Public Service Announcement: You Are All Mispronouncing ‘Neanderthal’

President Joe Biden has set the political world afire with his slam on the “Neanderthal thinking” behind Texas’ decision to end mask mandates, but he’s also responsible for a rash of mispronunciations that threaten to send the Geico Caveman into another emotional spiral.

On Thursday, President Biden ripped states like Texas for lifting Covid restrictions and ending mask mandates against the advice of public health experts — even in their own states — and said “The last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime everything is fine, take off your mask. Forget it. It still matters.”

What followed was a slew of news reports on Biden’s remarks, as well as a parade of outraged conservative figures who sought to combat an epidemic of people calling the decision “Neanderthal.”

In every one of them, news anchors and reporters and legislators and commentators followed President Biden’s lead in pronouncing the word as “Knee-ANNE-dur-thall.”

They were all wrong, and while there’s an argument to be made that many of them were simply quoting the President, it is also a journalist’s duty to correct: it’s actually pronounced “Knee_ANNE-dur-tall.”

That’s according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and while Merriam-Webster lists both pronunciations, the hard T pronunciation is listed first. And for a more authoritative ruling, check out how the eggheads on science shows say it.

This might seem like a trivial matter, and some might argue that if you’re going to ignore scientists, it’s better to ignore the ones who pronounce “Neanderthal” correctly than the ones who say to keep wearing masks in order to save tens of thousands of lives.

But think of the poor Neanderthals, whose feelings are apparently easy to hurt.

Watch the right and wrong ways to say “Neanderthal” above, via Mediaite.