Archdeacon Rachel Mann shared this Pause for Thought on Zoe Ball's Radio 2 show on Tuesday, 29th October.
"It should come as no surprise that a poet like me loves words. I adore not only their sound, but how they feel as they roll off the tongue. I love choosing just the right word in the right place. But I’ve also come to enjoy how readily we mess things up. I still smile when I recall how, when Mexican food caught on in the UK in the ‘80s, my mum would pronounce fajitas as ‘Fujitsus’. And I’ll never forget an aunt whose best shot at the word ‘gateau’ was the nonsense word ‘gaytex’. And it’s not just words loaned from other languages that trip us up. If you ever go to Lancaster you’ll see signs for a place called Quernmore. Except its pronounced Korma, like the curry. And don’t even try to spell ‘Chumley’ Castle.
"When I was little I read voraciously. I’d read anything, including the telephone directory (if anyone remembers one of those). And, yes, I was a show-off too who loved to parade my new vocab. Except I pronounced hyperbole and cacophony as ‘hyper-bowl’ and ‘cack-oh-foney’. Oh, the cringe when better educated people pointed out my mistakes to me. It was even worse when I became a Christian and tried to say biblical words like Beatitude, which became for me beautitude and the book of Colossians became ‘collo-see-ans’.
"Then I read this: "Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means that they learned it by reading." It helped me not to feel embarrassed about messing up a word I’d learned, but never heard. Nor should I rush to judge or mock a person who gets words wrong. Yes, the right pronunciation matters, but I’d rather encourage people to try the riches of language than be put off or put down by judgment. I don’t want anyone to cringe at an honest mistake.
"Jesus famously said, do not judge others lest you be judged. He reminds me that when I look down on or laugh at others, ultimately, the judgment rebounds back on me. No one should feel ashamed for trying to learn new stuff. Mind you, now I’m thinking of them, I really could do with a few of my mum’s Fujitsus and a slice of my aunt’s gaytex cake."