English, with its complex phonetic rules, presents challenges for pronunciation. Seriously, can anyone say Worcester right? In this week's episode, our storytellers delve into the personal and psychological aspects of pronunciation, exploring the nuances and hang-ups associated with the way people say certain words

Part 1: As someone who values language, Jerzy Gwiazdowski is thrown into turmoil when his partner says “suposably.”

Jerzy Gwiazdowski is a writer/performer who has appeared on Broadway, originated roles in new plays (NYC and regionally) and made numerous film/TV/streaming appearances. His plays have been produced on four continents. Jerzy is co-creator of Vocabaret, a monthly wordplay variety show since 2019. An ten-time champion at the O.Henry Pun-Off World Championships, Jerzy is pretty sure he's the winningest wordplay competitor in the world. His most recent project—THE LIE (a True Story)—is a solo show about the time he gave the greatest performance in history (which was only ever seen by one seven-year-old child). Alum: UNC School of the Arts. Faculty: The New School.

Part 2: No one can ever say Casie Caldwell’s name correctly and it makes her furious.

Once deep-fried in an almost 20-year-long restaurant career, Casie Caldwell has now simmered down into the world of marketing consulting. While her culinary chronicles remain a proud part of her legacy, it's her newfound passion for pickleball that's spicing up her life. Her friends joke about her undeniable "pickleball problem” now that she’s crafted her work schedule around being on the court five times a week without fail. And her penchant for decorating everything, including her Halloween décor, with everything pickleball-related, truly gives the game away! Beyond the court, Casie cherishes the art of storytelling and life's quieter moments on the lake with her wife and ever-loyal Australian Shepherd, Indigo. Trading the sizzle of restaurant operations for the pop of pickleball shots, she's found a delightful balance between her professional journey and her playful present.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

“I need you.” Those three little words that are very nice to hear, I heard them while I was sitting on the bench of a junior varsity basketball game. I was 13 years old and it was my coach that said it.

I was very used to being on the bench, but I felt his big hand collect me by the scruff of my uniform, lift me up with his arm out of my seat and push me toward the scorer’s table to check into the game.

Now, I love basketball. I've loved it my whole life and I thought this is going to be a moment where my direction changes forever. This is an opportunity to be a hero, so I took a minute to let it sink in.

I looked at the crowd. It was a home game. My friends, girls I had to crush on. I looked at the court. Players were looking at me, like, “Why is he coming into the game in this very crucial moment?” They were a little bit surprised.

And it was a moment of great directional change for me in that I was immediately pulled backward once my coach realized that he grabbed the wrong player, pushed back down onto the bench and he went off and found the correct person. So, in real time, the experience went a little something like this.

“I need you. No, not you.”

I've heard that a couple times throughout my life since, but in that moment I decided it was still going to be a directional change for me. Maybe basketball isn't for me. It was a prep school. I've been this tall since I was 13 years old. There were no tryouts. There were no cuts, so I just ended up on the basketball team.

But that wasn't my destiny to become Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson. My destiny was to be the editor of the literary magazine.

So, I thought, “Well, maybe I can have a little fun with language in this moment, maybe break the tension.”

Jerzy Gwiazdowski shares his story at Caveat in New York, NY in December 2023. Photo by Arin Sang-Urai.

So, I got a little closer to my coach and very quietly in his ear so only he could hear, I said, “That was incredibly emasculating.”

He turned to me and he looked me in the eyes, as if, for the first time ever, saw me as a person. And his head started doing little bird‑like movements, as if he was glitching internally. Then I decided to double down and I said, "It looks like you grabbed the wrong jersey.” Jerzy is my name, so that made that a pun.

Sent me down another dark path in my life. I, in fact, made him freeze to the extent that he was not focused on the play on the court. And, from the bench, I cost my team the win.

Now, that's how I was cut from a basketball team that didn't have any cuts. But it was fine, because I realized I don't need basketball, because I have language. I wasn't good at understanding the systems of basketball in the doing of it. I could watch it, I could appreciate it, but I couldn't do it when I was under pressure.

But what I was good at was language. I was able to, in that moment, deflect the shame from everybody in that arena and that I was feeling on myself through a little bit of language. I had been good at language since I was very young. I was placed in all the advanced classes. I was given advanced texts. I was tutoring other students.

But not only was I getting good grades and being advanced through school, which is why I was 13 when I was on the junior varsity basketball team at this height, but there was something else that came with being good at language that doesn't come with being good at math, for example, because you don't really need math.

But you need language to do everything in life. There are some linguists that believe it is innate to human beings to create language. It must be acquired, but there's something in us. That's definitely how it felt to me when I was younger. It just made sense. The understanding of it, watching it from afar, doing it, communicating with people, synthesizing large blocks of language, understanding syntax, grammar, semantics, morphology. I didn’t know those words at the time but that’s what I was doing.

I felt maybe I could become the Michael Jordan or the Larry Bird, the Magic Johnson of language. But that might have been a little aspirational. I aspired to be the God Shammgod of language. Do you know God Shammgod? God Shammgod isn't a legendary player, maybe to all of you, but he is legendary because he perfected one move. It's an eponymous move known as The Shammgod.

It's a fake crossover. I indicate with every fiber of my being that I'm going to change direction. But I, in a magical feat, trick the defender and go the way I'd been going originally. And what happens? They freeze in the moment. Their head starts making little bird movements. They glitch out. Their controller disconnects. They have analysis paralysis. They go into the centipede's dilemma. Maybe one part of their body goes one direction, one part of their body goes the other direction. You break their ankles. You go in for the easy score.

That's what my coach had done to me by changing direction on me and then pulling it back, but then that's what I did to him linguistically. And I kept doing that, because when you're good at language there's a sense of pride that comes along with it. Being good at language, it was communicated to me by people older than me, people that were teaching me, made you better at being a person. So, there was some pride that came along with it.

And I would use that skill to feel that pride, to get that praise, and to avoid shame. It became a defense mechanism.

I said, "Mom, I'm going out tonight."

“Says who?”

“Says whom? Don't wait up.”

I wasn't doing well in my Calculus class, which is fine because math isn't necessary. And I pitched my teacher, “What if I wrote a paper explaining why calculus is important? Could I pass the class without doing any actual calculus?”

Shammgod. “I need you. No, not you.”

“You grabbed the wrong jersey.” Shammgod.

I kept doing this through my life. It helped me defend myself. It helped me protect myself. It helped me feel that pride, get that praise, and avoid that shame.

I got older and it comes in handy. I was dating. There's a lot of, “I need you. No, not you," in dating, in both directions. But I met somebody that I really, really liked, that I really connected with, and we said those three little words to each other. I decided I want to introduce her to my dear friends.

So, there was a party, there was some brie cheese and some wine. We got to talking and, while we were talking, she said one of the bad language things. She used the word ‘supposably’.

Now, I knew this woman to be exceptionally intelligent, creative, compassionate, skilled, caring, successful, very good at being a person. But in that moment, in spite of myself, I felt profound shame. I couldn't reconcile it. I was, in that moment, not present, but I glitched out. I had Shammgod‑ed myself internally. I figured it was something that I needed to reconcile and figure out, so I kept dating this person.

We made it past that moment and I learned a lot of things about the way language is used, because she didn't use languages, I think, that was right or wrong. She looked at it as a tool that was sitting in front of her to articulate the vastness of human experience and would use it in fascinating and sometimes so‑called incorrect ways. She was a person that viewed language differently than I did. She saw it in three dimensions. She saw it in color. She saw it non‑linearly. She saw it in space and in time.

But sometimes, when under pressure, she couldn't use it in the way that other people could, and there's a word for that. Those people are called dyslexic, which is a word that means bad language things.

I think that's unfair. I've always thought that that's unfair, because the difference between language and basketball is that if you're bad at basketball, as I am, you're not put in one of two categories: basketball competent or dyshoopic, because not everyone is expected to be good at basketball.

But when someone processes language differently than is expected, they are also subject to unique experience in education. They might be put in classes for people with disorders. There is an order to the way that we communicate. You are outside of that order. You are out of order. And that seemed to me incredibly unfair.

As we kept dating, I kept finding myself surprised at the way that she would use language and realized I actually didn't understand what the fuck language was for. It was to say the truest possible thing with the tools that we were given.

We'd be with each other, she'd say some malapropism. She'd say ‘troglodyte’ instead of ‘trilobite’. Shammgod, I would freeze.

We stopped dating. When I asked her to marry me. And when I got on one knee, what I said to her was, “If I could have a crumb of your perspective on the world, I will be better at being a person.”

And now, I'm writing my vows and it's a tricky situation to be in, because I want to say the truest possible thing. Knowing that I no longer fully understand what language is for and I'm saying it to the person that did that to me. And I'm not going to tell you now what I'm going to say, but I think it might start with those three little words, "I need you."

Thank you very much.

Part 2

I have what some people might call a visceral reaction when people get my name wrong, when people misspell it, especially when people mispronounce it and, my new favorite, when the iPhone tries to autocorrect it.

Casie Caldwell shares her story at Wild Detectives in Dallas, TX in December 2023. Photo by Jason Hensel.

My name is “Kay-cee”, not “Kah‑cee”. It's spelled C‑A‑S‑I‑E. Note that it has one ‘S’, not two. But, for whatever reason, people have liked to gift me an extra letter of the alphabet, maybe because there's not enough Casie’s out there. I'm not sure. But all I’ve ever wanted is for people to get my name right.

You see, I've always had a unique connection to my name. It's always been more than a label to me. It says a lot about how I got here in the first place.

My dad came from a big family of boys. He had a lot of brothers and he naturally wanted a boy. He loved the name Casey because he was a big fan of Casey Stengle, the Hall of Fame baseball player.

Well, fate had a different idea and I turned out to be a girl. So, my parents thought it’s smart to alter the spelling of my name to Casie with an I‑E. My dad thought that the traditional spelling of Casey wasn’t feminine enough.

But, to me, my name has always been or felt pretty straightforward, pretty easy or simple. But for as long as I can remember, it seemed to perplex people. Maybe it's because the spelling of my name wasn't all that popular.

But I remember as a kid going to the mall and going into those curio shops, the ones with all of the knick‑knacks with your name embossed or engraved all over different things, things like keychains or stickers or license plate frames, whatever it was. I would rush into the store in this frenzied search for my name on something. I would always find an Amy and Amanda, a Brooke, a Brandi, a Cathy, a Courtney, a Jill, a Jennifer, but never a Casie.

I would often find a Casie spelled C‑A‑S‑E‑Y and I would think, "Why isn’t my spelling there too?”

Of course, I would find Cassie, and I would think, “Ha, I wonder how noticeable it would be if I scratched off one of those S's."

As soon as I came to accept the fact that my name would probably never be found on something like that, I was fine. I mean, so I thought. First‑world problem, right? I had a unique spelling in my name, no big deal.

But as I got older, it seemed to just be getting worse, where people butchered my name. So I would usually use some lighthearted humor to deflect my annoyance. I could remember being at a family reunion and a cousin came up to me and called me Cassie.

And I joked, “I don't have to re‑introduce myself, do I?”

Even my massage therapist who I knew for years used to call me Cassie all the time, and I would joke, “You know, my muscles would be a whole lot less tense if people would get my name right.”

Even at work, I would use a pronunciation key on my email signature, and that didn't even seem to work. I would go over, literally, the edge when someone would respond to an email of mine and they would address me as Cassie. I would literally think, “Oh, my God, you stupid idiot. My name is right there in the email signature. Pay attention.”

Then sometimes I would try a sneakier approach where, in a conversation, if somebody got my name wrong, I would resort to speaking back to them in third person. I would use my correctly‑pronounced name in a sentence where it might look like something where a colleague comes in and says, "Hey, Cassie, you got that expense report?" And I would say, "No, Bill. Cassie does not have your expense report, but Casie does."

Then I would just end up usually sounding like a crazy person, so I stopped that altogether.

But a turning point came for me about five years ago when I was asked to speak at an industry conference. I used to be in the restaurant business and I was asked to be a keynote at one of the largest restaurant conventions in the state of Texas. As you can imagine, I was pretty thoroughly vetted for this thing. I had to submit my speech beforehand and so there was a lot of back and forth about what I was going to speak about, emails exchanged, phone calls. It was just a lot of meticulous prep.

So it came time to, the day finally arrived. I walked into this auditorium and I remember seeing this life‑size photo of me behind the podium featuring me as one of the speakers. I started to get really nervous, because I had never really done anything like that before. But I was also really excited. I was proud to be asked to be a speaker and to just talk amongst my peers.

So it came time to go up on stage and the emcee, the very person who had invited me to speak in the first place, she starts in with a little bit about my bio. She shares snippets and credentials from my background. I just remember there was this buildup. It was almost like a crescendo when she said, “And without further ado,” she introduced me to the audience as Cassie.

Can I just tell you that everything inside of me was on fire. My emotions boiled with rage. I was pissed. It was like a bear had been woken up from a nap. And all I could think about was how could this person invite me to speak, take me through this rigorous preparation process, attempting to get to know me personally, and then be so careless and thoughtless with my name.

I didn’t even chalk it up to a simple mistake at that point. I started questioning this person’s intelligence. I was thinking, “How does this woman even get through life without a basic understanding of the English language?

I didn't even correct her when I got up on stage. I didn't confront her or anything like that. No, no. I did what any person would do that wanted revenge, because that's what I wanted, big time. I came home and I blocked her from social media immediately. That's what I did.

I admit, I have not always been great at dealing with these situations and I've often shied away from correcting people when they get my name wrong. But I started wondering why am I so triggered by this? What's the big deal here? Why these big reactions?

I started digging and my Google search pulled up all kinds of article after article after article, from New York times, Harvard Review, NPR. Lo and behold, I find out there's this thing called onomastics. For those of you who don't know, onomastics is the study and research behind naming, especially proper names.

What it told me and what it proves is that there is a sociological and psychological connection to our names that we often don't even realize.

Aha! There it was in black and white telling me what I needed to know all of these years. Basically, a person's name is singlehandedly the most significant connection that we have to our individuality. Sometimes a person's name is the most important word in the world to someone. Sometimes it's the biggest connector that we have to a family history or even our culture.

Well, let me tell you, onomastics had me wanting to do some gymnastics, because I felt justified. I felt validated in my name rage, as I like to call it. It was really like a veil had been lifted. Not only did I understand, finally, that this was showing a sign of respect, but it was important and it showed me why it's important to get people’s names right.

It wasn’t until this discovery that I became less embarrassed about having to correct people and I didn’t joke anymore about it. I corrected people with confidence and authority.

The other thing that I stopped doing was I stopped faking and altering the spelling of my name. For instance, if I went to a restaurant and there was a wait list, I would often put my name on the wait list as Casey with an E‑Y or K.C., period, just to make it easier for someone. Every time I did that, I realized that I was chipping away at my own unique individuality.

So, do I still get a little feisty when people get my name wrong? Sure, I do. I admit it.

But I did something really fun a few years back. I found out that Coca‑Cola was selling personalized and customized bottles of Coke, cans of Coke as a part of one of their advertising campaigns. And I'll show it to you. It sits on my desk today. I bought one immediately, because it was my opportunity to finally get something with my name on it. See, that says C‑A‑S‑I‑E.

And no offense to all the Cassie's out there, but it is a fun reminder that I will gladly share a Coke with those who never call me Cassie ever again.

Thank you.