Christine in Denver, Colorado, is pondering the etiquette of correcting someone’s pronunciation. How do you approach knowing the actual pronunciation of a word, when it’s not the most common one? For example, Christine learned that the name of the Japanese clothing store Uniqlo is pronounced YOO-ni-kloh, but some people she knows call it yoo-NEEK-loh. Is it kinder to offer a gentle correction, or should you adopt what you know is the wrong pronunciation in order to be agreeable? This is part of a complete episode.
It’s hard to remember how to spell the names of some cities. Tallahassee, Florida, for example. Then there are towns with very few letters to remember. Y, a tiny town in northern France, has only two main streets, which come together to form...
On a busy day in the emergency room, Alisa of Dallas, Texas, told an efficient colleague that she was really humming, meaning it as a compliment. Her colleague took offense, maintaining that humming meant “smelly.” Since the 18th...
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