In the world of great debates, there is one that has been long enduring and still keeps language prescriptivists awake at night: Is it "tom-ay-to" or "tom-ah-to"? Now, this may not seem as pressing as whether nuclear fusion is possible, but to people in the linguistic trenches, it is pretty darn close. After all, how many linguistic pronunciation ambiguities have been so long running and widely known that they have actually inspired a song? In the second segment of the show, we explore why "chiropractic" is such an outlier for "-ic" words.

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HOST: Mignon Fogarty

Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.

Theme music by Catherine Rannus at beautifulmusic.co.uk.

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