Friday, May 23, 2008

Deaf Jaguar

No, I'm not starting a cheesily-named tribute band to pay homage to my favorite rockers of all time. I'm literally hoping that jaguars can't hear. Because if they can, they might be as irritated as I am that suddenly people can't seem to pronounce their names correctly.

As with the previously blogged about acronym debacle, this is a new development in the butchering of the English language - or at least one I hadn't noticed until now. Over the past year, I've noticed that a lot of people are referring to the spotted cat (or the luxury car brand name) as a jag-WIRE. Do you see the letter "I" anywhere in this word?

The ultimate offense occurred when I heard a radio commerical for a local Jaguar dealership, and the narrator made the above-mentioned gaff. Granted, it sounded like it was just one of those live reads by the station talent and not a professionally produced spot, but still - how embarassing for the dealership that their own advertisement doesn't even know how to pronounce what it's supposed to be selling. That's assuming that the folks at the dealership even know the correct pronunciation.

Score another one for the English-speaking public.

No comments: