Aural Perception

The subject line is the giveaway here. If you were hearing, rather than reading the words, you might hear "oral perception," unless the speaker had particularly precise pronunciation (take that, nattering nabobs of negativism!). I bring this up because lately I've been experiencing what one might call auditory misperceptions.

My favorite example: the Honeydew Donuts ad that features folks itemizing the Honeydew treats that light up their day. The final character lists "A large houseplant and a pistachio muffin or two." After the first couple of times I heard this, I made a point of watching the actor's lips carefully, and still can't hear it any differently. I should note that the last time I had my hearing tested, it was exceptionally acute. However, that's no reason to believe that what I perceive is what's in the script. As far as I know, Honeydew doesn't have a garden shop. Best guess? Hazelnut.

Another ad that really grates on my nerves is one for Friendly's, an East Coast ice cream/burger chain. Friendly's commercial tag line is "Where ice cream makes the meal." No nutritional judgments are being made here; the problem is the ad, which features a mini-van full of kids happily singing the catchy Friendly's jingle. Their vocalizations are rapidly overridden by the demented soccer mom who is chauffering the kids. The kids, wide-eyed, fall silent as Mom, who seems to have been dipping into little Tommy's Ritalin, pounds rhythm on the steering wheel and frenetically bounces up and down in her bucket seat, belting out the signature words (rendered phonetically) "wayer ahs creem makes the mee-uhl." This performance is doubly icky. Not only is seeing a crazy person driving a carful of kids quite disturbing, but her pronouncing ice as ahs makes the word seem, unpleasantly, much more like ass than ice. Not so friendly for Friendly's. ICK ICK.

As it happens, I've had some theatre training, and was once complimented on how beautifully I enunciate the Queen's English, so I have a very modest claim to knowing what I'm discussing. From my viewpoint, one would hope that actors who are cast in commercials would be highly motivated to enunciate well for three reasons:

• optimizing perception of the product being advertised, leading to
  
• further commercial acting opportunities, leading to
  
• those lovely residuals.

Unfortunately, I've noticed some trends, particularly in television commercials, that either ignore or glorify mispronunciation of basic American English word elements. This doesn't have anything to do with the linguistic regionalisms that one hears in local advertising. It's all about national promotions featuring misinterpretations of pronunciation, which then perpetuate that mispronunciation ad infinitum.

No, I don't mean NOOK-yoo-lahr vs. NOO-klee-ahr for "nuclear." President Obama has it right, and we can hope that his example will help correct the mispronunciations of previous administrations. And then there's KAR-ah-mel vs. KAHR-mel for "caramel," this seems to come under the heading of personal preference, like toh-MAY-toh vs. toh-MAH-toh. It's not worth haggling over. Nope, I mean the rampant reinterpretation of the double O.

Case in point: Wendy's restaurants feature a chirpy animated Wendy character who cheerily declares that "it's not fast fewd, it's Wendy's!" I don't go through a drive-thru for fewd, I'm looking for food, and if they can't deliver food, I'm not buyin' it.

If this becomes any more widespread, we'll be facing a linguistic crisis. The famous rhyming trio "moon / June / spoon" becomes "mewn / Jewn / spewn." which starts to sound a bit icky. And if cows stop saying "moo" and instead say "mew," what are cats and seagulls to do?

I have a feeling some of this stems from our texted communications, where "cool" has been replaced by the cooler "kewl."

Ewwwww.