"Is "perogative" a word?" Topic

Is "perogative" a word?
Or, is it "prerogative"?
I have always heard, seen and pronounced it as the former.
This subject has mildly confused me for some time, so I tried to do a Google search for "perogative". It searched for the latter.

Note to my stalker(s): Jump in if you wish to insult me, but I don't really care what you think. I am making a conversation, not asking for your drooling "jump on the OFM" slobber.

I just thought I would proactively add that insulting paragraph now, because I would get the DH for a "personal attack" if I added it to a comment from the usual suspect(s).

You've been spelling it WRONG all your life. Just like my use of perscription….

"Jump on the OFM", eew, what a concept. No thanks….

Well in English English (as opposed to American English) it's prerogative. The clue is in the first part of the word pre- ie. you have first dibs.

It's sort of like "ignorant" and the local version, "ignurnt"; even the meanings are different: the original means without learning, the local version means stupid and mean….

The nuns dinnit larn you Latin very good.

"ig nurnt" (with Doug's second meaning) is two words around here.

and it's prerogative, no matter how some ig nurnt lout pronounces it.

It's PRE-rogative – just to be sure, check this out YouTube link

The nuns dinnit larn you Latin very good.

Perhaps. When I took the Wayback to see and hear what Marc Antony REALLY said at JC's funeral, I didn't understand a word.

It's just a mental block, I think. Every time I saw "prerogative", all I could think was either "That's just SO wrong!", or "Why do they have two different words for the same thing?"

Around these here parts it's pronounced 'ig nant', not 'ig nurnt'. Y'all might could git the thang rat now and then.

Note to my stalker(s): Jump in if you wish to insult me, but I don't really care what you think. I am making a conversation, not asking for your drooling "jump on the OFM" slobber.

Surely insulting you is their prerogative? :)

I note that you and I have achieved parity in the stiffle (sic) stakes. We must be doing something right. Or not

Okay, I'm puzzled now. If it's a prerogative, it means it come before a rogative? But what is a rogative? It sounds like something you take to clear your stomach after the holidays.

A rogative is a donative to the shrine of the God of Hair Restoration.
How they got "prerogative" out of that I will never understand.

Surely insulting you is their prerogative? :)

Of course it is. However my stalker(s) are universally boring and repetitive. They have no imagination and trot out the same old lame old tired stuff.
I yearn for a worthy enemy, and they are not.

Naw, it ain't "ignurrnt" nor "ig nurnt" nor "ignant." Ev-rybody knows its ig-nerr-unt. As in:

"That ig-nerr-unt ig-nor-a-mus dun sed thuh werd wuz pree-rog-ah-tivv, when I knowz itz per-nownsed 'di-yubs'."

Another one: "perjorative". It's actually (I just discovered by spelling it wrong) pejorative.

I wonder how many of these I have in my vocabulary. Damned Mormon hicks and their lousy pronounciation: makes larning school kids thar phonetics rawlly hard….

We are not worthy……LOLOLOLOLOLOL ahahhahahaha Cough..choke snort AHAHahahahahahahahahahahahaha !!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's a good example of elision. "Perogative" is so much easier to say. Plenty of folks who know it's spelled "prerogative" elide or minimize that first /r/ so it comes out sounding like "perogative" anyway; I know I do.

The consternation arises because it's not a word we use very often, ergo we have to stop and think about how it's spelled. In comparison, you probably don't think twice about "fifth" or "subtle", despite eliding the second /f/ in the former and the /b/ in the latter.

Would it be against the law to change the 'proper' spelling to the way the modern tongue speaks it? Or would some chap from the 18th century roll over in their grave?

Another non existent word that is frequently used is "irregardless" Sounds good but there is no such word. It is regardless.

To ADub74 if we changed the spelling to agree with modern pronunciation we would be changing a lot of words. In addition there are the words that are either spelled the same but pronounced differently or pronounced the same but spelled differently. Here are examples that I use to show ESL students that they are not crazy – English is!!

1. Have you read the red book? No! I hope to read it tomorrow. I will use their copy that is over there on the reed table.

2. Polish the Polish silver.

3. If you catch a rabbit and make a brush out of it's fur then give it to Prince Charles, it will be known as the heir's hare hair brush.

"we would be changing a lot of words."

So we don't do it because it is hard. Same reason we, Americans, don't use the metric system. Wonderful reason for not doing something.

No, we don't change it because a common, historically consistent spelling is necessary. The anglophone spectrum is remarkably diverse. Any attempt to modify spelling would immediately run into the hazards of regional pronunciation.

Consider some very basic words, like "all" or "out". Listen to speakers from London, Manchester, Belfast, Edinburgh, New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Sydney, Pretoria, Toronto, and Kingston. You're likely to hear differences in each one. Who has the correct pronunciation, upon which to base the revised spelling?

Standardization comes with pain. For example, USB ports are awesome but required a lot of hardware change. I'm sure mouse manufacters went, "dang, we already have a mouse port that works just fine." But they, along with alot of other mfrs, paid the R&D and now we all enjoy lots of neat, easy to use, plug and play toys.

Heck, I'll accept Queens English and I'd do my best to use it correctly if it made any damn sense.

If Queens English isn't going to be it then I vote Texas English. We're at least smart enough to make up our own plural you.

Heck, I don't even buy your argument now that I think of it. If we spell it different than it sounds and it sounds different because we drop the r's, lenghten the vowels, put in silly drawls, or whatever then it's our fault. And those are pretty easy to explain to kids and foriegners; "'ca' is spelled car because we tend to drop the r's in this part of the world, but in proper English it would be pronounced 'car'".

"'ca' is spelled car because we tend to drop the r's in this part of the world, but in proper English it would be pronounced 'car'".

Or "kar," maybe?

What we are really addressing here is "slurvian": everyone tends to slip into speaking "slurvian" when speaking in their native tongue….

Would it be against the law to change the 'proper' spelling to the way the modern tongue speaks it? Or would some chap from the 18th century roll over in their grave?

This isn't French – there's no-one "in charge" of English – if you want to spell it with only one "r", feel free to do so. If enough people join in, and you stop getting mocked for illiteracy, then it'll become the "proper" spelling.