nothing profound here

I didn't even realize the shift until the radio announcers were providing information about school closings by reading lists aloud for seconds on end: my, how times have changed.


[Edit much later to clarify my navel-gazing: Since the advent of the internet, apparently there is no need to read school closings aloud on the radio. There is also no need to skim them across the bottom of the local TV channel. Only when the internet cannot be relied on (because the power is out) does that old standby of youth in the second half of the 20th century reappear. And there I was, never even noticing that it was gone.]

query?

So about half a dozen times in the course of literally only days, someone has said the word "query" in my presence. Always -- always -- pronounced "quairy." But me, I pronounce it queery. And this weird pronunciation has seriously thrown me for a loop. I've always pronounced it queery. Everyone I know has always pronounced it queery. I look it up in dictionary and that says it's pronounced queery, and the recording reiterates that. So... where is this strange new quairy pronunciation coming from? Have I actually been missing it all these years? Or (obviously my favorite explanation, but totally unsupported by any data at my disposal), is there a vast conspiracy to avoid any vestige of queerness when speaking?