Copyright © 2018 by Ralph Robert Moore.

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A friend on Facebook recently asked his American readers how 'route' is pronounced over here. There were a large number of replies, most of them agreeing that the word is pronounced either as 'root' or 'rout'. I made the point in a comment to his post that it's more often pronounced 'root', and offered as evidence the idea that it would be bizarre to hear the early Rolling Stones singing about 'Rout 66'. (Although there is an exceedingly rare pressing of them singing the song as 'Rareteno 66', discussed below.)

I meant to elaborate on that point, but unfortunately, in what has to be the world's worst example of bad timing, at that moment in the small town in which Mary and I live, there was a loud boom outside our home, and racing onto the front lawn in my blue and white striped pajamas, I saw that a fuel truck had a brake failure, taking a shortcut through our sleepy neighborhood, and plowed into the side of our neighbor's house. The crash set off a spark that ignited the truck's sloshy cargo, and as I watched in horror, our neighbor's home was engulfed in flames. Little Nelly, the brave 6 year old daughter of our neighbors, who had valiantly fought without complaint a long, painful series of radiology and chemotherapy treatments to eliminate the stage 4 liver cancer from her system, ran out of the blown-open front door, bald head on fire, rolling around on the lawn, desperately trying to save her young life, but on that green grass she eventually perished after about five minutes, give or take. I kept calling to her to crawl over onto my lawn, where I was watering our hedges, which might have helped her, but she was apparently too distracted to hear me.

We had planned a neighborhood barbeque for later that day, but of course, under the circumstances, we cancelled it. It would send the wrong signal.

Anyway, here's the more elaborate reply I had intended to post, before I was interrupted.

How the word 'route' is pronounced in America varies quite a bit, regionally.

On the west coast, especially in California, but also extended up into Oregon and Washington state, the word is almost always pronounced as 'root'. Except that in the Hollywood gay community, it is ALWAYS pronounced as 'reet'. The belief is that this pronunciation is used to signal to a stranger waiting in line to use the bathroom at a party, or in a supermarket's produce department (especially in the aisle of that department devoted to dark leafy vegetables), that the speaker is gay, and wonders if the tall man holding a red shopping basket by the kale bin is also gay, or at least open to sexual honesty.

In most of Nebraska, but especially in the southern counties, you'll frequently hear the term pronounced as 'raaat'. In Omaha, for example, if someone is in a fabric store, and suddenly has intestinal distress from eating too many raw onions, to where their anus is about to explode, it's not at all uncommon to hear them desperately ask a cashier, "What's the quickest raaat to the men's rest room?" (Or women's restroom, although women living in the southern counties of Nebraska typically say, 'raaaat', for obvious reasons.)

People living on streets beginning with R, U, K, Q, S, E, K in Baltimore, Maryland pronounce 'route' as 'rattig'. This is associated with the local legend of the Rattig Bean, a type of pinto bean that grows in soil that contains a high concentration of decayed straw. People living on streets beginning with letters other than the ones listed above pronounce 'route' as 'rattig', meaning soil with a low concentration of decayed straw, except that people living on streets beginning with 'O' live on streets with a medium amount of decayed straw in the soil. A medium amount of decayed straw in the soil is considered to be a decayed straw content of 23.04% to 39.8878%. These people pronounce 'route' as 'rattig'.

In New Mexico, people who live in orange houses, of which there are quite a few, pronounce 'route' as 'roo-ta-ting-ting'. It's not at all uncommon to hear a white-haired artist who has never sold a painting say to his young wife, 'What's the quickest roo-ta-ting-ting to the nearest market that sells hatch chilis, so I can make my famous beef enchiladas for our guests tonight?' And then the wife might reply, in her ankle-length dress, standing in front of their non-functioning fireplace, 'I'm sleeping with Harold.'

People who live in green houses in New Mexico, and some people who live in yellow houses in New Mexico, but certainly not all of them, pronounce 'route' as 'quercolosabo'. Which literally means, the crunch of a small dead insect under one's unclean thumb pad (but not unclean because it's crushed a dead insect; unclean already, prior to crushing the dead insect. The distinction is important. See Woolerman, Feisenkopf, Willis, et al, "The Intersection of Woolermanian Measurements in Oral-Limited Dialects".) 'Quercolosabo' is derived from the word 'suuperosa', which literally means, 'The sensation [lack of sensation] [lack of awareness of sensation][awareness of efficiency]of separation [unification][red and white cardboard in a herringbone pattern] with blueness. The word, as so many words in American English are, is derived from a Native American tribe, but I forget which one. I think they lived on the plains somewhere, and ate a lot of fresh water fish. But I could be wrong.

The Rolling Stones recorded Route 66 in January of 1964, and it is in fact the opening track on their debut album, The Rolling Stones, subtitled, England's Newest Hit Makers. When the Stones arrived in America to go on their first tour of the greatest country on earth in June of that same year, Route 66 was the clear stand-out hit. The Stones were enamored of America, and each night's stop across the vast breadth of the country, teeming with cities and fried food with various dipping sauces, was another opportunity for them to experience firsthand a world they had previously only glimpsed in the words and rhythms of blues and country recordings.

The tour reached a snag when an appearance in Miami was cancelled because Mick Jagger's pronunciation of the word 'route' in Route 66 was 'root', rather than 'rareteno', which several influential groups within Miami, Cuban refugees, old-money retired Jews, and the short-lived 'Pastry Conspiracy' members, who had this thing about blueberries, expected to hear. In an attempt to assuage this resistance, Jagger tried to dub the vocals of the song during the group's stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but after repeated humiliating attempts to fit the 17 syllables of 'rareteno' into the phrase 'rareteno 66', he sat on the floor of the recording studio in Harrisburg and burst into tears. "Can't fookin' do it, man!"

I could go on and on about all the disagreements as to how 'route' is pronounced in America, but you get the point. The important thing to remember is, if you disagree with how someone else pronounces the word, it's perfectly okay, for example, in a restaurant, for an adult to steal a kid's cap off his head, throw the kid's drink in his face, and laugh at him. And call everyone who doesn't exactly agree with your pronunciation a Nazi, or punch them in the face, or verbally harass them.

Because the best way to persuade someone their beliefs are wrong, to where they might reexamine those beliefs and perhaps modify them, is to get in their face and scream at them, rather than sitting down with them and sharing each other's life experiences.

People who are evil Nazis just don't understand that some people's freedom of speech is more equal than other people's freedom of speech.

Because physically attacking someone who says something you disagree with? Trying to destroy them on social media? That's the rareteno to true freedom of speech.