. When I speak, however, I do think more consciously than when I hit the space bar. Carbohydrate, for instance. I used to pronounce it "carbohydrit" instead of "carbohy-drate". Somebody corrected me. So now when I speak the word carbohydrate, the little speech coach in my brain reminds me to employ the ATE sound instead of the IT one. (Who knows--carbohy'drit' may be an acceptable pronunciation by now. Thus progresses the language in its many-garbed parade of possible sounds.)

I agree, WW, that pronouncing a word correctly is a relatively minor habit to fix as opposed to a muscular reflex action like thumbing the space bar or being right or left-handed for that matter (and, BTW, Faldage, one can train themselves, in baseball, to be a switch hitter and to bat with both hands with a modicum of effort ).
I used to pronounce discombobulate as discom-boob-ulate (and I still like the latter better, dammit! ), but once I learned the error of my mispronunciation I immediately made the correction and have never lapsed back into the "boob" form unless it was intentional, because now I know it's wrong. Ditto hackneyed (pronounced hack-need)...I used to pronounce it hack-neyed as in eye. I think if Bush's error were brought to his attention he could correct it very quickly...but two things come to mind as to why this is not happening. 1. All his kiss-up staff and cronies have never pointed it out to him. 2. They caught it, but to correct it after his fluent use of the incorrect form would just highlight his linguistic foppery and provide fodder for columnists and the late night comics, so they prefer to just leave it alone....political expediency is the only approach these guys know or care about (they don't care about his intellectual stature or the example he sets for school children).

Hey...what we could all do is e-mail our favorite columnists (Dave Barry, Leonard Pitts Jr., Richard Cohen, Kathleen Parker, etc.) and point this situation out to them! Fight fire with fire, I always say!
(and be sure to send them the link to this thread! )