Controversial question

[BroccoliSpears]

ContROVersy or controVERsy?

[Threadworm]

I like the first of those two. But I guess neither is more correct than the other.

[Pruners]

Message withdrawn

[Spidermama]

My mum (pendant queen) tells me the latter is correct and the former an Americanism.

[Pruners]

Message withdrawn

[stuffitllama]

The second.
The first is not acceptable.

[stuffitllama]

Yes is is pruners CONtroversy.

[Threadworm]

Actually, does anyone say controVERsy?

[stuffitllama]

spidermama your mum is right! does she have some lovely pendants?

cue discussion about evolution of language

[Threadworm]

Oh, yes they do

[stuffitllama]

no they don't.. contro VER sy is very wrong and i was wrong to say it was right but I thought BS meant CONtroversy and was in too much of a hurry to be a know-it-all to check

i just know the first one is wrong

[Spidermama]

I know stuffit. She has burdened me with a lifetime of correcting people on the radio or wincing inwardly when people say, for example, contROVersy or none are instead of none is.

It stood me in good stead at my rough comprehensive in Aberdeen.

[Threadworm]

OED has CONtroversy as correct. So I am wrong, apparently.

[VictorianSqualor]

I say conTROVersy personally, but it's one that always gets me, almost as much as economy and economical with the long 'eeee' in economy and the short 'e' in economical.

[Spidermama]

Gallant of you to 'fess up Threadworm.

ner ner Well done.

[Threadworm]

. I'm not going to change my pronunciation though!

[RosaIsRed]

One of my Angela Thirkell novels from the 1930s has an upper middle class lady despising the BBC for its use of conTROVersy. And generally making hilariously snobbish remarks about the lower middle class types employed by the BBC and their linguistic solecisms. With no ironic intent. The author was in complete sympathy with her character. Those were the days.

[Carmenere]

I say both.

[Carmenere]

I am an ambi-pedant.

[BroccoliSpears]

Yes... I probably did mean CONtroversy or conTROVersy.