boxofdelights

I tend to twitch when "poem" is pronounced either "pome" or "poim" as I don't like the sounds of either of those, my preferred pronunciation being somewhere in the middle. Except when I start repeating it to myself in an effort to work out how it "should" sound, at which point I lose all ability to pronounce it in any way that sounds nice to me. (But I recognize this is a weird affectation of mine and try not to push it on anyone else!)

Something I do tend to judge people on is pronouncing "cooperation," which I can trace back to an interminable speech I had to listen to in highschool at a convention that was ridiculous to begin with: the Office Education Association of America, which changed its name to Future Business Professionals of America at the convention, but which failed to change anything substantive about the organization to reflect that -- the officers dressed in jockey silks at the opening ceremonies (held in Louisville, Kentucky near Derby Day), and at closing ceremonies they wore party dresses and each sang a song.

But they also each gave a speech at closing ceremonies, and I had to sit there and listen to one of the party-dress-wearing young women talk on and on and on about "kwaperation" and I just wanted to throw something at her and shriek "IT HAS FIVE SYLLABLES, NOT FOUR! YOU PRONOUNCE BOTH OF THE 'O'S!"

I hope they've figured out what "professional" really means in the past 24 years.

(The entire reason I was there was that my computer science teacher was the local faculty rep for the group and made me participate in a competition at State level, which I inexplicably won, so the school sent me and a couple of others who placed first in various competitions to the national convention competitions.)