There is a new theory that President Bush’s native language is Latin:

Something interesting: ‘nuclear’ is the adjectival form of ‘nucleus’, which comes from the Latin ‘nuculeus’, from ‘nucula’ the diminutive of ‘nux’, meaning ‘nut’. So the at some point the ‘u’ between the ‘c’ and ‘l’ was dropped (and at that point would have probably been considered a mispronunciation).

My theory – it’s Bush’s comprehensive knowledge of and fluency in Latin that leads to his pronunciation.

3 Responses to “President Bush knows Latin!”

1. Luboš Motl says:

   1/30/2005 at 11:12 am

   Actually your theory is not quite correct. Bush talks about the nucular weapons as one of the leading experts in particle physics.

   Nucular physics is an abbreviation for “nu” (the neutrino) and “molecular”, and it represents all phenomena at the submolecular level the produce neutrinos.

   George Bush has used his amazing talent in particle physics to find some errors in the papers of our colleagues at the Fermi Nucular Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab, FNAL), see

   http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~neubert/bush_finds_error.html

   Reply
2. Michele says:

   2/5/2005 at 4:30 pm

   Even I, that I’m Italian thus not native-speaker, have realized that there was something strange with his pronunciation…go figure!

   He is so dumb…

   Reply
3. Aurelius says:

   2/19/2007 at 7:58 pm

   Not just President Bush, but all Latin speakers characteristically make errors of this kind. For example, the Romans called "Heracles" "Hercules."

   Reply