tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5621024.post113100563859424891..comments2024-01-09T03:52:43.027-08:00Comments on The Abstract Factory: Thoughts on "nucular"Keunwoo Lee (Cog)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05577836853536292311noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5621024.post-83000363870945197562013-09-19T10:29:53.023-07:002013-09-19T10:29:53.023-07:00I have researched this claim by Muller - and I thi...I have researched this claim by Muller - and I think it's bogus. Teller has a thick Hungarian accent - so his pronunciation will never be quite "right". But he does not pronounce it as nukular or nucular - he pronounces it as nuclear (with a thick Hungarian accent). <br /><br />If you don't believe my counter-claim I invite you to hear for yourself - there is a youtube interview with Teller on the ill-fated Project Plowshare from <br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa-IqOHDr_k (start at 0:28 listen closely at ~0:38)<br /><br />It's a 1965 interview made by Ohio State University for the USAF. <br /><br />I really don't know if Muller created this phonetic mythology himself, or was repeating it. Perhaps he knew Teller and made the determination himself. But as I said, I disagree with the claim (contrast Teller in this interview vs. Bush). <br /><br />As I said, I wanted to verify, with evidence. Muller seems to assert without reference, much like I just did for Bush. The difference is that it's quite easy to find clips with Bush, and most people have 1st hand experience from watching Presidential speaks. With Teller, it's necessary to do some digging. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5621024.post-1131209188213367932005-11-05T08:46:00.000-08:002005-11-05T08:46:00.000-08:00Not that this necessarily disqualifies serious tre...Not that this necessarily disqualifies serious treatment of the 'nucular' question, but I'd like to register a more general objection to the premise that experts in a given subfield ought, without great consideration, to be regarded as language leaders. Experts famously use jargon that is not in any useful sense English. Experts say things like: "We leverage multiple data providers to produce a very high quality output with a minimum amount of development against the core data sets enhancing the development speed at which people can bring an application to market." This may, in a small workforce community, be a passable way of communicating, but it is not language that the rest of the world needs any part of.<BR/><BR/>That said, I'm open to more context on the nucular question. Though it's worth noting that Jimmy Carter was famous for saying it well before the Bush family was.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5621024.post-1131146828061002332005-11-04T15:27:00.000-08:002005-11-04T15:27:00.000-08:00This is my fault for not being clearer: during the...This is my fault for not being clearer: during the lecture, Richard Muller actually wrote the word "nucular" on the screen, right under "nuclear" and "atomic", as three historical ways of referring to the weapons.<BR/><BR/>(Incidentally, apparently some physicists don't like to call them "atomic" weapons, because the thing that makes them special is that they employ the energy stored in the nucleus, as opposed to other parts of the atom.)<BR/><BR/>I therefore inferred, from Muller's presentation, that "nucular" was actually a distinct word from "nuclear" and not just a variant pronunciation. Obviously, "nucular" was at least a synonym for "nuclear", and possibly a homonym. I don't know how to decide whether a homonym for X that also sounds very similar to X is a distinct word, or merely a variant pronunciation of X.Keunwoo Lee (Cog)https://www.blogger.com/profile/05577836853536292311noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5621024.post-1131141802473006212005-11-04T14:03:00.000-08:002005-11-04T14:03:00.000-08:00My 2nd question was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and ...My 2nd question was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and I'm certainly not in a discipline from which I can criticize others for coining new terms. In the end, it's moot, but it strikes me as an odd distinction to pronounce a word differently rather than come up with a new term or an overly clever, contrived acronym. Or maybe it was just that the spelling n-u-c-u-l-a-r never made it out of Teller's notebooks.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5621024.post-1131132914077889482005-11-04T11:35:00.000-08:002005-11-04T11:35:00.000-08:00I don't know if anyone asked, but scientists make ...I don't know if anyone asked, but scientists make up jargon all the time for the novel phenomena they're describing. Nucular seems like a perfectly useful word for distinguishing between other senses of the word "nuclear", and the particular subset of nuclear reactions that are of interest when you're building a weapon.<BR/><BR/>I don't know whether Teller was making this distinction consciously. If he wasn't, well, OK, maybe there was a moment to correct that mistake, but that moment's past. The fact remains that plenty of experts actually use the term; if linguistic prescriptivists really feel qualified to walk into Lawrence Livermore and tell nucular weapons experts how to pronounce their job description, then I encourage them to do so.Keunwoo Lee (Cog)https://www.blogger.com/profile/05577836853536292311noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5621024.post-1131128210392585392005-11-04T10:16:00.000-08:002005-11-04T10:16:00.000-08:00Was this some conscious distinction made by Teller...Was this some conscious distinction made by Teller, or was he just using bad/lazy English in his day-to-day speech that was then adopted by his underlings and their descendants?<BR/><BR/>Either way, I'm not sure that a license to rework the spelling or pronunciation of <I>nuclear</I> should have been extended to the inventors of nuclear weaponry. Were the Curies asked if they wanted to change up their terminology and call it radiativity instead?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com