“Jeopardy!” fans are having a debate of their own.
Some viewers were outraged after a contestant mispronounced a word, but it was accepted as a correct answer on Monday’s episode.
Matt Brooks, a health-care IT analyst from Virginia, was at the center of the controversy. He was winning against Zoe Strassfield, a park ranger and writer from New York, and Cat Pisacano, a nurse from New York, heading into the “Jeopardy!” round.
Brooks took the $400 clue in the “Taking You to School” category. The clue read: “Anatomy: There are both false & true vocal cords in this hollow, tubular structure, also called the voice box.”
He answered “larnyx,” mispronouncing larynx. However, host Ken Jennings accepted his guess. “Oh, yes, we will take that,” said Jennings, who then repeated the word with the correct pronunciation. Brooks won the game with $10,600.
Fans were upset over the larynx debacle and aired their grievances with the show — and Jennings — in a Reddit thread. “How in the world did they accept ‘larnyx’ as a correct response for ‘larynx,’” the first post in the thread began. “They say pronunciation doesn’t count, but they routinely count answers wrong when the spelling and pronunciation don’t go together – ‘larnyx’ is just not a conceivable way to pronounce ‘larynx.’ We were expecting them to come back and correct the score on that and they didn’t. It really soured the whole game for me.”
A fan responded: “Yeah, that was unbelievable. How on earth can that be considered an acceptable answer when historically the judges have been total sticklers for pronunciations. That implies an extremely incorrect spelling.”
Another person noted that Pisacano “was flustered” by the mispronounced word being accepted and could’ve won the game if that didn’t happen. A different viewer said, “It was pronounced laranyx, which, as a former speech pathologist, is an annoying unacceptable pronunciation.”
However, other fans took the opposite stance on the topic of how to pronounce larynx. “From my experience, larynx is pronounced like that in the US south frequently. In school, my biology and anatomy teachers both pronounced it that way. It always led to a visceral cringe throughout my body,” read one of the Reddit comments.
Another said, “I had an anatomy instructor who said it like that too and I felt the same after hearing it.” “I thought it was pronounced ‘Larnyx’ since that’s all I have ever heard in the Midwest,” a different fan wrote. Someone responded, “I’m Midwestern too, was curious if maybe this is a regional thing!”
Other fans pointed out that late host Alex Trebek accepted “larnyx” as an answer in November 1997 and March 2006. During the latter game, Trebek said that it was “a common pronunciation.”
Jeopardy fans can’t believe Ken Jennings accepted mispronunciation of ‘larynx’ as correct response
Everyone’s favorite answer-and-question quiz show sparked controversy this week when host Ken Jennings accepted a mispronounced response from a contestant who went on to win the game.
While playing the $400 clue in the “Taking You to School” category, contestant Matt Brooks responded with an odd pronunciation. The clue read, “Anatomy: There are both false & true vocal cords in this hollow, tubular structure, also called the voice box.”
Brooks answered “larynx” but pronounced it like “lare-uh-nix,” to which Jennings hesitantly replied, “Oh, yes, we will take that,” while also restating the word with the correct pronunciation.
It wasn’t the first time the show allowed for that variation of pronunciation: The same utterance was accepted on Nov. 14, 1997, and March 27, 2006. In the case of the 1997 episode, the score was adjusted after judges decided that the pronunciation was acceptable. And in 2006, then-host Alex Trebek even noted that it was “a common pronunciation.”
But that didn’t stop debate from raging online this week, particularly on a lively Jeopardy Reddit thread where users complained about the lack of consistency in rules. “How in the world did they accept ‘larnyx’ as a correct response for ‘larynx?'” asked one redditor. “They say pronunciation doesn’t count, but they routinely count answers wrong when the spelling and pronunciation don’t go together — ‘larnyx’ is just not a conceivable way to pronounce ‘larynx.’ We were expecting them to come back and correct the score on that and they didn’t. It really soured the whole game for me.”
Debate raged, with some fans pointing out that Brooks’ pronunciation could be a regional variation, with suggestions that it was the common way to say the word in the American South or Midwest. But the main issue was that there is no clear-cut ruling when it comes to regional dialects or variations. Another redditor pointed out that contestants have previously been dinged for mispronouncing words such as “sherbet” and “foliage.”
“I would like to see a rule that’s more consistent so one region’s regional pronunciations don’t wind up ruled OK while others are ruled against,” one fan chimed in. “Specifically, either a correct pronunciation or one that is consistent with the spelling in a phonetic way.”
Despite the kerfuffle, Brooks went on to win Monday night’s game with $10,600.
Source: Entertainment Weekly, ABC
