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Now you are just getting absurd. There is a huge difference between adding letters to a word that shouldn't be there and speaking with a regional accent that simply makes the same letters sound differently. If spelling is important and you say SHERBERT instead of SHERBET, you did not answer correctly.
You analogy would only make sense if the correct answer had been coffee and the contestant had responded with CORFFEE.
And dropping letters, or changing letters is acceptable? I'm not being absurd and people aren't adding letters to words, they are pronouncing them differently. If you see adding the r sound as wrong then it is just as wrong to not pronounce an r that is there, or to pronounce other letter sounds that aren't there, such as the w in coffee. If a contestant were to answer the judge with corfee for coffee I would hope the judges would have enough sense to understand they have the correct answer. I totally get the judges disqualifying answers when it's obvious the contestant is unsure and is reaching for a word they don't really know, but that's not the case here.
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Ok. I think this writing by Miriam Webster will completely put this debate to rest.
The alternative word, "sherbert" has been around since the word entered the english language. Webster now fully recognizes the word "sherbert" as an alternative spelling of the traditionally correct "sherbet".
So when Austin pronounced the answer "sherbert", he was in fact naming a word recognized by Webster as a word, and not a mispronunciation of the word sherbet.
So he got it wrong. Sherbert and sorbet don't share the last 3 letters. Clear as can be.
This has been a big topic of debate both on the Facebook page of A Way With Words, the NPR show about language, and the Jeopardy web page.
Jeopardy is sticking to their position, although I disagree with them. Fortunately it didn't change the outcome of the game.
Oh, and did you know that there is an appeal process in the show? When Alex comes back with a correction of a previous ruling sometimes it's because the person who was ruled against appealed and they changed their decision.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jackmccullough
This has been a big topic of debate both on the Facebook page of A Way With Words, the NPR show about language, and the Jeopardy web page.
Jeopardy is sticking to their position, although I disagree with them. Fortunately it didn't change the outcome of the game.
Oh, and did you know that there is an appeal process in the show? When Alex comes back with a correction of a previous ruling sometimes it's because the person who was ruled against appealed and they changed their decision.
Did you read my post right above yours, Jack? This now seems cut and dried. Miriam Webster is pretty much the gold standard for American English dictionaries, and they say sherbert is a word.
He gave the wrong answer.
And I would guess the judges were actually waiting to hear whether the player would say "sherbet" or "sherbert", and were prepared to declare sherbert a wrong answer.
I'm from Boston originally and everyone I know has always pronounced it as "sher-bert". I'm actually kind of shocked to find out that's not the right way to say it.
Last edited by SparklesNShine; 10-06-2017 at 03:32 PM..
Ok. I think this writing by Miriam Webster will completely put this debate to rest.
The alternative word, "sherbert" has been around since the word entered the english language. Webster now fully recognizes the word "sherbert" as an alternative spelling of the traditionally correct "sherbet".
So when Austin pronounced the answer "sherbert", he was in fact naming a word recognized by Webster as a word, and not a mispronunciation of the word sherbet.
So he got it wrong. Sherbert and sorbet don't share the last 3 letters. Clear as can be.
Im guilty of this. We are generally terrible at words like oil, foil, boil as well in terms of pronunciation.
Speak for yourself! This thoroughly Southern girl has never added an R to words like "wash" or whatever. I also say "foil, oil, boil" etc., with no problem at all.
No one in my family or my husband's family (both completely southern since, oh, about 1640) does that weird R thing. I'm not even sure I could have married anyone who did that!
I hear it very occasionally but it's never been the norm anywhere I've lived and every time I hear it (once in a blue moon) I always think "What the heck is that about?"
Back to the OP, yeah, I do say "sherbert" and somewhere in my distant past I knew that it wasn't technically correct, but I'd totally forgotten that interesting tidbit. So I guess I DO do one weird R thing.
Ok. I think this writing by Miriam Webster will completely put this debate to rest.
The alternative word, "sherbert" has been around since the word entered the english language. Webster now fully recognizes the word "sherbert" as an alternative spelling of the traditionally correct "sherbet".
So when Austin pronounced the answer "sherbert", he was in fact naming a word recognized by Webster as a word, and not a mispronunciation of the word sherbet.
So he got it wrong. Sherbert and sorbet don't share the last 3 letters. Clear as can be.
But have you ever actually seen a food product labeled "sherbert"? Does such a dessert actually exist? How is this different from the example I gave earlier about "baloney"? No such food product actually exists that is spelled b a l o n e y, despite it often being pronounced that way (including in the Oscar Meyer commercials, in which it is not only pronounced baloney, but then spelled out as b o l o g n a.) Some people may pronounce it as buh-low-nuh (Weid Al did when he parodied My Sharona ) but buh-low-nee is the pronunciation I've always heard.
The food packages all say BOLOGNA, no matter which of the two ways it's pronounced. Likewise, the food packages all say SHERBET , no matter which of the two ways it's pronounced. That's why I think the judges got it wrong.
I'm glad we can all quibble about such a fun, trivial thing! Thanks for participating!
There's no second "I" in aluminum either but for some unknown reason the U.K. residents all seem to pronounce it 'a-loo-min-ee-um."
Do I get a prize?
This comes up often on a show that I watch that is produced in the UK. That said, it is their language, so who are we to say that they are pronouncing (or spelling) anything incorrectly?
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We are generally terrible at words like oil, foil, boil as well in terms of pronunciation.
