Presentation Thread: How Best do we pronounce TOUAMBIES?

[AlohaDawg]

TOUAMBIE POLL #1

How to prononounce the name for our beloved message board awards.

[pmcd9]

To present the award for How Best do we pronounce TOUAMBIES i'd like to bring out a board favorite Wombat.  Wombat...

~Paul

[wombat]

How do you pronounce TOUAMBIES?

As a former professor of linguistics, years of training led me to a deep professional conviction that the only valid test of language is actual usage.  Words mean what people use them to mean; they are pronounced as people pronounce them; grammar is what comes out of the mouths of native speakers, despite the agony of those who wish English were Latin upon hearing a preposition comfortably ensconced at the end of a sentence.  All the professional and amateur language curmudgeons who rail against the use of 'hopefully' and 'I could care less' and 'nucular' have as much effect as a surfer spitting into the ocean.   At one point, prescriptivists complained bitterly at the use of 'donate' as a verb, a bastard back-formation from the noun 'donation'.  But they all died, and now no one remembers, just like no one will remember that you thought there was supposed to be a [k] sound in 'flaccid'.  You will die too, and on top of the indignity of rotting in your grave, you will have to live with the knowledge that somewhere, an English professor hanging out in a cafeteria is saying  "Irregardless of what you say, he literally tore my head off"  --

Excuse me?  The hour's up?  You have another class to get to?  One more minute.  And stop putting your books away before I finish, you twerps.

As I was saying: As a recovering academic, I know that actual usage is the only arbiter of what is  "correct." However as a normal person, like all normal people,  I know that correct usage is whatever is correct according to ME and the rest of you are a bunch of ignorant bastards.   I therefore introduce the nominees:

The obviously correct Two-AM-Beez;
The deranged TAUM-beez;
The idiotic Toe-AM-beez;
And what I am informed that you younguns call the Cowboy Neal Option, which I will not dignify by repetition.

And I am pleased to announce that the winner is:

Two-AM-Beez.

I am so proud of you all!