What? It’s not still Friday? For a number of reasons I won’t bore you with, my usual Friday post did not go out as planned and it’s now Sunday. You can plan all you like, but the universe will laugh in your face. But, on with the show…
The Northern Parula is one of the beautiful warblers that breed in our area. We’ve always pronounced it /puh-ROO-lah/ for year. But this recent article in American Bird Association says that it should be pronounced /PAR-a-la/ or, even more weird, /PAR-you-lah/.
Uhh, why? In the same post, it says that the bird is in the family Parulidae–pronounced /puh-ROO-luh-day/ or /puh-ROO-luh-dee/, which is much more like the way we pronounce “Parula”–and NOT in the family Paridae, which is pronounced /PAR-a-dee/.
So why continue to propagate the falsehood with the wrong pronunciation?
What are some pronunciations that baffle you?
Teresa Robeson 何顥思 