhile on several levels, and yet troubling in several important ways. First, it provides an eye-opening and entirely useful guide to better speech through better pronunciation. Second, it opens up the world of words in new ways to the uninitiated, including the tug-of-war battles that go on under the surface for control of our language. In addition, the book motivates the reader to pay better attention to how he or she speaks, which has a huge impact on how others perceive us. How is it troubling? Well, unless you were raised by English teachers or sticklers for accurate speech, you will realize that you have been laying verbal eggs all your life by repeating pronunciation errors you learned first from family and friends and never bothered to check out in the dictionary. You may begin to despair that your errors are so ingrained you'll never get it right. If that were not enough, you'll begin to realize that if you DID clean up your act and say words the "right" way, many people will assume either that you're saying them wrong (so common are the mispronunciations) or else you acting affected. What is a person to do? Mr. Elster does come to the rescue. He suggests that you do your best and pay attention to the way you say words, but not obsess about it. He realizes that every time we open our mouths and speak a word, we are voting in the great ongoing language referendum. If enough people decide to say a word a particular way, the more popular dictionaries will eventually follow, leaving only the language purists to complain. So, we have here a book that is fun, useful, thought-provoking, clever, and well-researched. If it ultimately causes you to be more careful and deliberate about how you speak, it will help you speak in a way that reflects well on your obvious intelligence, illustrated by your decision to acquire Mr. Elster's unique book(s).

This book should be standing next to your dictionary on the shelf.

This is a book which, unfortunately, many people don't know about but would do well to have in their collection. Mr. Elster appears to have researched the words covered in the book very well, and he tells the history of many of them. A pattern that quickly becomes evident is how some words are continuously mispronounced for many years, whereby eventually the erroneous pronunciation can become the standard - resulting in dictionaries adopting them over the correct traditional pronunciations. Some people may think this is no big deal, that we can just keep changing our language according to how most people say things, even if they're just plain wrong. To me, there's something really sad about that. This book is so valuable because it captures most of the words that are most often violated, and it makes a point of what's happening. Probably the best example in the book is the word "flaccid". When you read what Elster says about it, you realize how wrong it is to say it any other way than "FLAK-sid". After many years, the incorrect way of saying it became standard, because not enough people give a damn enough to buy a book like this and start caring about how they speak their own language.