Everybody hates a word-Nazi, but in our defense there’s nothing more triggering that an eggcorn. For all intensive purposes, unless you’ve had a severe head injury and can produce a medical certificate, I reckon aphasia just means you’re lazier.
Half the people I know — more pacifically, those I work with — suffer hilarious bouts of parapraxis but are totally oblivious to their malaproprisms, so when you gently correct them it’s like a savage blow to the never regions.
When I tell my wife there is no ‘g’ in ‘onions’ she might point out that my pronunciation of duodenum is also chancy. But in the-world-according-to-me, my duodenum is superior because it triggers that song from Sesame Street, and so — unlike ‘ungyen’ — totally passes mustard.
Eggcorns, spoonerisms, Freudian slips and earworms aside, every country has its etymological peculiarities, and while Aussie strine may be in decline, we continue to reinvent the Queen’s English.
Fuck yea, Straya!
As a purist, I wince at awful orthography. Like a kick in the clitics, bad English’ll make you cry; but beautiful English can also make you swoon.
So excuse the pedantry, but I’d prefer to get it right from the get-go.