You say "tomato" and I say...

I'm supposed to be a Big Thinker. At least, that's the excuse we use when I've forgotten to fill out some form or other or have conveniently missed a 5 am meeting. "He's a big thinker," someone will say, gently implying I’m not capable of dressing myself without help. “He’s not that good with the details.”

This caricature is beneficial to me insofar as it presents an image of a kindly, if doddering, ivory-tower intellectual. It has saved me from a number of lengthy meetings on structuring internal processes so as to preserve the sovereignty of one group or another. I’ve even bought into it myself along the way and make occasional self-deprecating comments designed to imply someone else had better tackle the details if we don’t want to starve.

However, like most identity-statements, it is true some percentage of the time and in some percentage of circumstances. For instance, when it comes to language, I’m a raging OCD-driven traditionalist. For some reason, which I could probably blame on my parents, I’m personally offended when the language I grew up with undergoes changes. (You have no idea what it took me to adapt to dangling participles. Only regular doses of the PBS radio show “Way with Words” allowed me to write “I grew up with” instead of “with which I grew up,” for example).

My current obsession is the new British Invasion. Of course, I’m as taken with accents and dialects not-my-own as the next guy, but why must we now pronounce “collegiality” as if the “g” belonged at the beginning of garage, not at the end? I remember the shivers I felt the first time I heard one of my fellows talk about call-eeG-ee-a-lit-ee.  In good-old American english (note the small “e”), the combination “gi” within a word always is sounded as if it were “ji” or “jee.” You will note that all American dictionaries recognize the soft “g” sound as the first pronunciation and most note the hard “g” only when making reference to the college of cardinals. Did we need to change collegiality to conform to “colleague” once we had decided we no longer had "co-workers"?

Now, in the interest in beating my critics to the punch, I will confess I’ve been caught describing my cell phone as my “mobile” (moe-bile) instead of (moe-bl) and, when in London, I adapt. However, here I take my stand: when in the United States of America, I will practice collegiality (coll-ee-jee-ality) with my colleagues, although I expect most of them to turn up the torture now that they know my secret. That’s true collegiality (pronounce it how you will).

Comments

[Steve Roesler]

Doug,

Now you have my antennae up. I've not heard the "hard-g" collegiality word spoken but will be on the alert.

However, I was laughed at during a meeting last week when a fellow Philadelphian berated me for saying "niche" instead of "nitch". He literally did not understand the word when pronounced properly.

I'll either have to find new friends or offer up flowers at the grave of my English teacher in penance.

In any event, there is a sense of collegiality in our common dilemma.

[Jim Connolly]

Doug,

Your article is so timely and right on. I just recently started working with a new client in the U.K. During the first couple of meetings, I thought we were going to need an interpreter. Apparently English is not the same as English.

Thanks for the article!

Jim Connolly | Organizational Results

[Helene Wong]

I sometimes spell theater 'theatre', and favor 'favour'. Americans think I'm a bad speller...oh, well.