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[Laurence Urdang]

Give people literacy and the first thing they do is turn to spelling pronunciation.
  Recently, I have heard albeit, alternative, and stalwart all pronounced with a first syllable rhyming with pal.  Speakers are badly stressed enough to keep saying con-TROV-er-sy and other, similar nonsense.
  And whence comes homage, a word borrowed and assimilated as HOM-ij or OM-ij, from 12th- or 13th-century French, made to rhyme with fromage?  What pretentious crap!
  These are all current in the speech of those who otherwise sound like native speakers of American English.  Now that we've taught them to read, maybe we can teach them to read a dictionary once in a while so that, as Pick and Pat used to say, they can keep their ruby lips flip-flip-flappin' in the breeze reflecting more or less "standard" (or, at least, high-frequency) usage.
  The vexing question, fortunately one I need no longer address, is How much of this should a lexicographer record, especially in light of the ineluctable fact that people don't look into their dictionaries anyway?
  L. Urdang

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