Open Post: Hosted By Tan France Of “Queer Eye” Teaching Us How To Pronounce “Squirrel”

I’m wondering how good the new season of Queer Eye is if proper rodent pronunciation is the biggest takeaway from the first few episodes. The third season takes the Fab Five to Kansas City, and they meet Jody Castelluci in the first episode. Jody’s husband rattled off her interests, which include “deep-fried squirrel.” Rather than ask, “Da fuq is THAT?!” the group seemed mainly focused on how Tan France pronounces it the British way and not the American jumbled version.

It basically comes down to Tan saying, “‘Skworl’ is a noise, squirrel is a word.” So British people pronounce it something like skwee-rel while we’re over here saying it in a way that rhymes like “pearl.” I can’t find a video of Tan saying it in a way that confuses hot Antoni Porowski more than an avocado-less home, but I did find this linguistics lesson that shows the difference:

I guess the episode set of a transatlantic pronunciation debate:

I think the hardest thing about this queer eye episode is learning that there is consensus amongst Americans that the word squirrel is pronounced skworl.

— Jordan Raskopoulos (@JordanRasko) March 16, 2019

First thought and possibly the most important thought of the series: Americans pronounce 'squirrel' like they're using mouthwash #JusticeForTan

— Jess Brough (@Jessica_Brough) March 15, 2019

Shout out to Queer Eye for throwing me into an existential crisis bc like … CAN I pronounce squirrel correctly?

— Preeti Chhibber (@runwithskizzers) March 16, 2019

I have just discovered that in America "Squirrel Girl" rhymes.

— Andrew Ducker (@andrewducker) March 16, 2019

We can make this easy on ourselves and call squirrels what they really are: rats with good PR!

Pic: Wenn.com