There's probably a word I've been pronouncing wrong my whole life that I don't know about
There's probably a word I've been pronouncing wrong my whole life that I don't know about
Just based on how often I notice someone mispronounce a word without realizing it (or have done so myself and realized it later). Statistically I'm probably still doing it with some word.
Welcome to the world of Irish names!
We got:
- Dearbhla (Derv-la, f)
- caoilfhionn (kee-lin, f)
- Meadhbh (Maeve, f)
- Saoirse (seer-shuh, f)
- Seoirse (shor-shuh, m)
- Caoimhín (kee-veen, m)
- Sadhbh (sive, f)
And many more!
We should re-do Romanization. Start over, sound it out, have a big Anglosphere conference to decide on what letters make what noise and stick to it.
My Irish cousin-in-law recently had a daughter and named her Blathnaid. I was very surprised to learn it is pronounced Bla-nid
Worcestershire
Wash your sister sauce
There's a Worcester in Massachusetts, local pronunciation rhymes with sister (which is in turn said like "sista")
One of my friends once called me pedantic, and I got to correct his pronunciation of it - he stressed the first syllable. One of the high points of my life.
Ghoti
I remember this one! They're was another one as well which I've sadly forgotten. I believe I tried to make a couple up myself once upon a time.
A "niche" is not a "nitch"
You're a bit too late for trying to complain about that one.
The latter has been the dominant American pronunciation of the word for so long that it now appears as the primary pronunciation guide in American dictionaries.
Both Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster agree that "nitch" was the correct pronunciation in both British and American English until very recently. You already linked Merriam-Webster, so here's O.E.D:
N.E.D. (1907) gives only the pronunciation (nitʃ) /nɪtʃ/ and the pronunciation /niːʃ/ is apparently not recorded before this date. H. Michaelis & D. Jones Phonetic Dict. Eng. Lang. (1913), and all editions of D. Jones Eng. Pronouncing Dict. up to and including the fourteenth edition (1977) give /nɪtʃ/ as the typical pronunciation and /niːʃ/ as an alternative pronunciation. The fifteenth edition (1991) gives /niːʃ/ in British English and /nɪtʃ/ in U.S. English.
(N.E.D is the original name of the O.E.D. "/nɪtʃ/" is pronounced "nitch" and /niːʃ/ is pronounced "neesh".)
Fun fact i lost a regional spelling bee because of those exact words. I should have asked for usage example but I was like 11 and terrified
Or a niece, Eric Matthews.
For me it isn't "some" word it is "many, many" words.
charcuterie (shar-KOO-terr-ee) (TIL)
potable (POH-tah-bull)
prerogative (preh-ROG-ah-tiv) -- wait, wat? Damn. I say it (pur-OHG-ah-tiv)
preternatural (pree-ter-NAT-chur-al)
remuneration (reh-myoo-ner-AY-shun) -- I'm not admitting how I say it lol
surprise - let's just say I spelled it suprise for ages. sigh
victual (vittle) - wait, that's how you spell it??
Indefatigable (IN-dih-FA-tih-gə-bl) not in-dee-fa-TEEG-able
Primer: \PRIMM-er\ -- small book / short informative piece of writing. (Brits can use long-i for both the paint undercoat and the book).
Mischievous: \MISS-chuh-vuss\ though mis-CHEE-vee-us is a non standard alternate pronunciation.
Interlocutor: \in tuhr LOCK you tore. I had no idea how to pronounce this so I never said it.
I think some "mispronunciations" are down to regional pronunciation. Like, I say miniature as MIN-ih-chure by habit though I'm well aware of how it's spelled and "should" be pronounced. I swear that's how I heard it growing up.
Maybe it isn't regional and it is just me. That would explain some things lol.
And uh, yeah I have a bunch more, some I know but am forgetting at the moment. Undoubtedly I mispronounce many more while having no idea. What must people think of me? Lol
Looks like you're mainly struggling with words of french origin, which is fair, the language is fucked up.
TIL it’s “prerogative”…
I'm American and have never heard "prim-er" I've always heard "prime-er".
I say miniture when it's an adjective like a smallish thing, but mini-a-ture when I'm using it as a noun, like the pieces used in tabletop gaming.
victual (vittle)
I knew that "vittle" was from the word "victual," but I never knew that they were actually pronounced the same!
Mischievous: \MISS-chuh-vuss\ though mis-CHEE-vee-us is a non standard alternate pronunciation.
I hate that alternate pronunciation. How do you get "vee-us" from "vous"?
Idk. Likely some people misheard or misread it way back and then repeated.to others and it spread. How does any word change over time, right?
The only time I have actually heard someone use indefatigable is in the Monty python, where they intentionally pronounce it wrong
/prəˈrɒgətɪv/ Huh. I guess usually when a schwa and a rhotic is involved, my dialect drops it. I pronounce it /prˈrɒgətɪv/ which could be romanized to pur-ROH-guh-tiv. But there's no actual separation between the u and the r there.
Interesting. I find the combination of rhotic - schwa - rhotic rather awkward. That could explain why it is commonly mispronounced.
its aluminium
Only if you trust the French more than the guy who named it.
i do. coughs in jpg
aluminum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium
tomato tomato lets call the whole thing off!
I was like 25 when I found out it was wheelbarrow and not wheelbarrel
It's pronounced 'gif'
The German girl Ginger gave George gross gelatin.
Giblet
Jiraffe
/ʒaɪf/
What's the grammatical rule for using 4 l's in a row? Ma gawd what a mess
Perfectly cromulent in Welsh.
According to this song, you pronounce like trying to cough up some phlegm that's gotten stuck in your throat. I can only assume that their history of coal mining has affected the language.
4 l’s in a row
That’s basically how you spell “yellow” in 22nd century Spanglish
You know they specifically chose that place to mess with him haha.
Par-mee-zee-in
Oh crap, which universe are we in?
Dealbreaker, we gotta find another dimension.
Better than Farmer John cheese, at least
For the C/C++ nerds: Clang. There are still many people pronouncing it "Cee-lang".
Worcestershire.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiasis.
I must be pronouncing them right enough for voice to text to understand me because I certainly cannot spell those.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiasis.
I must be pronouncing them right enough for voice to text to understand me because I certainly cannot spell those.
Except voice-to-text spelled “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” wrong. It did “iasis” instead of “iosis.”
Not exactly related to the question, but as a non-native English speaker, whenever I read something related to weights in imperial, e.g., 150 lbs, my mind reads it as 150 lubes.
I know it's pounds, if I would read it out loud, I would say pounds cause I'm not a weirdo (well...). But still, my internal monologue has lbs = lubes
I feel you. My inner voice reads this as "libs".
Elbs
I love your brain
I love your brain
Right? I’m a native English speaker (Aussie, so…loosely native English speaker) and my first exposure to “Lbs” was for the weight of Pokemon in the physical red Pokédex handbook, so I always just said they weighed “X labs”, still don’t immediately correct it in my head 25+ years later.
I was the same except I said it as "ibs" was quite a while I was thinking that when I was younger. My internal monologue still says it this way anytime I read it even though I know now
If anyone is wondering why this is abbreviation for it, it is because the full name for pound weight in latin is libra poundo. We use the libra part for the abbrievation into lbs but pounds for the actual common name.
For me its always been "limbs"
I made the mistake of pronouncing epitome as "ep-i-tome" for a while.
Sometimes I like to pronounce it “lingerie” just to piss people off
Mine was "daschund". I always thought that was a separate breed from a "doxen".
Even after being educated on how the word is actually pronounced, I still purposefully pronounce it literally "daschund". Fuck 'em - should've spelled it better.
Daschund is pronounced like "daak' snd" in case anyone else didn't realize this. My mind is blown.
-
It is spelled Dachshund (Dachs-Hund, German, lit. Badger-Dog, as the breed was created to hunt foxes and badgers in their burrows)
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It is pronounced Dax Hunt (good example by a native german speaker: https://youtu.be/6aveG0N6Jtc?si=mzCsfrVA95VJZggG )
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Daschund is pronounced like "daak' snd" in case anyone else didn't realize this. My mind is blown.
I had a roommate in college that pronounced "epitome" like "epi-tohm." He also pronounced "tome" like "toom." Drove me nuts.
Barely Sociable did this and got a chuckle out of me, great that he owned it in a later video, though.
My buddy would always talk about the skill toom's used to unlock the "ruin" (rune) skills.
Brian Regan, the epi-tome of hyper-bowl. What a great show. Thanks for the in-aardvark-ent reminder
Hyperbole, not ‘hyper-bowl’ (like superbowl)
superbowl like su-perb-owl?
/r/superb owl
As a non native EN speaker, this website helped a lot. Even has regional variants
You could record the times when you find out a new word that you've been pronouncing wrong. You should notice less and less new mispronounced words as your list of known mispronounced words gets longer and longer. If you graph the data out, you can extrapolate the curve out to infinity, and you can estimate how many total words you're mispronouncing.
So swaive vs suave or deboner vs debonair? Maybe 'fisticated vs sophisticated? You could be a swaive, deboner, 'fisticated urbane 'burban urbanite.
Personally, I blame the French for the short comings of the English language, just because I randomly can.
"shortcomings"
Chip-o-tot-el
Arist-ot-le
Chip-ol-tay
Chop a topple eee?
It’s okay guys. OP meant to write pronunciating.
Have I been mispronunciating that too???
It’s okay. Everybody’s got a few of thowse.
I once spoke with a Southerner about favorite books. They recommended a series they called "The Will of Time".
Only later I found out they were talking about The Wheel of Time.
I started at a company that had a lot of people from India. I have no problem with anybody from anywhere but It takes me a little while to become familiar with accents. That little fuzzy search option in my brain that listens to one thing and realizes what they're trying to say is woefully undersized.
It's my third or fourth day on the job I'm nice and early and my boss's boss strolls in. I'm the only one there.
Suresh: I need you to check on the Catalina office. Me internal: I roughly heard of Catalina but I don't know anything about it I don't even know where it is, maybe it's a city in Spain or something. They do have some international offices maybe I'm missing something. Me: Catalina? Suresh: Catalina, I need to know the status of Catalina. Me Internal: s***, that didn't help. Furiously googles, no, that's not any help either. Can I ask the CTO to spell something, would that be a career-ending move on day three? Should I ask him what country it's in, should I say I don't have the information for that office obviously I'm a working human being I could look them up and call them if I knew. Suresh reading my confusion: Catalina, Catalina, about 6 hours from here.. Norte Catalina. Me: ohh so sorry, no problem, I will find the contact information for our North Carolina office check on them and let you know.
And that is fine, when/if someone corrects you, you explain that you have never heard the word spoken, just read it.
Tri-ummm-vir-ate
This right here! I tell my kids not to give someone a hard time mispronouncing a word because it means they learned it from reading.
Peregrine. It was only last week that I realized it has two r's and doesn't rhyme with penguin.
BEHOLD, T H E P E R E G U I N
I pronounced puddle as poodle up into my thirtys. Maybe I didn't use it too often so it wasn't noticed. My second wife did. Absolutely scundered!
February
Thing is, language is constantly changing, so if enough people say it wrong, it makes it correct over time.
As an example, people have been using nauseous incorrectly for so long, that it's now correct again.
I could care less.
I couldn't.
Açaí
But isn't that the right way to pronounce it?
I pacifically told you!!!!
I love visiting the Specific Ocean.
This one is specially humorous.
ITT: people who care about how you represent yourself are evil, apparently.
I suspect people got a little butt-hurt when they discover their shirt is a little stuffed.
Kibosh
I would say you're actually witnessing the very real phenomenon of language-drift. Languages evolve for a billion reasons, but there's no right or wrong state of language.
That's why we distinguish between language, dialect, idiolect, sociolect. Each bearer of language is also a producer of language. Their version is just theirs, in whatever many ways that makes that version unique.
(Check linguistics to better understand this process of language-drifting )
My wife pronounces ‘foliage’ like ‘foil-adj’.
Mine says window-seal.
Supposably
Ja-lap-e-no chips
First time I saw giraffe in a book I thought it was pronounced Grr-Ah-Fee.
Like the fist time going to Denny's and ordering the car-ah-fee of OJ
Bruh
My teacher told me that he'd fail me if I mispronounced "Data" as "Da ta" and not "Dait a". So I always mispronounce it
Is it a dialect training class? Because otherwise that feels like boarderline racism to penalise someone for having a different an accent.
"Da ta" vs "date-ah" is regional. If you're pronouncing it "wrong" move across the pond and suddenly you'll be right.
I mean I live in Colorado and I've heard it both ways all the time. I've even heard "da tum" and "date 'em" for the singular.
He claimed it wasn't an accent. It was a database class. I think he was correct though as that type of thing transcends accents
He was weird. He spent an entire class talking about his divorce and once came in dressed as a cowboy. Oh, and he also taught us for mathematics, and ended up failing the entire class on coursework.
Your teacher clearly watched Star Trek TNG, because it's Mr *Dait a" not Mr. Da ta.
You just reminded me of my highschool AP bio teacher who was a new Englander, but lived and worked in the UK for a few years. He pronounced half like "hawf" and it was always jarring because otherwise his accent was mostly normal.
Though I want to know why Wednesday is pronounced "wendsday" or "wensday". The n is after the d!
It’s wed-nes-day.
Or so my wife insists, while giggling.
The d before n is inherited from the original name Wodans dag (like Tiu's dag, Thor's dag and Frey's dag inherited through the Saxons and Danes from pagan germanic gods)
The rest is just linguistic shift through the centuries of changing language. Like Dag -> Day while for example in German Dag -> Tag.
But the root of the word is still Wodan then old english Weoden then Wedn.
Go ahead and say it literally. The middle syllable is still barely noticeable when said quickly.
That's probably why it got dropped.
The channel this video is from can be a useful resource.
Thanks for reminding me of these. A while back I met someone named Chateauneuf, and I tried to look up how to pronounce his name and found this very helpful answer.
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Panacea. I pronounced it incorrectly for a long time. Never knew because no one corrected me. Fortunately it didn't come up too often.
So you're just gonna leave me here saying puh-nay-shuh and not tell me how it should be?
Pan-ah-SEE-ah
I was saying puh-nay-shuh too
My favorite example of this happened during a D&D game years ago in which the DM kept pronouncing the word portcullis as PORK-YOO-LISS.
To this day, the word causes the image of some sort of ancient Roman pig gladiator to appear unbidden in my mind.
My wife says "wheelbarrel" and I giggle every time.
We've probably all said a sentence that no other person in history has ever said.
- genre
- only
- gif
- croissant
- Aloysius
- Edinburgh
The rest I can understand, but... only?
I had heard the word “only” spoken in English, but didn’t know how to spell it. At the same time, I had seen the word written, but thought it was pronounced “on-lie” — oddly enough, I had never heard anyone use “on-lie” in speech; I thought it was one of those words that exist but aren’t used very much, like “splendid” or “indubitably”.
I just remembered I also had trouble for so long with the English words “union” (pronounced like English “onion”) and “onion” (pronounced “onny-on” or “on-ion”).
I don't think I've ever seen Aloysius written.
Trough?
You can just look up words in the dictionary and look up the phonetic pronunciation key to refresh your memory. It pays to do this every once in a while.
I said automaton wrong for years. I said auto-maton instead of au-tomoton. I still cringe a bit thinking about it :-/
I only just woke up so forgive me if you're right, did you mean automation?
No.
automaton — Noun: 1. A machine or robot designed to follow a precise sequence of instructions., 2. A person who acts like a machine or robot, often defined as having a monotonous lifestyle and lacking in emotion., 3. A formal system, such as a finite-state machine or cellular automaton., 4. A toy in the form of a mechanical figure. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/automaton
I got Linux wrong for a while
Lattice
Likely to be “schedule”
At some point in my life I started enunciating every syllable of the word "comfortable," where as most Americans opt for "kuhmf-tr-bl." I don't remember when or why I started doing otherwise, but I can't go back now.
Contiguous. Didn't find out about that one till I got to college... That was embarrassing as f***.
If people can correct you then it means they understood it perfectly clear.
You underestimate the narcissism of small differences. As exemplified in the below recent local news clip that demonstrates the publics furor over the correct pronunciation of "pierogi."
^Also a great look into the mind of the average white working class swing state voter and where their priorities sit
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Every time I mispronounce a word, people are assholes and make fun of me. Human beings are pieces of shit for so many reasons.
