So who is exactly who says “potarto”? Because someone should tell them that they are saying it wrong. It is not the correct response to try and avoid confrontation and maintain the status quo by calling the whole thing off. The person is saying potato entirely incorrectly and if no-one is brave enough to stand up to them and tell them this then it will only result in humiliation for them somewhere down the line. Perhaps out on an important date with someone he hopes to marry he will ask the waiter, “Does that come with potartoes?” and the waiter will be confused and the date will snigger and all will be lost.
Even if this doesn’t happen it is a dangerous precedent to allow someone to start making up their own pronunciations of words where a definite consensus has been reached. What if he starts referring to oranges as ore-arnges or apples as ape-els? What if these bizarre pronunciations move beyond the world of fruit and vegetables and the person becomes say President of the United States (a job where being able to pronounce words correctly and understand their meaning is of utmost importance- there’s a test at the investiture and anyone who can’t pronounce words properly is immediately stripped of their position) and he warns Iran that if it doesn’t stop its march towards making weapons of mass destruction he will have no option but to unleash a “new-cookular attark”. The Iranians will not understand and a war that will kill us all will result. Just because you’d rather call the whole thing off than tell a bloke that he is pronouncing potato in a strange and unique way.
What’s weird is the same person pronounces tomato in what I would argue was the right way – tomarto. But his friend pronounces it to-mato, which although it slightly rankles with me is at least an acceptable alternative. The potarto man has the high moral ground here, but then ruins it all by apparently satirising himself and pointing out that he is adding a non-existent “r” to tomato so does the same to potato. Which starts to make it look like to-mato is the correct pronunciation, when it actually isn’t. I mean I don’t think that issue is worth making a fuss about because enough people say to-marto to make it be one of those words that we can accept either way, but potarto is not right. It’s potato. I am all for the evolution of language which means the invention of new words and alterations in spelling and pronunciation, but potato is a perfectly acceptable word for the thing that it is and potarto just sounds stupid, like you’re taking the piss out of potatoes for getting above themselves.
So please to avoid any problems if you have a friend who says potarto take them to one side and let them know that they are in a minority of one and what they are doing is not cool and for the love of humanity they must stop.
