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.
Contiguous. Didn’t find out about that one till I got to college… That was embarrassing as f***.
Worcestershire
And nearby Leominster
And Cirencester
Sern Stir?
It’s pronounced “siren sester”.
“-cester” is usually pronounced “stir”, I’d assume then “Sir In Stir” if I got the first part wrong
The whole word is silent
sauce?
That one isn’t silent
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”.
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.
My wife says “wheelbarrel” and I giggle every time.
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
Look, I was on board until you started throwing out made up words like preternatural, victual, and indefatigable, then I knew you were pulling my leg.
Looks like you’re mainly struggling with words of french origin, which is fair, the language is fucked up.
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.
/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.
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.
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”
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.
Well, crap. Guess I’ll eat a nice quitch to chear myself up
You mean a quickie?
As long as it’s not scrambled, I suppose
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
Huh, you learn something every day. Thanks for that
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?
I hear so many people pronounce “cavalry” as “calvary,” which is a different word altogether.
A coworker of mine always says chipolte it boils my guts
I pronounce Chipotle with the same emphasis as Aristotle
Same as you, but in my defense I’ve never heard it out loud. A mexican friend taught me the correct way, I then understood the word comes from Nahuatl
Xipoodle
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.
Someone is peDANTic, but they themselves are a PEdant. Probably why they made that mistake
Like how we can reCORD some music and release a a REcord
Or make some COMpost by putting those scraps in the comPOST
I still put scraps into the COMpost, but only the comPOSTable scraps.
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.
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.
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.
Oxford English dictionary gives both pronunciations, your teacher is just a dick https://www.oed.com/dictionary/data_n?tab=factsheet#219838686 - it’s like my ex who always gave me a hard time for saying “ant” instead of “ahnt.”
