Agreeing with Ted O'Neill is not something I undertake to do lightly, but he is
I think right about the provenance of these two pronunciations.
In my experience United Statesians use the first and the rest of the world
mostly uses the second.
The notion that one is right and the other wrong is drôle.
Spoken dialects differ about things that are indistinguishable in a written
language. The spelling of the word 'laboratory' is, so far as I know,
invariant in written English. In Canada and the UK I say lab-or-ah-tory; in
the US I say lab-ri-tory; etc., etc.
Surprise is of course possible. The first time, circa 1947, I heard a Scot say
man-DATE-or-ee instead of man-duh-TORY for the word we both spelled 'mandatory'
I was taken aback. The second time I heard it I recognized it for what it is,
a wholly legitimate dialectal variant.
As English become a world language the number of such variants is increasing
very rapidly, and it is time for this to be more widely understood.
Specifically, many American posters to this list exhibit far too much
astonishment at departures from whaqt are, finally, provincial United Statesian
usages. They need to read and travel more.
John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
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