Linguistic Snobbery

   A finance professor warned his students that the "proper" way to pronounce the topic word is to stress the second syllable. Thus, "fih-NANCE," not "FIE-nance."
   So which is "correct"?
   Presumably, if one wants an A in the class, one yields to the professor's preference (not to say prejudice), and pronounces it his way.
   The linguistic reality, however, is that noun stress in English tends to shift toward the front of the word, with variations over time, place and social level.
   Consider, for example, the word garage, borrowed from the French root gare, and the suffix -age. (Other borrowed words with the -age ending include courage, marriage and carriage. Note that the stress is on the first syllable.) In America, the pronunciation of garage is typically on the second syllable: "guh-RAJ." In England, however, the pronunciation in one social class is "GAH-RAJ," with only a bit less stress on the second syllable, and in another social class the pronunciation is "GAH-ridge," with a lot less stress on the second syllable.
   To insist that students speak a certain way is to say that a given dialect or pronunciation is somehow "better" than others. But that is a social judgment, not linguistic.
   There was a time when a certain university in New Jersey required all its students to pass a speech exam before graduating. But diversity brought students from Scotland, Ireland, Australia and England as well as from U.S. inner cities and suburbs. All were native speakers of the English language.
   What, then, were the criteria for passing the exam? Were the students from Scotland, Ireland and Australia to be judged by different standards applied to those students from England or American suburbs? Were students with inner-city dialects relegated to secondary status because their speech patterns were somehow "wrong"?
   Which, then, was the "correct" dialect?
   Answer: All of them.
   Linguistically, all dialects are equal. The only reason one dialect has more prestige is because its speakers have more prestige.
   And that is a social judgment.
   The linguistic reality is that all dialects are equal. The social reality is that success can depend, in part, on how well you speak the "prestige" dialect. Fairness don't enter into it.