moonjaguar
2006-10-10 07:08 am UTC (link)

I pronounce it "reediculous" as do many people where I'm from and where I'm currently staying so that might explain the common spelling error. I don't check the info (if there is any) on everyone who spells "ridiculous" with an E so I can't tell if everyone doing it has a similar regional and/or personal pronunciation.

What's funny are people who harp about another poster's "spelling and grammer" mistakes. I've heard the most interesting defenses when someone points out that it's grammar.

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abbymouse
2006-10-10 07:10 am UTC (link)

I stand corrected on the dialect front!

And those instances are funny, yes. Especially when they claim that it's just the Internet, it's not serious! Because if their spelling/grammar errors are admissable, then so should be other spelling/grammar errors, by that logic.

Of course, I am the sort who wants people to thwap her when she makes mistakes.

(I also get bothered by "sandwhich". Clearly doing English Extension 2 was a bad plan.)

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	eclair 2006-10-10 02:08 pm UTC (link)
	God, you would hate being around me. I drive my SO crazy because I always spell 'sandwich' with the additional h. I'm sorry, I help in the decline of the English language. (I also pronounce 'ridiculous' as "reh-diculous". Yikes! ) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	soy_latte 2006-10-10 09:33 am UTC (link)
	Definately. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	snacky 2006-10-10 03:32 pm UTC (link)
	Man, I was just coming here to make that comment! You have foiled me again, flutterg! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	littleshebear 2006-10-10 04:04 pm UTC (link)
	I used to do that all the time, took ages to train myself out of it. hangs head in shame My own spelling pet-peeve is when people confuse complement/compliment. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	squib 2006-10-10 09:47 am UTC (link)
	You know what's even more ridiculous than "rediculous"? Misspelling "mad". I shit you not. I see "she got really made at me" all the time-- entirely too often for it to simply be a typo. How the hell do you misspell a three-letter word?!? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	jeanne 2006-10-10 01:57 pm UTC (link)
	I once mispelled "the" to the point where none of the correct letters even appeared in the word. My fingers had shifted slightly on the keyboard without my noticing. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	braisinhussy 2006-10-10 04:01 pm UTC (link)
	I was attempting to type "?style=mine" yesterday but got "?style=,ome" because my right hand had shifted. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sheep 2006-10-10 04:31 pm UTC (link)
	That just reminded me of this fanfic I read, where some one wrote "he was bent over the pope" instead of "he was bent over the pipe." I laughed so much I started crying. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	breecita 2006-10-10 07:40 pm UTC (link)
	spews milk everywhere Oh god. Warn a girl, would you? There are some things... BAH! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	abbymouse 2006-10-10 07:41 pm UTC (link)
	Pope Palpatine does not approve. Although with the way Senator Palpatine was acting in the third movie, perhaps he would. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	breecita 2006-10-10 07:45 pm UTC (link)
	I think it's probably on his daily to-do list right between "Kill cute kittenz" and "RULZ TEH WORLDS!!!" (Reply to this)(Parent)

	dejla 2006-10-11 11:21 pm UTC (link)
	Definitely warn us first. I don't even want to think what images hit my mind when I read that. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ladybirdsleeps 2006-10-10 11:59 am UTC (link)
	Given English's bizarre spelling, "rediculous" and "ridiculous" would be pronounced the same way, if "rediculous" was a word. That's why it's such a common spelling error. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ladybirdsleeps 2006-10-10 12:00 pm UTC (link)
	Left out an important bit of my comment: in my dialect, which is a damn common American one. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

seraphtrevs
2006-10-10 01:40 pm UTC (link)

Same here - I've lived on both coasts of the United States (Pennsylvania and California), and pretty much everyone pronounces it ree-diculous. I don't know enough about any other US region to know how they do it, though. /thoughts on vowels

Question to the OP: Where are you from? I find dialects really interesting.

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moonjaguar
2006-10-10 05:10 pm UTC (link)

Wow, it's a bigger dialectic band than I thought, perhaps it's not so regional. I hear "reediculous" in a longitudinal swath in Illinois from Chicago to the Mississippi and heard it in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee but I wasn't sure if it was a Midwestern and Appalachian regional pronunciation or if it occured in other US states and in other countries.

I'm a regionalisms, dialects and accent fiend to the extent of where I get teased with "you probably hear a regional accent when you cross the street!"

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	moonjaguar 2006-10-10 05:11 pm UTC (link)
	er... GAH. Preview is my friend, I should visit Preview more often. Lateral, not longitudinal. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	abbymouse 2006-10-10 05:53 pm UTC (link)
	Australia, and it's most definitely "rid-ick-yuh-luss" here, so that could be why the misspelling bothers me so. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kyuuketsukirui 2006-10-10 09:52 pm UTC (link)
	I'm in California and that's how I've always said and heard it, too. (Reply to this)(Parent)

polygamouse
2006-10-11 03:48 pm UTC (link)

North-American air force brat here, and that's how I've usually heard it said, with "ruh-dick-yu-luss" as a distant second.

I've never heard anyone pronounce it with a short e, which is how rediculous looks like it should sound, and there's obviously no such word as redicule, which makes me wonder if the people spelling ridiculous with an e even knows what the word means.

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mookie
2006-10-12 03:33 am UTC (link)

The same folks, you mean, who don't quite get that should've is the contraction for should have and that should of isn't how it's spelled, no matter what they think they're saying in their heads?

Yeah and I remember a time when I used to think it was the smorning to refer to as earlier today before lunch time, but then I realized when I tried to write it down that the word made no sense, and it dawned on me what I was actually saying.

/ranty rant

Is it very sad that I'm sitting here wondering how to pronounce your user name in my head and that I'm leaning toward "puh-lig-a-mouse"?

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	entelodont 2006-10-12 03:42 am UTC (link)
	I pronounce it with a short e most of the time (am of south Texas origin). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	drhenryjekyll 2006-10-13 02:44 am UTC (link)
	North Texas, same. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	breecita 2006-10-10 07:43 pm UTC (link)
	Hmmm... strangely, I pronounce it "ruh-diculous" most of the time. But my accent is fairly confused, as I was born in New England, spent 10 years in the midwest, one year in Austria and a few months in California before spending the last 5 years in the deep south. ;) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	entelodont 2006-10-12 03:40 am UTC (link)
	I'm from south Texas (border country) and I usually say ruh-diculous or reh-diculous. Sometimes I actually say rih-diculous, but damned if I know why. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	xero_sky 2006-10-10 01:20 pm UTC (link)
	One of the mildly endearing things about the SA forums is that there's a word filter that substitutes [NOTE: I AM TOO STUPID TO CORRECTLY SPELL THE WORD "RIDICULOUS"] every time someone uses "rediculous". They also have a version for definitely/definately. SA: sooooo educational! (Reply to this)(Thread)

	seraphtrevs 2006-10-10 01:43 pm UTC (link)
	Hee, that's pretty funny! If I had $10, I would join the forums. (Well, maybe. I have a sneaky suspicion that the goons might drive my insane. In a bad way.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sashenka 2006-10-10 03:32 pm UTC (link)
	If I had $10, I would buy some comics. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	seraphtrevs 2006-10-10 03:38 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, that probably would be a better investment. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	puipui 2006-10-10 09:37 pm UTC (link)
	I'd buy cake. Mmm, cake. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	rogue 2006-10-10 04:40 pm UTC (link)
	I don't think I've ever heard anyone actually pronounce it as something other than "rediculous". Not that it makes up for the misspelling, but, yeah. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	toph 2006-10-10 04:59 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah. I've always heard it pronounced with the same vowel as 'red' which to me makes the mispelling understandable though granted no less annoying. Northern midwest american accent here. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ealusaid 2006-10-10 05:53 pm UTC (link)
	Ditto; Canadian prairies. But then, I love my accent, because we're so lazy. We can't even pronounce our on cities right. Edmonton is "Edmitten" and Calgary is "Cowgry". It's like, if you've got the beginning, and something approxamating the end, people can figure the rest out for themselves. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ashinae 2006-10-11 02:50 am UTC (link)
	Heh. I was born in Cowgry, but have lived virtually all my life somewhere near Toronto. My entire extended family is still "out west"; they make fun of my accent. :) I pronounce it "ruhdiculous". (Reply to this)(Parent)

	abbymouse 2006-10-10 07:42 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah; as I said, I do not know all dialects, but my Aussie self is used to hearing it with a clear "rid" sound at the beginning, which is why it irks me so. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	polly_parrot 2006-10-10 07:31 pm UTC (link)
	'Hampster' is my own pet peeve. You don't pronounce it 'hampster', so why spell it that way? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ealusaid 2006-10-11 12:04 am UTC (link)
	I pronounce it hampster. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	deadgayrobin 2006-10-11 01:26 am UTC (link)
	Wait, are you talking about the laundry thing or the tiny fuzzy animal? Or some horrible conglomerate of the two? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	chibicurmudgeon 2006-10-11 03:59 pm UTC (link)
	gets a terribly cute mental image of hamsters in a hamper (Reply to this)(Parent)

	quinctia 2006-10-11 03:34 am UTC (link)
	You know what, it bugs me too. Grew up around Chicago, always heard it as rih-dih-cue-luss, and never saw it spelt with an e until the internet, and it drives me bonkers. Oh well. (Reply to this)

	mookie 2006-10-11 04:40 pm UTC (link)
	I came very close to posting a similar rant myself the other day, but I might as well do it here. It's ludicrous, damn it. I don't care how the rapper spells his name; "ludacris" is still incorrect. (Reply to this)

	mindset 2006-10-11 04:41 pm UTC (link)
	After reading this whole post, I don't actually know how I pronounce the word anymore. I only wanted to comment for Cypher shoutout love. :) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	abbymouse 2006-10-11 09:04 pm UTC (link)
	Cypher is, indeed, awesome. holds out hope that he might be in Ultimate X-Men someday (Reply to this)(Parent)

chibikaijuu
2006-10-15 06:21 am UTC (link)

Hmm. Most people tend to stress the second syllable, and so don't really enunciate the first, making it more of a "r'DIKulous", (and when they do stress the first syllable, it's generally "REEdiculous!"). "Re" and "ri" are fairly similar sounds, especially if you aren't over-enunciating (and in certain parts of the South/Midwest appear to be the *same* sound -at least, my friend from Oklahoma regularly said "pin" for "pen" and "igg" for "egg"), so it you aren't thinking about the root word, "rediculous" seems a reasonable spelling. It took me ages to stop spelling it like that automatically - I knew it looked wrong, but for some reason it always came out like that.

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