"Tuh" The New Word In Town

Unfortunately, I've done this myself, so rest easy.

The English word "to," a common and much beloved preposition, has been transmogrified into "tuh" when it is spoken outloud in sentences by an increasing number of Americans (and perhaps those in other countries as well, but I'm not sure because my sample is too small).

It's still spelled "to" (as if it were to be pronounced that way, too), but it is mostly pronounced tuh.

"I went to the store" comes out as "I went tuh the store."

This is not just another case of saying "nuclear" as "new-cue-lar" as one of our current politicians is so fond of doing. No, it is a little hard to keep your tongue moving properly when you say "nuclear" especially if you are not too fond of reading and spelling. Those who say "new-cue-lar" tend to spell it nucular, so they have an excuse. (In case you are confused, it is pronounced "new-klee-are" or something very much like that.)

But this new "tuh" thing is some sort of creeping tongue laziness. We can all see how it's spelled, for heaven's sake. It' s a two letter word composed of "t" and "o." It's hard to mess that up.

It's supposed to be pronunced like "two." They are homonyms, right? 'Two=to' when it comes to pronunciation. That should be easy.

"I want tuh go out tuh the movies."

"Did you take the book back tuh the library or did you give it to you dog to play with." Now there's one where they are differentiated. I think.

Perhaps "to" is pronounced correctly when we want to emphasize it. "Did you give it to her or did you just leave it on the table?" I'll bet you'd say "to" as "two" in that sentence, wouldn't you?
Not that I have any way to know, but when you are reading these sentences to yourself in your head, are you saying "to" as in "two" or do you misprounounce it in your mind as well? I tend to think "to" (as in "two") when I read silently to myself and while I'm typing this.

But, as I previously confessed, I (ahem) do sometimes utter the dreaded "tuh." "So I said tuh the guy that he oughta give it back tuh her! And he told me tuh shove it."

And perhaps you will, too.

Fewer And Fewer Fewers

Fewer and fewer of us use "fewer" as a word. It has been replaced by less.

Modern folks would say "less and less of us use "fewer," but that's wrong, not that you'd know it by listening to anyone else but me and a few of my foolish (or is that "few-less"?) friends. It annoys me to hear otherwise intelligent announcers on, say, NPR, saying "fewer" less and less, if at all. Every day, in fact, there is less use of few.

The difference, for those of you who are too young to remember or just don't or didn't care, is that "less" is for "amounts" of things and "fewer" is for numbers of things or people.

Here're the examples.

• There is less water in the short glass than in the tall glass.
• There are six people in the blue car and four in the red one. The red car has fewer people in it.

No one would say "please put fewer sugar into the pie," but no one seems to have a problem saying there are less people in that line than in this one.

That, I guess, is how language changes. It seems to become less precise and much less useful. (Intuitively, one does know that you wouldn't say "fewer precise.")

Is it just laziness on the part of the average person? Or is the difference between "fewer" and "less" just too hard to learn?

I have fewer and fewer ideas about it and less and less time to try to figure it out. Or is that less and less ideas about it and fewer and fewer time to try to figure it out? Nahhh... it's the first one, don't you agree?