Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Friso Pas asks Hi Gary, do you listen back to your episodes áfter you’ve recorded and edited them, so just before you put them on the podcast app? The reason I’m asking is that this week, even though I’m not English or American (I’m Dutch), I think I heard you mispronounce a word 2 episodes in a row. I could be wrong though, as it’s not my native language. In Ep. 2211, you said ‘preferable’ with the emphasis on …fer… , not on the first syllable. And in the intro of Ep. 2212, you said ‘divisive’, with the second syllable pronounced with a ‘short i’ sound, not as in I, which I also never heard before. In short, in what way is there quality control for each episode?

Most episodes are recorded hours before they go live. Once an episode is recorded, my focus is on getting the next episode out.

What you are noticing might, as someone who doesn’t speak English as a first language, seem odd. There are often multiple ways to pronounce the same word, and they are often regional variations.

Preferable and preferable are both acceptable. Likewise, divisive and divisive are both legitimate pronunciations.

I’ve found that many non-English-speaking Europeans learn British or American English depending on where they live. What they learned isn’t wrong, but it is also not complete.

English is a weird language. There is no one correct way to speak English. It is a language with many different accents and dialects, and the language evolves, often at a rapid pace.

I speak a midwestern American dialect, and that’s how I speak.