Mispronounced

(photo: quickanddirtytips.com)

Do not fear mistakes - fear only the absence of creative, constructive, and corrective responses to those mistakes.

- Rolfe Kerr

One of the things that really strikes me when I observe others is their ability to pick up the mistakes of people. Take for example: the way persons mispronounce words. During programs, you see them smile and whisper their critiques when the speaker miss the correct pronunciation of words. Of course, there are instances when the thought of the sentences becomes different when a word is mispronounced. But what about considering the courage of the speaker to talk in public? What about seeing the whole and not just the part of the speech? Pronunciation is a part of the communication process but if the message is delivered, isn’t it a minute thing to consider?

I also notice that these people who criticize a lot on pronunciation are so obsessed with the pronunciation per se and not the meat of the speech. Most of them could not talk straight because they are constantly being careful on how to enunciate the words. They are always editing their words that the thought of their sentences are affected. We hear them talk good when they have a prepared speeches which they rehearsed for hours but we could not get anything from them when they do spontaneous talking.

There was a time when I was listening to somebody lambasting a speaker for not being able to pronounce the words of his speech. I was lost on the ranting since I tried to remember the history of the critic’s public speaking engagements. Reality came that it was nil. So, what’s the credibility of the critique when one does not even has the clue what it is to be on the stage? You see, a book critic could never be called one unless he/she was able to devour tons of books of multiple genre.

Of course it takes a lot of skill to talk in public. Yet, there are people in the government service or even in the academe who are required to speak on certain occasions. Could you expect them to spend 10,000 hours of rehearsing for the speech to be perfect? Then, these critics would insist that such people need to improve their speaking skills…what for? If they are managers, why not concentrate on managerial skills? If they are school heads, why not put up a lot of energy on the teaching-learning process?

The point is: Not all can become very eloquent speakers. Leave this to those facilitators and whose careers are on public speaking. A speech is not just a set of properly-pronounced words. It entails getting the soul of the message rather than being distracted by an f mistaken as p.

Writing is similar: it is a means of communicating. But look at what 98% of the people are doing in social media. They are abbreviating words; they are using codes and misspelled stuff yet they are able to understand each other. Of course, it is not a good sign for us who are obsessed with the written word. Yet, only a few are complaining since they are able to come across.

There are even those who are very critical with pronunciation who could not write well. Their syntax is that of a high school student. Yet, the way they project themselves are that of demigods in the spoken word. There are those who constantly update their status and we cringe on their grammar. There are those who write to impress and not to express… Yet we keep our silence.

What if we consider our “superiority” over you and create a WORD WAR?

Can one picture what will happen to the world when we linger on petty things like this? Yet, the way we live our lives is that of a horror film? I’d rather pick a person who could not pronounce words properly than those who can but the stains on their humanity could not be erased by a BACKSPACE.