A Rant about the Pronunciation of a Single Term in Govt-Sponsored Healthcare

Americans have a reputation in some parts of the world for being lazy with their speech habits, although we like to consider ourselves coolly efficient and unwilling to put up with hoity-toity speech. This cool efficiency means that we feel fine when we use the same pronunciation for different ideas; for example, the pronunciations of the words vane, vein, and vain. I do not feel too bad about those similar pronunciations since, at least, the American rules of spelling and pronunciation support their sounding the same. But there are two words that should not sound the same since they are spelled so differently:

Credible and Creditable

The spelling of the second word, creditable, the term that is important to government-sponsored healthcare regulation like Medicare, should not be pronounced as kre-duh-buhl, as if it were credible. Creditable‘s spelling indicates that it should have 4 syllables during pronunciation, not 3. I offer you this easy-to-say alternative pronunciation: kruh-DIT-uh-buhl, the stress being on the second syllable. Saying it this way, your tongue does not trip; your lips do not suffer irreparable damage. Plus, such pronunciation involves an acceptable amount of cool American efficiency, an amount that we can be proud of. You can tell that just the cool amount of efficiency is there from all the “uh’s” in the pronunciation. Best of all, such a pronunciation easily distinguishes it from credible.

Promote this pronunciation among your friends! I will be grateful that you did.

What do you think? Could we build a social movement around improving the pronunciation of a single word? (Everyone else in the country is building a social movement around a bunch of other trivial ideas, so why not us!)

By the way, this trivial opinion is just mine, not Stone Hill's.—Doug