let it go

For the past four months or so, I have wrestled with some serious angst over the pronunciation of the word "Babel." See the former blog for a chronicle of the dictionary research developments. I've alienated friends over this (ok, well if not alienated, I've at least moderately irritated friends). I've nearly given up on uttering the word at all or even thinking it. I just mentally sort of skip over it, the synaptic equivalent of the old literary device of dashing out the majority of an offending word (B——— in this case), a strategy that used to be reserved for whitewashing blue language or to half-assedly protect the innocent by throwing a thin veil of obfuscation over the proper name in question.

My main beef with this word is that I pronounce it one way ("Bay-buhl," slight emphasis on the Bay) and other friends and certain movie-announcer guys pronounce it other ways. I automatically assumed that my particular pronunciation branded me with an indelible label of "hick" (inferiority complex still alive and well, clearly). So I fled to my dictionary references trying to justify my pronunciation, to mixed results that effectively justified not only my pronunciation but nearly everyone else's as well, much to my irritation. Then, yesterday, I got a wily idea to check if there is a regional preference of pronunciation of Babel - to determine once and for all if my pronunciation was hick-ish, or something else. I wasn't entirely worried about this mind you because I heard Cate Blanchett pronounce it my way at the Golden Globes and you can't go wrong if you're in the same league as Cate. So the first place I checked was the Oxford English Dictionary. They list my pronunciation as the only pronunciation, with the edition note that all pronunciations are British English unless otherwise noted. So. Apparently my instinct and familiar pronunciation of Babel is the British way. I can live with that. Just like I say "toasted cheese" instead of "grilled cheese," "toasted" being the British preference. It's just a family thing. And it's not like the family is fresh from England. I have some Welsh and English in the blood, but that part of the family came over several generations ago. So who knows. The bottom line is that I'm letting go of my little ball of fluster about Babel. And that should be good news for everyone.