‘Correct’ pronunciation is off the menu. How about a poke bowl?

By David Astle

“Hey, Astle – how do you say poke, as in poke bowl?” Stuart is holding a menu. He calls me Astle as I’m one of two Davids at the table. My namesake is an extrusion engineer, whereas I seem to be the one you poke for language umpiring.

The internet quickly lost its mind over the way British chef Nigella Lawson pronounced the word microwave last year.Credit:ABC

“You just did,” I tell Stuart. Say poke, I mean. His preference had been the second half of hokey-pokey, versus my hunch which rhymes with bouquet. Either way, the meaning is clear in context, aided by the diner’s finger-jab at the meal list.

“Where’s the word from?” asked Kerri, Stuart’s wife. Japan’s my first hunch, as that ending’s reminiscent of karaoke, minus the pseudo-French accent on the e. French, of course, was off the list of suspects, thanks to poke’s k.

Scour Le Monde from headlines to zodiac, and you’ll barely see a K all week. Maybe in le hockey, or le weekend, but the import is a hen’s tooth. Besides, a poke bowl is served raw, in the Tokyo style, but ultimately I say to Kerri, “Not sure.”

The table is disappointed. The engineer at my elbow exudes a silent tsk as if I’ve failed my calling. Maybe I need a new hustle. Soon a wave of Google checks will show poke to be Hawaiian, meaning to cut.

A poke bowl.Credit:Hawaii Tourism Authority

Now cut to a radio studio seven years earlier. Between proper jobs, I’d maintained my word-nerd licence by chatting with several ABC hosts nationwide. Listeners would fire random questions, seeking the collective noun for vultures, the roots of gibberish, or why February’s first r is sporadically deciduous.

It was punishing. And fun. Like masochism meets machismo, pretending I was equal to every English sling and arrow. Nobody is, despite your degrees, your chutzpah. Language is a cosmos set to gobble the bravest verbonaut. Soon I learnt the sagest response to any query beyond my grasp was to say as much.

Roly Sussex, my learned counterpart in Brisbane, and author of Word For Today (UQP, 2020), adopted the homework response. Should a caller’s question defy a prompt reply, then Roly would welcome his forthcoming investigation rather than resign himself to the bafflement.

Sue Butler, ex-editor of the Macquarie, is another oracle. In her Rebel Without A Clause (Pan Macmillan, 2020), Sue recounts the phone ringing one evening. The caller was a teacher in central NSW, a friend unsure about how to pronounce mischievous. No normal chat, the whole exchange was broadcast across speakerphone, with Sue obliged to arbitrate to a table of educators in a Hillston pub.

Representing English is a precarious gig, your reputation as good as your next blooper. Hawaiian verbs won’t be the only custard pies to fly your way. Hence my growing reliance on the wisdom of crowds.

Since those early studio trips, I’ve come to see how the umpire role is almost redundant, or wrongly ennobled at least. Language lives among its users – the speakers and listeners. We so-called experts are more spies than judges, eavesdroppers over adjudicators. Last year, when a Wordplay reader asked, “Is there a word for deliberately mispronouncing a word?,” I turned to social media.

Is there, I asked. I didn’t know one. Nigella Lawson’s micro-way-vee in December had sparked the query, as the crowd furnished more examples, from skissors to Target (with its posh Frenchifying).

Neologisms arrived too, including malpronounciation and lookatmoyism, plus the genuine offering of acyrologia (literally without-speech-authority). Which takes us back to Stuart’s hokey-pokey bowl, or however you opt to utter that order. Word experts can advise, but ultimately the meal is made by the people.

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