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Stop Ea'zh'th-qu'ack'ing!

I will bring to the fore two disturbing trends that plagued me whenever I stumble on it. These two are entirely unrelated. The first one being the pronunciation of the word "Earthquake" and the next being the sound that 'r' suffers in the tongues of Indians mimicking the Brits and the Americans. Yes, I agree there are other words pronounced wrongly but this particular word had the power to draw me in to a mode of introspection, albeit for weird reason.

I have encountered gentlemen and women pronouncing the word as Earth-qu'ack'. They are not of a particular category. These gentlemen span the range of all the seven stages of life, yet most of them don't seem to be concerned that they spell the word in an embarrassing way. Maybe their teachers had pronounced it so, maybe they ignored the thorn in lieu of the bigger scheme, whatever might be the reason, I consider it  a blemish on their record, more so if they happen to be English lecturers. The correct pronunciation would be Earth-qu'ake' where the 'ake' is similar to the 'ake' pronounced in "wake" and "take".

Next comes 'r'. How would you pronounce 'SUFFER'? The purists would advocate its pronunciation as 'suffer', wherein the 'r' has the sound similar to that, children produce when queried as to how a car runs. Something similar to 'rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'!! The fever of Westernisation has gripped us to such an extent that we pronounce 'suffer' as 'suffezh'. That word is one example of the 'r' being abused. True or untrue, rests in you fair.

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