YOU ARE PRONOUNCING THE WORD “ROBOT” WRONG!
As robots begin to take over the world, do you want to be that guy? The guy who mispronounces the word “robot”? I think we owe our new robot masters more than that, don’t you? The future will be a perilous place; and, with one slip of the tongue, you could find yourself sticking out.
And in a robot-world run by robots for the benefit of robots, you don’t want to be the human sticking out. I became aware of this problem while watching The Twilight Zone. After some hurried research, I concluded that I must warn my fellow humans.
Before it’s too late.
The Robots Are Coming!
Mechanical men (and women) were supposed to be created to help us. They were to do the menial labor that humans shunned. But early on, that paradigm was set aside. Take, for example, the case of Harry May.
On October 23, 1932, readers of the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah and parts thereabout learned of a real robot that had turned on its master in the way that the fictional Frankenstein monster did so many years before. The paper led readers to believe that British inventor Harry May had given his robot a gun, walked across the room for a demonstration, and as the dapper inventor was turning around, the robot stood up and shot him.
It was fake news.
Well, it was more like fact laced with fiction. Harry May had built a “robot” that stood over six feet tall, weighed a ton, and could shoot a gun. In the picture above, what you see on the right would be the fact part. On the left, the narrative takes a fictitious turn. What actually happened was a gunfail. While putting the gun into the grip of the robot, it accidentally discharged. The inventor’s arm was injured from hand to elbow. That is less interesting, though, than a homicidal machine BENT ON THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL MANKIND!
Some of the stories about the incident actually contained a supposed quote from our luckless inventor that went something like this: “I always had the feeling that he would turn on me some day.”
And they will, you know. They will turn on us. It’s just a matter of time. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
What should we call them, our soon-to-be tyrannical sovereigns? Perhaps we can find the answer in the old joke: Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep? Where it wants to. Or, we can do a little research. We’ll start with a little research and end up by asking the gorilla, herself.
The Word “Robot.”
I was watching full seasons of The Twilight Zone to get ready for Halloween. (I am now ready for Halloween.). In a couple of episodes during the first two seasons of the show, Rod Serling wrote stories about robots. The funny thing is that his actors pronounced the word differently compared to you and I. It sounded more like 'row-but or 'row-bit. If it had been in only one episode, or from only one actor, I would not have written this diary.
But as you will see below, Rod Serling was a detail-oriented individual (possibly a robot?). He had carefully taken the pronunciation of “robot” from its originator, Czech playwright, novelist and journalist Karel Čapek.
It was Čapek, who, with his 1920 play called Rossum’s Universal Robots, coined the term “robot.” He chose a Slavic formulation of a word that meant “work” or “labor.” The play became a hit, and was eventually made into a movie.
The video starts right before the character speaks the word “robot.” Notice his pronunciation of it. That doesn’t sound like how you or I would say it, does it? Here are a couple of Twilight Zone episodes cued up to when the actor uses the same pronunciation:
.
.
This episode is called “The Lonely,” and it was episode seven of the series, airing on November 13, 1959. Jack Warden and Jean Marsh starred. Caddyshack and The Mary Tyler Moore show actor Ted Knight played himself. All of the actors who use the word “robot” pronounce it ‘row-bit.
.
The episode above is called “The Lateness of the Hour,” and it was the forty-fourth edition of The Twilight Zone, airing on December 2, 1960. Inger Stevens starred. Again, the word is pronounced ‘row-bit.
Lost in Space (and Time)
I recalled that the robot from the television series Lost in Space was called Robot and not something that sounded like “rowbut” or “rowbit.” That show aired from 1965 to 1968. It came immediately after The Twilight Zone, which had an original run from 1959 to 1965. So, was the proper pronunciation lost in space or time?
Had the pronunciation become bastardized by Lost in Space?
That’s what I originally suspected, but I kept digging. I eventually found the first television appearance of a very famous American robot. instead of clearing everything up, it confused the matter. I’m speaking, of course, of Robby the Robot.
Robby the Robot (or Row-bit?)
In the 1956 MGM film Forbidden Planet, a character named Robby the Robot made an appearance. That studio’s prop department built him. His name was an off-shoot from earlier pulp and science fiction versions, including Isaac Asimov’s short story Robbie.
Of course, people who read that earlier fiction figured out in their own mind how to pronounce the word. That is, until Anne Francis, co-star of Forbidden Planet came on the Perry Como show on February 18, 1956 to introduce the metallic monster called Robby. I have cued the video up near the point she speaks the word:
.
As you can hear, the way we pronounce the word “robot” either started with Anne Francis, or she positively reinforced it. (Note that Perry Como, though, seems to use the old pronunciation immediately after that. He appeared to be a little ill at ease with the word.).
We need to go further back into the past. Let us try radio, why not? We shall go back, way back, to the year 1950:
.
That is “The Robot Killer” from 2000+, a radio show that ran on August 30, 1950 over the Mutual Broadcasting System. Right from the start, the actors use the proper Czech pronunciation of the word. So, it seems that Hollywood, and specifically Anne Francis, are to blame for the mix up. Stupid liberal Hollywood elites! To complicate matters still further, new robots—who supposedly think for themselves—have yet another pronunciation for the word!
Sophia, Citizen of Saudia Arabia
Recently, we heard news of an interview with a new robot or Artificial Intelligence. In the snippet below, you can hear how the robot says the word “robot”:
That’s right. She says, “Row-’bot,” like we do, but she slightly stressed the second syllable. Granted, her pronunciation of the word seemed to change a little bit later in the interview to a more conventional sounding “row-bought.” Still, unless you want to die a terrifying death at the hands of our new metal overlords, you might want to fall in line now.