I'm Smarter than Ken Jennings

Okay...no, I'm not. Except for one little thing. But first, for those of you not in the geek loop, Ken Jennings is that super-nice guy who won on Jeopardy for 74 straight weeks. He's won more than $3,000,000 over the years.

Okay, here's the thing: on his blog he recently used the word résumés...accented just like that. Me, being the correcting type*, decided to shoot a quick email correcting him. It was polite and respectful. His reply too, was polite and respectful. Basically, he said that he'd actually never seen resumés, and had learned something. He looked it up on the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, and it showed résumés as the preferred spelling, but resumés as an alternative. And, of course, he included the link...and it was just as he'd said.

However, I'm right and Ken and the Merriam-Webster dictionary are wrong. That is, unless one pronounces it the actual French way ray-zum-ay, instead of reh-zum-ay, but no-one does. Even the dictionary's thingy where they say the word for you, pronounced it reh-zum-ay.

Why am I right? If you have a word, and you go to the trouble of putting on accents to describe the EXACT pronunciation, then it should be accurate. Or at least it should be consistent. Since the two e's are pronounced differently, they CAN'T be accented the same. The alternative is to leave off all the accents - that's accepted too. Obviously one of them HAS to either have no accent, or has a different accent. I'd even accept the mistake of accenting the wrong e, because it at least shows that you know that they're pronounced differently, but mis-remembered your grade 7 French.

Je m'appelle Jean Cluny. Et toi, comment t'appelles tu?

I'll have you know that I'm doing my best not to pester Ken. I'll also have you know that I have his personal email, that he's a gmail man, and that he puts a happy face at the end. Just knowing that I'm right should be good enough. Should be. Never is. Also, he doesn't know that replying twice to me automatically makes him one of my close personal friends and a trump card for me in 7 Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Sigh, I just know that I'm going to reply to him with further explanation. I also know that I'll finish with something passive-aggressive like: "I don't want to take up your time, so I guess we can agree to disagree" - to make it seem like I don't want to banter, plus to get the last word in so he has to reply. Watch out Kenny...

Maybe I should, like my friend Doug, see if I can chat up NY Jets QB Mark Sanchez. He's on a BBQ website dedicated to those Big Green Egg BBQs. I'll tell him I know both Ken Jennings AND the guy who does those Wuzzles in the paper. I'll save my Wuzzle King story for a different day.

Paul
* Having lost more friends than arguments.