Please, say it the right way...

I hail from eastern Pennsylvania and my husband is from northern New Jersey.  Though most of our dialect is similar, there are a couple of words that we emphasize differently.  And while I might not say aloud that my pronunciation is far superior, I will admit that his leaves me irritated at times.

This morning I was pouring the gooey, rich, sugary substance on my pancakes that I have informed my son is syrup <seer-up>.  My husband walked by and mentioned something about the syrup <sir-up> on my plate.  My son quickly turned up his head and looked menacingly at his father.  He asked me, "Mom--why did Dad just say 'sir-up'?  I don't know why he just said that."  Not surprisingly, I responded, "Hmmm, that is curious, isn't it?  Why would he say that?  That is so silly.  That's not how we say syrup..."

Ha.  I did it.  I firmly established in my son's mind the proper pronunciation of the word.  My husband came back into the room  argumentative (though only playfully of course).  Try as he might, he could not persuade my son that there might be another way to pronounce the word properly.

Moments after the disagreement had subsided, my son concernedly looked up at me and said, "People should say seer-up instead of sir-up.  And people should say ay-men."

The first part of this comment I could clearly understand based on the recent conversation, the second part perplexed me.  Thankfully, my husband quickly came to my aid:  "Yes, that's right," he said.  "Some people say ah-men and some people say ay-mean, don't they?"

"Yes," my son replied, "and they should all say ay-men."

This is not good.  He must have caught on to my feeling of pronunciation superiority.  I can already see I have a problem on my hands.  I just hope he doesn't correct someone out in public.  This could be very embarrassing.....