Navigating the Dual Pronunciations of Primer: A Comprehensive Guide

I did not expect this many responses to this video. Not about the sports thing, I anticipated that, but about this. Could somebody put together some kind of primer? About my pronunciation of this word. Because in that video, I pronounced it primer, rhyming with the word simmer. And I have seen a range of responses, everything from, have I been pronouncing this word wrong this whole time? To, hey bestie, I think that you might wanna go back, I think you made a mistake. All the way up to, hey, you pronounced that word wrong. If you were not aware, there’s actually two pronunciations of this word. And it’s because, from what I understand, there’s actually two different words. The first one is primer, like what I said, meaning like an introductory book. And it was actually the one that entered English first. Did English anywhere between like 700 and a thousand years ago from a Latin word, basically meaning like an introductory book, a Latin word primarius. And it entered English to mean an introductory book of Christian prayer. And by the 1500s, it was used to describe like any introductory text. Basically, a primer would be something you would give kids to learn how to read. A little bit later on, we saw the word primer enter English. This comes from the Latin word primus. Primus and primarius are related words, meaning that they come from at the beginning of something, but they are still different. Primer is literally like the first of something. So like the first coat of paint, I’m putting on a primer. It’s actually two different words. We’ll say the pronunciation of the word primer to mean like an introductory book on a subject or an introductory text has started to go away as language continues to evolve. In the UK, the pronunciation is almost completely erased. Whereas here in the US, it is still a little bit more common to hear an introductory book called a primer. So if you didn’t know, now you know. Hope that helped. Thank you, goodbye.