For the love of our mother tongue

You know, I'm usually a pretty mellow, live-and-let-live, gimme-another-drink-and-flip-me-over kinda girl. I even put up quite well with most butchery of the English language by its native speakers, because really, in the grand scheme of things, it's not that big a deal. It's not important like, say, celebrity gossip, or music sales charts, or monkeys. Nothing is as important as monkeys.

But there's one mispronunciation that has always made my skin crawl, and upon seeing it added as a nonstandard yet correct pronunciation in the dictionary, I just want to beat myself in the head with a frozen sockeye salmon until I'm in a coma. When I awaken from the coma, I really hope this abomination will be stricken from the books.

Here's the word: MISCHIEVOUS.

Correct pronunciation: MIS-cha-vus

Mischievous is a three-syllable word, not a four-syllable word. But all my life, I've heard people, even a lot of my teachers, say it thusly:

mis-CHEE-vee-us

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO motherfucking NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! There is no extra syllable, no third "i" in the word. Let's break it down.

MIS CHIE VOUS

See? Three syllables. It is NOT spelled "mischievIous" and so should NEVER be pronounced "mis-CHEE-vee-us."

I don't care if you say "ain't" or if you end a sentence with a preposition or even if you say ARKtic instead of ARtic for arctic (though the last one may make me twitch a little). But if you continue to say misCHEEveeus, I believe western civilization will come to a screeching halt, babies will toddle feral in the streets, and Britney will go back to K-Fed.

All I'm saying is: please stop it, people. You're giving me an aneurysm. You mischievous monkeys.