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ImageSMART TALK
by Dr. Verbos Metikulos

POINSETTUH: I feel sorry for this poor Mexican shrub every winter.  It gets planted and nurtured, filling towns and villages with its beauty before getting shipped north, where ignorant Americanos will call them poin-SET-ahs, or even worse, point-SET-ahs, as if they're never seen the name in print.

At the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, we can usually treat this problem by simply asking the patient to look carefully, perhaps for the first time, at the word.  Unlike many, this word is pronounced exactly the way it's spelled: poinsettia (poin-SET-ee-ah).  Note the penultimate letter; also note that the fifth letter is an S, not a T.  It's really not that difficult.

My colleague Laconia Crisp says she's apt to think the ignorant gringo pronunciation of poinsettia are simply a lower class of people, but they're more likely just poor readers.

And poinsettia isn't even a Spanish word.  Mr. Joel Poinsett, an American diplomat and amateur botanist, named the plant after himself in the early years of this great country.  So have some respect.

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