Do different pronunciations fit with basic grammar?
URRICANES HAVE BEEN CHURNING all week in the Caribbean. To hear news announcers report on their progress makes you wonder whether they are talking about the same location. Most call it the Carib’yan. There may be some who still refer to it as the Car-ib-ee’-an. When we studied geography and English even back in grade school, our teachers referred to it and we accepted it as Car-ib-bee-an. Even the radio announcers in those days called it that. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt changed that during one of his fireside chats in the early 1930s. He called it Carib’yan. From that day on, radio and TV announcers, speechmakers and others have adopted FDR’s pronunciation as the proper one. Modern dictionaries have allowed us to keep faith with our teachers of the past. At one time, they listed only the original pronunciation. Newer versions of Funk and Wagnalls and Webster’s have both pronunciations, but list the older one first. Common usage probably makes it right. The influence that pronu
