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The thread that I discussed yesterday about the wife who is rigid about being on time led as the most active thread yesterday. Skipping that one, the next most active thread was titled, "A teacher who pronounces library as ‘liberry’" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. In her original post, the original poster simply says that hearing "library" pronounced as "liberry" is "like nails on a chalkboard". Despite the brevity of her post, the original poster touched on two separate issues, both of which provoked considerable response. Because the post appeared to be criticizing a teacher, many posters addressed that aspect. This often resulted in defenses of teachers and expressions of sympathy for the things with which they must put up. Others thought that this mispronunciation was more egregious because it was done by a teacher who is expected to be well-educated and might pass the mistake on to her students. The other aspect of the topic was about the pronunciation itself. Many posters argued that this pronunciation reflects a regional dialect or accent, something that some posters greatly appreciate. Others, including the original poster, argued that the pronunciation revealed an accent that demonstrated a lack of education. Some saw racial connotations in criticism of the pronunciation, while others said that individuals of various races said "liberry". Posters also brought up other words that are commonly pronounced differently depending on the accent of the speaker. Given the nature of language, especially English, in which the "rules" are often arbitrary or extremely flexible, I am not sure that pronunciations should necessarily be described as "correct" or "incorrect". Rather, I think it would be better to discuss "accepted" or "standard" pronunciations. In a subsequent post, the original poster herself seemed to find the regional pronunciation of certain words acceptable and not reflective of poor education, but continued to take issue with "liberry". This was clearly a subjective and personal conclusion. I was thinking about the topic of pronunciation recently after I started a new hobby that involves soldering electronic components. In the US, we pronounce "solder" as "sod-er". Those with a British accent pronounce it as "sold-er". Based on the spelling of the word, the British would appear to have the stronger argument with regard to the correct pronunciation. However, "solder" apparently came from the French word "souder", which has no "L" letter or sound. So, perhaps a point for the Americans. But the bottom line is that if you want to be understood and not thought to be mispronouncing things, you should probably adopt the accepted pronunciation of your environment. Conversely, if you think that someone else has mispronounced something, you might not want to immediately jump to conclusions.