What words did you read before you heard them - and sometimes still mispronounce?

Inspired by this thread's tangent, I thought it'd be interesting to see what words give us readers pronunciation fits! I think that a lot of folks who read abundantly as children found their vocabulary growing - but not always their pronunciation of said vocab!

For me, it was 'dynasty', which I still want to pronounce as 'din-as-ty' and have to make a conscious effort to pronounce properly.

As mentioned in the other thread, my bugaboos were "facade" and "debris."

"fa-kaid" and "deb-riss"

I was well into adulthood before I saw the word "ribbon" in "beribboned" - a word you only see in books, never hear in life. Part of me still thinks of candy when I see the word.

Your pronunication of dinnasty is normal in the UK.

> 4

That's it! I'll pretend my pronunciation is just charmingly foreign whenever I screw it up! ;)

Erudite

I still don't really know how to pronounce that.

Potpourri - I always see it as 'Pot-a-poury' my wife laughs but I have a hard time associating it with 'Po-por-ee'

sooner or later it will happen though

Haha, this is a great idea.

Until I was at least 20 yrs old, I read 'Penelope' as 'Pen-ah-lope' and it wasn't until I was reading something aloud to my sister that I was not so kindly corrected. I still read it as Pen-ah-lope but remember to pronounce it correctly if someone can hear me. :D

I'm a bit sad though, I always thought Pen-ah-lope was a lovely name.

I have to agree with Pen-ah-lope being a lovely name.

I don't know of any words that I mispronounce right now. My daughter loves to correct me and tells me that I mispronounce words. I have come to realize that it is most likely my accent even though I was born and raised in America and so was she. Something must influence my speech.

#8 me too! but when I was probably 13-14, a new kid named Penelope moved into our neighbourhood and, oddly enough, didn't seem to like being called Pen-ah-lope so we called her antelope instead.

Disheveled - which I thought was dis-heave-elled and centrifugal - which I thought was cent-ri-fu-gal.

I hear the word "divisive" pronounced with both a short "i" and a long "i". I use the latter, as in "divide" not "division."

I have several of those trouble words, but I can't think of them all right now. I still cringe when I remember the time I embarrassed myself by pronouncing "treatise" "tree teas."

The really horrible thing is, once I read a word enough times and have a mistaken pronunciation for it in my head, I have a hard time remembering the real pronunciation even after I've been corrected.

My excuse is a learning disability; that is my story and I am sticking with it. (ī'sə-prō'pəl) I could pronounce the word from the first time I heard it used in chemistry class. I was in my 30s before I associated that with the word, the word I skipped over because it was unpronauncable, on the bottle of rubbing alcohol. Isopropyl.

Aldebaran

I was always putting the accent on the first syllable, rather than the second.

'Gunshy' bit me, and 'desultory' is a personal embarrassment. I used to like to pronounce 'soufflé' soofel purposefully, but then I started a career in municipal government. I worked with people who couldn't know that I was playing; my life was miserable until I retired 28 years later.

Robert

"Capacity". As a kid on the school bus, I saw "capacity 66" and in my head pronounced it cap-a-city, with the accent on the first syllable. I always wondered what city it was.

Halcyon. I'm still not entirely sure how to pronounce it, because every time it comes out just a little differently.

(I also have problems with a very common word, as my brother -- when much, much younger -- would often spot "ambleeances" driving to the hospital, instead of ambulances.)

I remember from many, many, many years ago:
melancholy = mel ank a nee
atrophy = a trophy
foliage = foil-edge

coup de grace always makes me stop...it sounds like a car if you say it wrong.

A new one to me was "winged". I've always said it one way but heard it in a song pronounced with an emphasis on the "Ed" as in 'wing-ed' bird

That is a poetic pronunciation. "wing'd" is still correct.

"Suffice."

I have to prepare in my head before using this word. I decided early on that SUFF-iss was more natural for sure.

"Colonel."

Many military characters were Colin-ulls to me, not Kernels. Frankly, I think it's time for a switch to Colin-ulls. Much more dignified.

"Contraindicated"

Well, on medication 'literature". I did not see this is Contra-indicated, but instead as some strange medical word - Con-train-dicted. I also turned 'dicated' into 'dicted at the end for melody.

Still unsure about Margot in Anne Frank, and others. Is it Margo or Margit?

"Paradigm"

Yup. Pair 'a Dig 'em. Trouble with reading self-help at 11.

ps. Hermione in Harry Potter. Oh you mean, Hermie-Own?

>22 jacnov: 'suffice' is the opposite for me. It's one of those words I really love to roll off the tongue.

'Superfluous' another word that refuses to exit my mouth properly no matter how often I practice, and I do. I'm not sure I could even spell exactly how many different ways my tongue and mouth murder this word. I really wish it was pronounced how I read it because I certainly have that one down with style. 'super-flu-is'. :)

There are so many I can't choose. I started reading English books before I started watching English shows or movies, and as I rarely get a need to speak in English, my pronunciation of most words is not correct (especially the ones that are not repeated much in movies).

The odd thing is that no-one has mentioned the name of this site: It was ages before someone tipped me off that it was an allusion to tim's star-sign and should be pronounced "Libra-Writhing" and not, as so many people erroneously think, "Library-Thing".

giggle/snort

Heh.

I used to think that "misled" was a separate word from "miss-led", and was pronounced mEYE-zulled. It meant almost the same thing, but had a more devious quality to it.

Chicago. When I was young (pre-teen anyway) I saw this in a book and had no idea a) that it was a city or b) how it was pronounced.

So I figured it was Chick-a-go. Was YEARS before I made the connection between hearing the name Chicago, and the word I had seen on paper.

Sauerkraut. I read it in I think it was The Pushcart War when I was a kid and I had no idea what it was or how to pronounce it. And my family doesn't eat sauerkraut (well, my mom does, but my dad hates even the smell, so was never in the house). It was years before I had any idea what that word was.

I had a friend in college who once pronounced "awe" as "ow-ee" and it took the rest of us a while to figure out what they meant.

Calliope.

Not so much ordinary words, but place names like Des Moines. Being English I figured it was French pronunciation and thought it was Day Mwah....a long time ago I hasten to add, before my American cousins on here snigger themselves to death!!!

Your pronunciation makes more sense than the right one. "Des" is pronounced "Duh" (no offense intended), and then we leave off the final S.

2 of our states do that too: Illinois and Arkansas. English isn't supposed to have a silent S.

Illuminated. I always have to think it through.

ill-um-inated vs il-loo-minated

When I was in grade school, reading Superman comic books, I never understand why the editor at the Daily Planet called everyone "Eye-doits." I was misreading "idiot," a word I had heard but never seen written, and had no idea how to spell. Later I reflected that it's a very efficient word for a space-constrained artifact like a comic book: three syllables for just five letters, two of them Is!

When I was a child I always pronounced the w in sword, because that's how it looked. I finally got that one right when I was in my early teens. I don't know if I will ever get debacle - it sounds wrong to me when I hear anyone say it properly.

Iron. Pronounced eye-ron. Hence I didn't associate the word with the metal and wondered what it meant. I was very young at the time.

In reading English history I am fascinated by the early forms used in their correspondence such as; hit, yow, at do, and writt for; it, you, to do, and written and 'was you like to come to live in the country?',(Windsor Castle) where was is an early form of to wish.

"Dachshund"

I pronounced it "Dash-und" until I was in my 20s (even after several years of high school and college German). I'd heard the word said multiple times but had always imagined it spelled "Doxon."

"taciturn"--as a young child I read it as "takiturn" & still hear it in my head that way; I was in college before I heard someone speak it.

>40 Katya0133: re: Dachshund. I thought Dachshund was pronounced Dash-und until...reading your post. I've heard of "Doxons," but thought they were a different breed. Wow.

>24 megangoat: Oh, superfluous was one of mine, too. I sometimes still have trouble with it early in the morning.

>31 jmreusser: Calliope for me as well. I was a teenager before I heard the word pronounced or saw a picture of one. It didn't look like I thought it would - I was imagining some sort of Dr. Seuss style multihorn thing, not an organ on wheels.

Epitome - I knew what it meant but never had occasion to pronounce it until I saw it written in graffitti on a wall during a college trip to NYC. My traveling companions immediately pounced on me.

>8 megangoat: I also thought Penelope was pronounced pen-ah-lope. There was a Penelope Baptist Church that we would pass on the way to my grandmother's house. We did the Odyssey in high school so I figured out my error. I also found it interesting that a Baptist church would name itself after a woman from Greek mythology.

>42 jacnov:

Great minds think alike! ;)

The pronunciation of the word pseudo is one that my husband laughs at all the time. I usually say "sway-do" if I'm not constantly thinking of the proper pronunciation.

superfluos...still not sure how to pronounce it.

su-per-fa-less is how I say it. Possibly to the amusement of listeners.

Accent on second syllable.

42 jacnov

Wow. Me too. This is an enlightening thread!

Thank you Mary!

What a great thread! And my first contribution at LibraryThing.com (I think...)

For me, one of the words was "awry." Before I heard it pronounced, I read it as "AW-ree," emphasis on first syllable. And I'm a New Yorker, so that W was _really_ pronounced! ;-)

(I think there were others, but can't come up w/ any at the moment.)

Pious always gets me. Pee or pie? I invariably pick the wrong pronunciation.

Marina. Metallurgy.

Misled, as someone else said above. I miss the wrong version. It was a great word when it lasted.

Armageddon

Capote, as in Truman Capote. My mom overheard me say his name out loud while answering a Jeopardy a question; she laughed at me for five minutes.

Being a teenager at the time, I had only read about him. It's not like my friends and I sat around talking about Capote during high school in the 1990s.

And let's face it: he pronounced his name weird.

I knew a man who, until quite late in life, believed that doughnuts—with the "gh" pronounced as "f"—were an entirely different delicacy than the grease-balls available at, say, KrispyKreme. These elusive pastries were, from everything he had heard, delicious.

Man, there's a number of them I'm only learning I had wrong from these posts (treatise and Dachshund, among others).

Chaos and ciao were particularly though ones for me as a teenager.

And Phoenix and Phoebe.

And behemoth I got busted on trying to say out loud -- badly.

What I love is the ease with which I can learn these things now by googling the word, getting a link to an on-line dictionary where I can just click on an icon and have it pronounced for me. How easy and fun is that? Love it!

I'm having trouble thinking of any words that I read and mispronounced due to never having heard them, although I know there were lots of them. I do remember place names often got me (Worcestershire for example).

I also once lost confidence in my French pronunciation and converted "haut cuisine" to "high cooking" much to the amusement of my friends.

At --I don't know what age-- probably 1st grade, because I did have minimal reading knowledge. , and I was already looking at a "World Atlas": I thought the word "Atlas" was the 2 words "At Last". (We learned whole words at a time, very little phonics). I thought they must call it that because it was the first time they FINALLY (At last) got the whole world into one volume.

A close friend of mine who won't mind me posting this (I hope!), pronounces poetry as pertry and gigantic as jijantic....the first time he did it, I mentioned it, but I think now he does it to irritate me so I keep quiet and let him get on with it!

Waistcoat (rhymes with biscuit). But wikipedia tells me that now it's okay to pronounce it like it's spelled.

Does anyone know how to pronounce Junot Diaz' first name?

I don't think I've ever heard it rhyme with biscuit.

I've only ever heard it pronounced once (doesn't come up much in conversation) and it was biscuit-y.

Oh, this is a "live and learn" thread for me too. It had just never occurred to me to pronounce it that way.

I love this thread!
I can identify with just about all the words mentioned at one time or another...lol
Penelope really hits home with me! I said it wrong for the longest time and I am just learning superfluos now.

I have an HP pavilion laptop. The salesman called it a pav-a-lon!

> 23 : I had another take on that - Hermy One, a robotic prototype?

>61 rolandperkins: I like your definition of atlas better than the real one. Isn't it funny how our minds work?

Dachshund still gets me. I, too, often pronounce it DOSH-und. As a small child, I had a reverse problem with museum--I'd never seen it in print, and never clearly heard the middle syllable, so I always said "mu-ZAM". It still seems a subtle difference to me, but Mom made a point of correcting it. I also remember being convinced that there was a place called IS-land (IZ-land) on first seeing "island" and confusing it with the country of Iceland.

I still want to pronounce the l's in guillotine.

I work in an insurance company, on a customer service line where we provide claim status to providers (among other things). You know they don't ACTUALLY work there when they call from "Are kansas (pick a specialty)". They get really confused when I try to correct them, too.

I always have had trouble with the word "pint". For some reason I really want to make that vowel short.

Knowing the French pronunciation of "guillotine"
(and an uncertain Engl. pron.: GILL- oh- teen), I don't get the point of your post (73).

Both the I s ARE pronounced, in any pronunciation I can think of.

(The French pron. is approximately:
Gee - yo - teen (hard g, like the g in "Guess"); not too different from the English, but with more of a "slide", like a y, for the -ll-.)

On 73, 76:
--I don't get the point (of "wanting to pronounce the I s. . .")


On 2nd thought, did you mean that you want to pronounce the last syllable "tine-- rhymes with fine"-- instead of "-teen -- rhymes with mean" ?

>61 rolandperkins:

Learning the language is always a challenge when you're a little goober. When I was a very young child hearing the "ABC song", I was conviced that there was a special type of letter called an "elemeno p".

Has anyone else mentioned hyper-bole? It took me a LONG time in my younger days to associate the written word with the correctly pronounced hyperbole. No exaggeration!

An old girlfriend of mine always used to wonder what a gayze-bo was until I pointed out a nice ga-zee-bo in a garden once.

omniscience and omnipotent.

Taeniopterygidae.

Is there a prize? ;)

Regarding guillotine, I think those are L's that booklady2031 wants to pronounce, and she may.

Robert

yeah, it's nothing to lose your head over.

Lots that i can't remember at the moment, but one i'll never forget. Quay. When i was a kid, a bus driver told me off for pronouncing it phonetically.

I remember reading Fleming's James Bond novels in seventh grade and I knew that at times Bond carried an attache case. Notwithstanding the telltale accent mark, which should have alerted me, I pronounced it to myself to rhyme with apache. Later, as a novice debate team member in ninth grade, I carried a briefcase, which with an air of worldliness, I referred to as my attache case. For a while, no one ever challenged my mispronunciation. After all, who (other than a complete nerd) carried a briefcase in high school, let alone an attache case. At some debate tournament that year, I misplaced my attache case, and asked an opponent if he had seen my attache case - giving it the apache pronunciation. He looked at me rather incredulously, and asked in what seemed a superior mock British accent: Do you mean your attache (giving it the correct pronunciation) case? I instantly knew that his pronunciation was the correct one and that I had been pronouncing it incorrectly for a long time. Quick on my feet, however, I quickly reposted: Oh, you prefer the "French" pronunciation.

I too never knew the correct pronunciation of facade. I realized my mistake during a spelling bee in high school. My mom was incredulous that I had never come across the word in my reading of Bronte and Austen novels and then I made the connection between facade and the word I had always read as fa-kayd.
A word that I know how to pronounce but can't ever associate with its written form is yarmulke.

I had trouble with several of these -- desultory (I still have to think hard about this one, and I'm never confident in whatever pronunciation I choose), Arkansas (I always pronounced the S, and put the emphasis on the second syllable), and, yes, I mispronounced "Hermione" until the first Harry Potter movie came out.

The ones that haven't been mentioned yet are subtle (I pronounced all of the letters . . . really, who ever heard of a "silent b"?) and Amish (it looked to me like it should have a long A, for some reason). "Queue" was a complete mystery to me, pronunciation-wise . . . doesn't it look like it should have two syllables? I'm sure there were others that I mispronounced. For all I know, there still are!

I was lucky with "Hermione." I'm old enough to remember Hermione Gingold.

As for "queue" - you aren't far wrong. Pronounce it "key-yoo" and say it really fast!

Pretty well anything that comes from Latin or Greek I will mangle... I must have looked up the pronunciation of 'sinecure' half a dozen times and I still can't remember how you say it. Possibly because I've never heard it said...

Off the top of my head:
Vee-hi-kl
Co-loan-el
Tsharacter
Sello

They all persisted into my late teens (I'm not a native speaker and read much more than listen). I can't stand the snobby-sounding correct pronunciation of 'cello'.

#78 = you might like a book called Ella Minnow Pea!

Someone already beat me to it with 'chaos'. I remember reading the word in a comic book when I was (ooo-er, comic book age, I guess, 8-9-ish?) and thinking what a useful word it would be until I told my mum my day at school had been absolute chay-ose and she didn't have a clue what I was on about.

As for that waistcoat/wiscuit - as far as I'm aware the 'wiscuit' pronunciation was only ever an upper class affectation in about 19th century England - you'd get some very funny looks if you pronounced it that way nowadays. I've no idea how it should be pronounced in the US - aren't they vests there?

ETA - Actually a lot of these do seem to be English v US pronunciation. I think the one that intrigues us most over here is how it is possible to pronounce the word 'mirror' with one syllable - 'meeir'?

#73, 76

The French pronunciation of guillotine is an accepted pronunciation in English although guillotine (with voiced L) is growing more common.

#92

The big US/UK difference that really made me stop was buoy. Which in the UK is always pronounced the same as boy.

Here's another US/UK one: I was an adult before I realized that "er" (as a pause filler in dialogue) was the British spelling of "uh."

I was reading an article to my husband once and instead of "tendril" I pronounced it "trendil". It has now become a running joke as I never pronounce it any other way and say it outloud every time I come across it.

Aloysius ( al-oh-wish-us) had me baffled - I had heard it, but never in conjunction with seeing it written. A-loy-shus never seemed right, but It took a long time for the penny to drop.

I once heard a noted professional person, now deceased, talk repeatedly in a public presentation about a new par-a-dij-im and cringed. Somehow I had both seen and heard paradigm (par-a-dime) before- but I can understand falling into that one.

hypothesis - until I heard it, I thought it was just hypo + thesis with the emphasis on the first syllable.

#94 How is it pronounced in America?

Nobody has been able to pronounce 'supposedly' without it becoming 'supposably' ever since we heard it on Friends and decided it made much more sense that way.

99: The American pronunciation is boo-ee.

> 100 Sometimes. I certainly hear 'boy' fairly often.

As a youngster and avid dinosaur lover, I always thought Coelacanth was pronounced "Coal-a-kanth" and Diplodocus was diploe-duckus. I'm sure that there were many other Greek and Latin mispronunciations.

I heard a list of the most popular dogs as read by morning show TV hosts in Ottawa after reading this thread and Dachshund was on the list. It did not come out "Doxon," let me tell you. It was more like Daks-hund.

Yeah, I'll never understand how anyone could reach "Doxon" from Dachshund - its Dachs, to be pronounced Dax, and Hund, roughly pronounced "hoond" (simply meaning "dog" in German). But that's why I call this thread a live and learn experience.

My mother taught us little, but one thing she taught us was, "dachshund rhymes with fox hunt."

Robert

#105
Yes, German Hund rhymes with hunt. Word-final unvoicing.

There are loads of mispronounced dog breeds out there, mostly because they're based on different languages. Schipperke is the most commonly mispronounced; American pit bull terrier and dachshund the most mis-spelled. It's surprising how many people don't know how to pronounce or spell their own pet's breed. It's even more surprising that Brad Pitt has overcome the word pit in the popular consciousness.

That being said, I have issues with the Flandres part of Bouvier des Flandres for the same reason the thread was started. Same for Belgian Tervuren. I have to pause and think about Xoloitzcuintli before saying it. If you want some fun, try http://www.akc.org/breeds/fss_breeds.cfm; some of these are mouthfuls.

There's so many words I get gently corrected on when I read out loud to The Other, but I can't seem to remember them now. All in all, it's a small price to pay for the fun I had reading before I knew how everything sounded.

I thought Nazi was pronounced "Nah-zee" until I was in high school.

Thank you to everyone who has posted here, you've made my morning. For years I thought the author Goethe was pronounced 'go eth' I've since found out his name is 'gerta'.

Oh. I thought it was "Geth." Echoing others, it's a good thing I jumped on this thread!

Can anyone help? How should "Goethe" be pronounced?

Social pages has the American pronunciation above. I don't know how it would go in the rest of the English speaking world. It would be risible to a German.

I cannot spell how I pronounce it to myself. I would have to dislike somebody to try it on them, but I like myself okay.

Robert

Dictionary.com says it's "gur'-tuh." Where's the R in Goethe?

From the point of view of German phonology there is no r in how the English say "gur'-tuh".

There is retroflection or some kind of lingual proximation in the pronunciation of the first vowel that sounds to the English ear like rhoticization. The final vowel is fully reduced to schwa. The whole thing in conventional orthography for an American speaker is 'gerta' as socialpages said in 109.

Robert

Rhe/tor/ic

I pronounced with 3 syllables. Rather than the normal 2 syllable pronunciation of rhetor/ic.

Nauseous

Pronounced Naw/ze/us. rather than Nawshus.

#108: SueRidnour "I thought Nazi was pronounced Nah-zee until I was in high school."

Winston Churchill pronounced it like that. I suppose he did it to be insulting rather than through ignorance.

(Edit: removed unwanted line break.)

"assuage" is the one that always has a "how-do-I-pronounce-this" pause before it for me. (My first instinct is ahs-yew-ah-gee which is clearly inane.)

There are others that my spouse laughs at my pronunciation of - today it was "milieu" - ... but these usually involve borrowed (from other languages) words. But a number of other words mentioned in this thread have tripped me up from time to time.

We had a "RE-search" vs. "re-SEARCH" conversation in the Pedant's group a little while back - I've been observing myself since then and, apparently, I use them both (and not consistently either!).

I once used "brusque" correctly in a sentence and was corrected, by my boss no less - who told me I meant "brisk."

ETA:
I love LT - learn something new every single farkin' day:
>102 Sandydog1: "Coelacanth was pronounced "Coal-a-kanth" - Holy Shit! me too - so how do we say it? is the "C" an "S" in this case?

Soul-ah-kanth?
See-ohl-a-kaahnth?

#118

See-luh-kanth

#118 If bosses were so great at grammar they wouldn't need PAs and secretaries to correct their all-too-frequent mistakes.

#106: No, the German Hund does not rhyme with the English hunt, but with hoond with a short oo.
#107: Schipperke is so difficult to pronounce due to the Dutch "ch" (see the thread on how to pronounce "van Gogh").
#111: The Germans of the Goethe Institut pronounce it as Goe-te. Where the oe is similar to the Swedish oe.

Having TV with subtitles, most of our kids learn to pronounce foreign words in the proper way before they can read. With the exception of parameter. Most people pronounce it as PArameter (like centimeter, millimeter, etc.). However, it is not some kind of length measurement, but a factor pronounced as paRAmeter.

And of course, there is the famous mrs Bucket or Boucquet as she would like it pronounced.

Zeitgeist? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it.

Is it 'zeetgeest' or 'ziitgiist', or possibly a combination, 'zeetgiist' or 'ziitgeest'? (The sound I'm trying to reproduce with the 'ii' is like the word 'eye'. I should probably learn that IPA stuff they use in dictionaries, but I never have.)

z-eye-t-g-eye-st (hope that helps)

Thank you.

Oh, by the way, in spite of my numerous corrections, my young son insists on calling the ancient Greek historian, "Thucky-diddies".

I would too, just as your son, Sandydog.

Robert

I don't pronounce this wrong anymore at all, but I still remember the light going off when I learned that determine was pronounced de-ter-min instead of det-er-mine...lol

>126 Mr.Durick:

Ooops!

Apparently that pronunciation is approriate, as is also, "thoo-SIH-di-des".

Thanks; I'm learnin', heah.

I was reading David Copperfield in 7th grade and that was the first time I ever saw the name "Agnes."
I was pronouncing it as if it rhymed with champagne, like the beginning of angel, which he thought she was - and I still think it makes for a much prettier pronounciation:) (Maybe I'm just stubborn!)

As a child, I read the name Serena "Sara'-nah," and as has been echoed before, I do like my pronunciation best :)

#129 Anus?

Which reminds me, as a kid I was always afraid to try Uranus lest I get it wrong and be mocked.

Ha ha ha ha ha! I'm still laughing! "Anus," what a pretty name!

Uranus was a tough one for me, too. Just too much giggling involved!

#129 Obviously you had a much better pronunciation! Can you write out what it was?

KateVogl already said "as if it rhymed with champagne, like the beginning of angel".

I would presume that meant something like "Ain". Been wrong before though.

>#132: I was always afraid to try Uranus

ah-hahahaha!

I have been reading this thread and trying to think of words that I have come across that have caused me problems and I can't remember any of them. As I am reading my current book I keep running into words that I stumble across trying to pronounce them correctly. Now I don't know if that is because of this thread or because I am now thinking about every word that I read. Here is a word I stumbled across yesterday while I was reading: magnanimity. If I say it fast I seem to be okay but other times I seem to get stuck on it.

Mischievious...my sister always says Mis-chee'-vee-ous; I say Mis'-chi-vous...

Endeavor...when I read it as a youngster, it was
En-dee-ver.

A friend of mine used to insist on saying "pictureskew" and "groteskew", and to my great annoyance I picked up the habit from her ...

an-ti-kew for antique until I was probably about 10.

A couple that confounded me as a kid: awry (I pronounced it ah-ree) and dour (I pronounced it dow-er).

Remember reading Misty of Chincoteague by Margaret Henry? Chin-ka'-te-gyoo. Man, that was a mouthful!

Exiled, there is no "I" toward the end of mischievous, so your pronunciation is correct.

#131

I think that's a genus of puddle ducks. Oh, never mind, that's "Anas".

alcottacre, I think 'dour' may be pronounced in a number of ways, and despite the alternatives I pronounce it dour in consonance with at least one of the dictionaries at hand. I looked it up when I heard it pronounced on NPR like the French for hard.

Robert

#145: Thanks for the info, Robert.

87: foggidawn I'm sure there were others that I mispronounced. For all I know, there still are!
Me, too!

107: alsvidur All in all, it's a small price to pay for the fun I had reading before I knew how everything sounded.
That's an excellent way to see it.

122 justjim Zeitgeist?
I can say it, I just don't understand it. Well, I almost understand it.

I am sure I struggled with almost all the words mentioned. I know I have had that "Oh, *that's* how you say it!" more than once.
One that I still have to practice whenever I see it is Armaggedon. A friend used to laugh at herself with pseudo--still wanted to say sway-do.

Just spotted one on another thread: eponymous. I can feel my tongue rebel just looking at it.

#147 I love the word eponymous! For me, it’s one of those words that are so pleasurable to say they just ripple over your tongue and slide gently out of your mouth. Fortuitous. Lissome. And it’s not just the ‘s’ timbre; a couple of other favourites are lollygag and tintinnabulation (which is really difficult to work into everyday conversation).

Didn't hear 'poignant' spoken until University. Thought it was poe-ig-nent. I grew up taking french, so I should have known better (assuming it has french origins).

#148, your comment reminds me of a particularly bad day in one of my freshman classes. My students were being especial buttheads and I chastised them for their asinine behavior. They asked what that meant. Furious, I replied, "Like an ass." All year long every time I expressed displeasure at anything, they asked, "Is it asinine?" It became a favorite word for them.

There are too many of these words for me to list. I tell my griends it's because I read more than I talk, which they find a little hard to believe, but there it is.

I do enjoy this thread. Reading other people's posts, there are a lot of these misunderstandings that happened to me in childhood, at least briefly. What's odd is that no-one has mentioned the opposite effect: if you happen to pronounce words of foreign origin correctly in a school playground, you are automatically considered either mistaken or pretentious. As I had the good fortune to grow up in a bilingual household, that happened to me a lot (or maybe I was a bit pretentious...).

#152,

I've had a somewhat opposite incident. Years ago, at the old factory cafeteria, I was reading the menu and decided to try a joke.

I said, "look, they have broe-KOLE-ee, today, it must be some kind of Italian desert!"

The guy next to me was conviced that I wasn't kidding. He laughed his ass off.

I say "Ja-LA-pen-noes" on purpose. It has actually become something of a habit, now.

I have a rather pretentious friend who purchased a set of Tumi luggage, of which she was quite proud. Intentionally, I kept referring to it as her tummy luggage, which drove her mad as she genuinely thought I couldn't pronounce it correctly. Some people just don't know how to play with their words.

#153

He may have thought you were making a botanical pun. Broccoli is one of the cole crops.

http://www.ncsu.edu/sustainable/profiles/c09cole.html

I should eat more of it to help rid me of all my Tumi luggage...

Then there all those words you used to hear in the shops, mills and factories. These were uttered without any consideration of how they are spelled. Examples included "orientate" (orient), "ahbestos" (asbestos) and "duck-wood" (ductwork).

I "kinda" miss the U.S. manufacturing sector.

There is a wonderful poem by Wendy Cope, entitled 'Stress'. It starts:

He would refuse to put the refuse out.
The contents of the bin would start to smell.
How could she be content? That idle lout
Would drive the tamest woman to rebel.

and goes on for another 10 lines using the different pronunciations of rebel, frequent(s), present(s), conduct(s), torment(s), protest, upset.

I find it quite difficult to read aloud correctly but, presumably, someone more au fait with poetic rhythm schemes would cope better.

Just came accross this mentioned on another book site I frequent:

http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/caos.php

I don't know how to make it a clickable link but if you want to follow it you can paste it into your browser. It's an article about a poem 'Chaos' - a versified catalogue of English spelling irregularities.

ETA: The link seems to work on its own...

Less to do with reading, but until a few years ago I thought "cafe au lait" was "cafe olé!" In my defense, I'd only ever heard it on TV, where a character distributes coffee and was very flamboyant when presenting the cafe au lait. I think there were even castanets in the background, which made me associate it with Spanish. Years later my mom saw me writing it down as "olé" and didn't stop laughing for about five minutes. She still doesn't let me live it down, but I think my way is more fun :p

It certainly sounds like a livelier beverage--possibly with a dash of rum.

What a fun thread! One of the wonderful things about LT is all the secret toy surprise threads out there.

I still mispronounce "desultory" and "nomenclature" for some reason, even though I know how they're supposed to be pronounced.

My husband likes to read to me aloud, but his pronuncination can sometimes be really amusing. We are reading LOTR and he keeps misprouncing "draught" as "drawt." He also just won't remember how to prounounce "quay." There's lots of others that aren't coming immediately to mind. I have pretty much given up correcting his pronunciation and instead choose to view it as a charming idiosyncracy.

(blushing) Yikes -- I didn't know until I read this thread that quay is pronounced kee. But then, it's not a word I often have occasion to use so perhaps I have not embarrassed myself too much.

I unfortunately learned the words "placenta" and "placebo" during the same week's vocabulary lesson, so for some time, I had to be careful not to say something like "that hypochondriac might be helped with a little placenta." (blushing again)

Edit: "blushing" in brackets caused a link I didn't intend.

I learned about quay here, too.

In Chicago, there's a Goethe street pronounced Goe-thee by residents. New here many years ago, I told the bus driver I need to stop at Gurr-tuh street, and he gave me an "another out-of-town idiot" look. I found out why when he announced the stop.

For personal names, lots of people struggle at one time or another with the names of the poets Yeats and Keats. My son mispronounced Yeats in a college class and was really aggravated by the sarcastic response he got.

I only learned to pronounce quay after reading this thread (thank you, dictionary.com), but I have lived 40 of my 42 years in landlocked areas. Hopefully I can be forgiven.

Epitome. (At age 12)

Ep it tome (long o, silent e). I was mortified when a friend corrected me.

Natives here in Colorado pronouce Buena Vista as bue-na-vista and Pueblo as pee-eb-lo. I've been here close to a million years and still can't do that. And of course, there is Pikes Peak, never with an apostrophe.

#167 -- Oh, intentional mispronunciations of place names is another matter entirely! I've lived near Prague, Oklahoma (pronounced Prayg), Versailles, Kentucky (pronounced Ver-sails), and others.

Kentucky pronounced Ver-sails? Now that really IS off the wall.

No too far from me is Lebanon, Indiana. Not Leb-a-non, but more like Leb-nin.

There used to be a shopping center on the water in Vancouver with a giant neon sign "something Quay". Maybe you Canadians know this place. I was there with my then husband visiting my in-laws for the first time when I mispronounced it in front of them. I embarrassed my ex to no end and he didn't let me forget it either. It could explain a few things.

Cairo, Illinois is pronounced Kay-roe there.
Pulaski, New York, is pronounced Poo-lass-kye there.

We could probably start a whole thread on different pronunciation of place names. Mobile, Newfoundland is completely different from Mobile, Alabama which is also different from the mobile hanging over the baby's bed.
(MOB ul, MO beel, mo BILE)

How about Houston St in NYC?

>167 TooBusyReading:
LOL! I had to read your post, twice. I instantly read and pronounced your phonetic spelling of that town, as "Bwe-na Vista" and thought, so what?

In Connecticut we have the Thames River and it definitely is NOT pronounced "Tems".

And how about all those poor folks who try to read Massachusetts place names like Spencer, Worcester, Leicester, etc., etc.?

There is a village in Nova Scotia named Havre Boucher. Locally, this is pronounced "Harbour Bushy".

171:

There's Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver - just across the harbour from downtown Vancouver.

There is also a Westminster Quay in New Westminster - to the south east of Vancouver, on the Fraser River.

I'm guessing it was Lonsdale, since the seabus and its proximity to the city make it a popular place with visitors.

Missouri also has a Versailles, pronounced Ver-SAILS; Nevada is Ne-VAY-da, and New Madrid is New MA-drid, the "a" as in "apple". St. Francois County is St. Francis, and Ste. Genevieve is Ste. Jen-e-veve. Cape Girardeau is usually pronounced Cape Gir-AH-doh. French names + Ozarks dialect = totally trashed French lol

They can't even agree on how to pronounce the state's name. My parents say Missou-rah; I say Missour-ee. My mom often says it's Misery.

>177 beardo: That's it beardo, Londsdale Quay.

I can't guarantee much, but am confident that if you (as I did) mispronounce Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn's name wrong only once in public, it will be the last time you do.

I was 17 and blessed with a wonderful friend, who looked extremely pained and embarrassed, but was kind enough to just gently correct me. Almost 20 years later, he still hasn't said a word.

We had a news anchor here in the Bay Area who once went the air with a story about Pen-a-lope the pig. He had to correct himself the next day.

In an ancient Near Eastern history class at Cal State Hayward, our professor asked, "Now where would we be likely to find such information?" One student replied, "In the anals of the king?" When the rest of us were falling out of our chairs laughing, the poor student was looking around and asking, "What did I say? What did I say?" It took our professor (whose eyebrows had almost detached themselves) a few moments to compose himself enough to explain that the word had two ns and was pronounced differently.

So when it's that of a king it's spelled with two n's?

Robert

sorry if I'm repeating what someone has already said, but there are too many posts since I last logged in here.

A word i pronounced wrong until my uncle, who had been in the navy, corrected me, was boatswain.

A friend's mum still pronounces Certificate as Susstificate - don't ask me why

>182 Mr.Durick:
"koning"?

Breaking news - I discovered yesterday that the word "blackguard" is pronounced "blaggard". I always thought "blaggard" was an entirely distinct word!

#183 If you didn't know Boatswain was Bo'sun, how would you go with 'gunwale', 'studding sail', 'topgallant' or any number of uniquely nautical pronunciations?

(gunnel, stuns'l, t'galent)

#185 Now sing the Blackadder theme song in your head!

how would you go with 'gunwale', 'studding sail', 'topgallant'

Thingy? ;-)

No, no, no! Only the Starboard After Whosamiwhatsit gets called the Thingy. Of course you might be mixing it up with the Port Forward (for'ard, rhymes with forehead!) Whatsamiwhosit, which is known on some vessels as the Thingumy.

My brother-in-law's boat features a handy little niche in the cockpit known as the plasfer. You know, it's the place for this, the place for that . . .

There is a town west of me called Hyannis - High-ANN-is.

It is always fun watching a new weather guy on the North Platte channel. You just know somebody has given him bogus pronouncing information just so he'll have to apologize the next night.

>180 beardo: - OK, I'll bite, how do you pronounce Bruce Cockburn's name? like Coburn?

192:

Yes, like Coburn. Sorry, I wasn't trying to be purposefully vague.

Having lived for 43 years in Eastern Massachusetts, I have never heard any pronunciation of "Hyannis" except the one you give in 191.

A curiosity of E,Mass. town names is that the h
of "Dedham " and "Chatham" is not pronounced, but the h of "Stoneham" IS pronounced. S. is a town just east of my home town, Woburn (pronounced WOO-burn, and occasionally, by outsiders, mispronounced WOE-burn)

I remember hearing someone on a bus (the name was apparently new to him) say
"STONE'm", and I thought it was aweird way to pronounce it , but on the analogy of "Ded'm" and "Chat'm" it would be logical. "STOEN

>194 beardo: - no problem beardo, and thanks for the confirmation; I said it like it was written, thinking what's wrong with that.....oops, lol, and then figured it out myself anyway...haha

If we are going to get into location names Norfolk is the place. Here are just a few.

Happisburugh = haze-bro
Wymondham = wind'um
Costessey = cossy
Wisbech = wiz-beach
Norwich = norridge (although that is obvious to anyone in Britain I expect)
Tacolneston = Tacklestone
Hautbois = Hobbies
Halesworth = Harsler (don't expect me to explain that one)
Hunstanton = the locals say Hun-st'n. The BBC usually say they prefer the local pronunciation for a town but they say Hun-stan-ton even on BBC East.

Continuing for Massachusetts:
Waltham is pronounced like it's spelled: WALL-tham.
And Wareham is not always consistent, having heard both Ware-'um and Way - uh - ham.

rolandperkins: Rookie weathermen in western Nebraska seem to be fond of pronouncing Hyannis as "high - anus."

197: Here in Canada, Norwich County -- just east of me -- is Nor-witch.

Having lived in the UK, I get confused. ;)

In Eastern NE, there's a Norfolk - pronounced Nor-fork.

195,

RP, oops, I've always pronounced it "WOE-burn".

The light dawns on Mahblehead...

I've been told the test of being a true Long Islander is how you pronounce Hauppauge: something like Haw-pawg.

Of course, Wantagh is pronounced Wawn-taw.

#187 - hah! Have now got that theme tune as an earworm. Cheers, mate ...

#204 Was just saying on another thread how I'm learning a whole new language here. An earworm is one of those tunes you get stuck in your head and can't get out - am I right? What a fantastic word! I shall use it frequently from now on! I just adore those words and phrases (usually American ones) that are so appropriate and you know immediately what they mean even if you've never heard them before. (You're probably going to tell me now that it means something completely different but I shall always think of it my way from now on.)

Nope. You are spot on. (A British-ism that I love.)

#205 -- I've also seen them referred to as "brainworms."

And here we call them a "Coke"
(I'd like to teach the world to sing.....)

Ha, try to get that tune out of your head now.

Oh no! I'd only just got rid of Blackadder.

As a kid I read New Hebrides as he brides. Never said it out loud but when i heard someone pronounce it correctly I said a silent whew!!!

La Plata, Maryland is "la PLAY ta" not the standard Spanish pronunciation.

I also want to pronounce Gloucester, VA as glau-sess-ter when I drive through it, even though I know better.

I didn't know that "gaol" was the British spelling of "jail" for many years. In my head, I pronounced it something like "gay-ole."

Twice I have had to remind my husband that "lyre" is not pronouced "leera"...which is not a big deal for most as it's not a word for common conversation. However, he was quoting Scripture in the pulpit. All those big unpronounceable Hebrew place names and he goofs up on "lyre", lol

I work with someone who spent some time in San Francisco and she always talks about how people never get "La Hoya" right. I heard the stories several times before I realized she was talking about La Jolla, which I always read as "La Holla". So I would be one of the people who had it *half* right :D

> 214

This reminds me of the first time I ever tried the word 'martyr' out loud - while reading in front of church for an Easter service! I think it came out something like 'mar-tir'.

I'm another one who didn't know about quay -- but I'm pretty sure I've never had to pronounce it at all.

One that still gives me fits is comely. I always thought it should rhyme with homely, being more or less its antonym. I still think that! but usually I do manage to pronounce it correctly.

Some names I will never understand

Featherstonehaugh = Fanshaw

Cholmondley = Chumley

There's another one I can't recall right at the minute. Do you get a British sitcom in the States called Keeping Up Appearances, the lead character is a total snob, called Hyacinth Bucket, and she pronounces it Bouquet! Same thing going on I reckon

On #216 "martyr"

I think I heard how to "pronouns" "martyr" long before I saw it in print; but the mar - tir pronunciation sounds better to me than the conventional pronunciation with the almost elided last syllable.

When I first saw "Martyres" in a Greek text, I thought it was strange that they were borrowing an English word. Of course, on 2nd thought, it's the other way around . The English "borrows" and specializes the meaning of the Greek (which is "witnesses")

168, we have a Versailles hamlet in western N.Y.,(pronounced Ver-sails).
170, the Arabs I know pronounce the country of Lebanon -- Leb non.

>218 Carrotlady:
Well, it's not precisely the same thing, is it? Hyacinth is trying to trade on the effect that means the Featherstonehaughs and their like are identified as belonging to some sort of elite by having a non-obvious pronunciation (and, as a corollary, anyone who doesn't know how to pronounce it must be hopelessly uncouth and probably American as well), but in fact she is just irredeemably labelled as "lower-middle-class with genteel pretensions" by her futile attempts to make her name sound less "common".

In college I mispronounced "inchoate," was embarrassingly corrected by a friend of mine, and it still makes me stop and think when I see it. There used to be a web site called Inchoatus which reviewed speculative fiction, a good site sadly missed.

As a 17-year-old I mispronounced "indictment" over the air as a disc jockey at the local public station.

I read the word facade and pronounced it fakaid! It took a while for me to brake that habbit.

After 223 posts...

I checked, but surely someone has noted the back-asswards way that we pronounce our town names here in PA (otherwise known as Pennsyl-tuckey) -

really?!

DuBois = Due-Boys
Wilkes-barre = Wilks-berry
Donegal = Dunny-gall v. Dawn-eh-gull (depending on whether you live there or not)
Pittsburgh = Picks- burg

The linguistics in my part of the state are just fascinating...

On Du Bwa/ Due-Boys (Spelt DuBois) (#224)

I was 20-something before i knew that the capital of Idaho is pronounced Boy-zee. I thought, or as soon as I knew any French pronunciations, I thought it was a one syllable word pronounced Bwaz.

" . . . 'La Holla. So I would be one of the people who had it 'half' right." (#215)

Getting it "half right" may be the rule, not the exception, in American pronunciation of French-derived personal and place names: Like: D'-ROSHE-er (spelt Durocher); if you get the "Du-" "wrong" and the
-er (rhymes with "Say") "wrong", why bother getting the "ROSHE" right? Why not "D' -roach-er
(2nd syllable rhymes with "Coach")?

Came across an old favorite today: lichen. Who would expect to say "LIKE-in"?

Re La Jolla: I think part of the problem is that it's a Spanish name. Expected out there, not so much for us easterners.

Although your half right theory makes some sense: Des Moines should be Day Mwoin, but all we do is keep the silent "s". But Des Plaines is dez playns—if you say deh playn, you get mocked by Fantasy Island impressions.

>225 rolandperkins:
My family in Boise says "boy-see". I only ever hear the -zee on television.

Brendan Behan would reverse the usual way of referring to these pairs like Boy-See/Bwaz (Boise).
He would say "B oy-see" spelt Boise".

About a common Irish first name, he says, somewhere, "Yammon, SPELT Eamon". instead of the way most people would say it: "Eamon, pronounced Yammon."

I have a heck of a time with the presumably Gaelic, "Padraig". "Paw-rick?"

"Padraig" is also Irish Gaelic, I think. (I'm not sure of the pronunciation. It's strange that with all the thousands of Irish kids I knew in Greater Boston, I can only remember one being named "Patrick". Also only one "Kevin", no Brendans, and no "Ryan"s (as a first name). Famlies in the old days normally named the the first four sons "Jackie", "Billy" "Eddie", and "Bobby"-not necessarily in that order. After that, "Jimmy" and "Tommy" and "Frank" might be pressed into used.

Padraig is pronounced "Jams O'Donnell."

On 231:

!! ? !! Er, Thanks

Flann O'Brien readers will get it. ;)

for sci/fi watchers...I often wondered when watching Stargate Atlantis why some of the characters called the Zero Point Module a ZPM, and others called it a Zed PM. Until last night when watching the Olympics opening, and the slam poet (forgot his name, but he was awesome), in his poem said that Canadians use "Zed" as "Z". And yep, it's McKay the Canadian in the show who says "Zed". I absolutely had no idea that Canadians did that.

#234

Umm I think you will find that it is not just the Canadians that use Zed for Z. I think you will find it is only the US that uses Zee. The British, Australian and New Zealanders all use Zed as well.

I'll be darned. I did not know that!

Every "Left-tenant" knows that.

224 I think Barre, Vermont is pronounced the same way as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

In Detroit, the major street, Gratiot (a French word), is pronounced Gră-shit. During the 1970's, a person came to head our agency and pronounced it frequently as Grah-see-oh, and wondered why he got snickers.

The island in the Detroit River, Bois Blanc, was pronounced Bob-lo (and this was the spelling of the amusement park on this island).

It's not just the Americans that do strange things with French-based placenames: I'm sure any intrepid French travellers who penetrate into darkest Essex on London's Central Line are puzzled by Hainault-via-Newbury-Park ("hey-nolt") and Theydon Bois ("boys").

And of course - for students of the First World War - there's always the famous Battle of "Wipers" (Ypres). If books on the subject are to be believed, this was a pronunciation favoured by British soldiers at the time.

Eoin Colfer's first name. I thought it was Ian. Just heard a reliable person on the radio call him Owen.

@234 theexiledlibrarian: I recall one show (it might have been a crossover to SG1) where Rodney says zed. Then one of the other regulars says, apologetically, "He's Canadian". So I think it was also an injoke for the series--they were big on those.

@241 tardis: On Colfer's website, the first thing you see under his name is "It's pronounced Owen!" Apparently many people are puzzled, LOL. I know I was.

Yes, zed is an in-joke. The various series in the Stargate franchise are all filmed in BC, so there is a lot of Canadian involvement, and many of the actors are Canadian.

>239 thorold: I'm reminded of an old soldier who relayed the common pronunciation of Pigalle as Pig Alley, the pronunciation due to the nature of the place at the time rather than ignorance.

>235 andyl: Its Zed in South Africa as well. Never knew Americans said Zee.

There is a street near my house called briseboise and my mother calls it briss-boys me and my brother always have to correct her.

But today I found out that Ayn (as in Ayn Rand) is pronounced Ayn like the ine in mine. Before I had pronounced in like -ain like in pain.
How annoying.

". . . like the -ine in mine" #246

I think I was used to non-English pronunciaitons of "Ay-" (as in Sp. "Hay"
(rhymes with "my") when I first heard of Ayn Rand, so that pronunciation (rhymes with "mine") came naturally. I had to learn the "wrong" pronunciation (rhymes with "pain"). And now un-learn it!

The port of Los Angeles is San Pedro. Notwithstanding the name's obvious Hispanic origin, and the fact that most Socals have some proficiency in Spanglish, the city is locally pronounced Peedro - not Paydro.

Stateroom. I was pretty sure that on shipboard you slept in a statter oom.

La Jolla. I thought La Hoya was a completely different place.

But when I heard a neighbor's daughter explaining that her key must be hidden somewhere in the Vinknity, I knew she had fallen victim to reading beyond her speaking vocabulary.

ennui...i used to say "enn ewey"

I used to have trouble with "hyperbole" - high-per-bole - but some nice person quietly corrected me!

I Just thought of a word that i continuously have to correct myself on while reading.

Explicit.

Instead of pronouncing the 'c' with an 's' sound i make it with the 'k' sound. drives everyone I know insane when I say a song is explikit.

Lots of these with me.
My latest are damask (dam-ask) and folk (fohk). I still want to say da-mask and f-olk.
(Oh, and I sort of mispronounce the name of that volcano thing in Iceland too.)

>253 omboy:
I think the only people who can say and/or spell the name right are just as Icelandic as that volcano.

>253 omboy::
It is spelled damast in Dutch and pronounced as Da-mast with a short a in mast

Here in the UK it's spelt and pronounced 'that f***ing volcano'.

I mispronounced "miscellaneous" terribly, as I said it (with my Afrikaans accent) as I read it, pronouncing the "c" as a "k": miss-kella-nis. Nobody ever knew what I was saying until I one day heard someone else pronouncing it correctly. And a light went on.

Reading this thread has been an eye-opener for me. Most surprising I suppose was the correct pronunciation of "comely." I have read it often but don't think I have ever heard anyone pronoumce it. I went to the pronouncing dictionary just to hear it. . That's the way we learn.

I remember in 8th grade pronouncing Italian as "eye-talian" and being corrected by my teacher. I have never misprounced it since--but sometimes I still hear it misprounced.

I read "albeit" often and to my embarassment misprounced it the first time I used it verbally.

I cringe when I hear "your" pronounced as "yore" and "our" prounced with one syllable instead of being pronounced the same as "hour".

#259 I know you didn't really mean 'prounced' and 'misprounced' there but it made me smile anyway. This is the problem with being a pedant, as I have found to my cost - every little typo you ever make gets pounced - or maybe 'mispounced' - on by other pedants;-)

ETA - I attended a drawing class many years ago and wanted to scream every time the tutor (an otherwise lovely man) referred to what he was teaching as 'drawrring'. It wasn't the reason I finally left the class but it probably should've been.

I thought for a very long time that "recipe" was re-sype.

I can remember back in the 1950's when my mother brought home what she called sea-same crackers, and I had just read some of the stories in the Arabian Nights and was quite familiar with the phrase "Open Sesame". I couldn't figure out what the crackers had to do with far-off Arabia, as I hadn't yet found out about sesame seeds. It took me about twenty hearings of "sea-same" before I had the courage to question her pronunciation.

What about words with two totally different but correct pronunciations? I always think I'm going to get into an argument just by uttering them.

Fortunately I don't use the terms "tinnitus" or "angina", too often.

Chaos, I pronounced, Cho -as.

#263 Tinnitus and angina have alternative pronunciations? I never knew that. Not 'tin-eye-tus' and 'an-jee-na' surely? Please tell.

#265> Well, that has a familiar ring.

#266 LMAO!

#266 A familiar ring of heartache?

Oh no, I've heard "An-JINE-ah" and "Tin-EYE-tus" are both perfectly appropriate.

{giggles like an 8th-grader as he pronounces the former...}

An-jine-ah would be perfectly normal here. How would you pronounce it?

I've heard it also as "AN-Jin-uh".

And conversely, that subchronic or chronic ringing in the ears, as "TIN-ih-tus"

Calliope was a big one for me-- I always thought it was Call-ee-ope. Until my mom heard me talking about it, and corrected me. :D

And, I was probably twelve before I realized that 'obliged' was pronounced like o-BLY-j'd. I always thought it was 'ob-lee-ged', and I couldn't figure out what it meant, nor why no one ever used it. :p

Why isn't onomatopoeia spelled phonetically?

When I was in grade school, I read Number the Stars for Quiz Bowl and hated those damn Nay-zees. It wasn't until in the competition, when the judge asked me to spell my answer for clarification, that I learned the were called Nazis.

>238 vpfluke:
I lived in Detroit and love pronouncing it Day-twah, like the French would, but was born on the street Dubois (Doo-boys). I met someone while on the eastside of Detroit looking for "Shoner", which is on the west side of detroit, until he showed me the map with the name "Schoenherr", which is pronounced "Shaner".

To anyone who comes across this thread, please add YOUR pronounciation of "foyer". Mine is foy-yay.

Mine too.

Finally a thread where I might find the answer to a longstanding question: Is the Wind River and its associated mountain range in Wyoming pronounced with a long or short i? It is a short river; however, it also appears to wind.

Short i. A reference to the blowing wind whistling through the mountains, I would assume.

I have always pronounced it as in the breeze; however, a friend hiked the area and pronounced it as in wind a watch. I have never heard a local pronounce the name. It is apparent that the mountains were named after the river, which would negate MerryMary's premise.

And here I've always pronounced Ayn Rand's name as Anne Rand, not even considering that her name would be pronounced differently. Otherwise, I've always been good with pronouncing things correctly on the first try. Only exceptions were "gullible" in the 6th grade (couldn't get that "guh" sound) and now, some French villages I don't even know where to start even being French myself.

Oh, and when I was really young I had trouble with the American 'R'. My best friend at the time was named Robert but when I tried to say it, it would come out as Wubuht.

275

Provencal, a street in Grosse Pointe, perpendicular to the Detroit River, does not have a consistent pronunciation. However pronouncing the c as an is not frequent (a la the French spelling Provençal, with a slight accent on the 3rd syllable). More common are pronunciations like Pro-von-chall, or even Provincial with an accent on the 2nd syllable.

My ex-wife was only familiar with reading about a gaze-bo and had never reconciled that a ga-ze-bo until in her twenties.

Well, many of them are excellent places to gaze from.

A former friend once emailed me that she had made a forpar. She was a notoriously bad speller, typist and proof reader and I thought I was quite good at translating her messages but this one had me completely stumped. She was fond of embroidery, knitting and cooking so I mentally trawled through each of those hobbies and several others trying to identify the word but still without success. In the end I had to ask her and she replied, a little snootily, that "a forpar is an embarrassing mistake". Slowly it dawned on me that what she'd made was a faux pas.

Ed for typos (mine this time)

"Demesne" always amused me and bemused me.

There's an advert on our local radio for a VOLKSWAGGON van which drives me mad every time I hear it.
Why can't they pronounce the whole word as the Germans do? Volksvargon? (I can't see how to italicise for phonetic spellings.)

Here you go, Julie. Italicise, bold or strike as you wish.

Anyway, how does your local radio pronounce the ad for the VW van?

I belive the correct phonetic German pronunciation would be "folksvawgen".

> 286: Sorry, but no R in Volkswagen, though it might sound that way to you - I I won't be the judge of that.

If you would really like to pronounce it correctly:

"Volks" = something like folks but with a softer f/v. Like the v in viaduct.

"Wagen" - nowhere near wagon : more like - attempting English phonetics - "wagun".

This would be how I would say it.

Surely you wouldn't pronounce "it" that way. Don't be ridiculous ;-)

Sorry, getting flippant - signing off.

>289 Nicole_VanK: "Sorry, but no R in Volkswagen, though it might sound that way to you - I I won't be the judge of that."

Except that she's English, so she wouldn't pronounce it, either, she's just using it to indicate the quality of the preceding vowel.

I lived in Germany for three years, took a college course in German while there, and became reasonably fluent. In general the German v is pronounced as an English f (think "vater" for father) and the German w is pronounced as an English v (think " was" for " what" as in "was ist das?" The first part of Volkswagen, volk, is German for folk or people. It was the peoples' car or wagon. I will gladly defer to anyone with better bilingual skills.

>292 Katya0133:: Ah, I see. But if you're not pronouncing them anyway, why introduce extra letters in foreign language words?

Never mind though. We're only talking about cars - it's not that important.

292. Thanks Katya, I was trying to indicate a sound (ar), not a spelling.
287. Thanks Justjim. The radio mixes German sounding 'volks' with the English 'wagon.'
294. Sorry, Barkingmatt. My computer skills don't match my pedantry.

Never mind. Neither do mine.

Northanger, as in Northanger Abbey. I've always pronounced it with a soft "g" (to rhyme with "danger"). Then, a couple of months ago, I saw The Jane Austen Book Club, where all the actors say "North Hanger" with a hard "g". I suppose it makes sense, but I can't get my head round it.

>275 nicky413: As a native French speaker, I prononce foyer fwah yeh, with the stress more or less equal on both syllables.

Hearing non-French speakers pronounce French words that have been incorporated into their languages can be quite disconcerting. And of course, it's the same for English words used in French. Try ordering a hamburger in France if you're an English speaker. Chances are you'll have to resort to pointing at stuff to make yourself understood.

As an American I pronounce foyer foyer taking it to have been fully assimilated. I also do not italicize it in writing.

Robert

Superfluous always gets me too. For some reason reading it I have no idea what it says. The closest I can get to a pronunciation is "su-per-fu-lus" and that works just fine for me.

For me foyer is an annoyance because I first heard someone say it "foy-yeh" so that's how it's always been and I get annoyed when a I hear it pronounced foyer.

Wow, what a nice topic!

I recently discovered (yay for audiobooks!) that disheveled is not dis-heev-eld and that debris is supposed to sound french-ish. Shocking!

>297 Dilara86:

As an American with a degree in French literature, I have been known to forget how Americans pronounce French words. (I once got stuck in a store when I couldn't remember how to pronounce "croissant." I knew it wasn't a fully French "krwassã," but "kroyssant" didn't sound right, either . . . )

Sometimes I like to mispronounce words on purpose or, more so, throw a malaprop into the conversation -- mostly with people that know me -- because it is fun. Get some good laughs sometimes...and a lot of groaners.

These two I did not make up but use often (they happened along time ago), sometimes to the point that I can forget their actual pronounciation:

Ga-zee-bow mispronounced as gaze bow -- got that from an old movie I saw a long time ago -- don't remeber the name, but Glenn Ford was in it ... dark-comedy mystery where they hide the dead body under a newly constructed gazebo in their back yard. The contractor kept calling it a gaze-bow throughout.

This happened in a diner with my family where the waitress told us the vegetable for the day was a vegetable melody. After she left we giggled a little over that, but quickly moved on to decidiing what the most musical vegetable would be. My answer: beans...they always make music.

Oh, fantastic! Please someone help me with pronouncing this one, since I don't think I've ever heard it spoken aloud in my entire life of nearly forty years:

naiveté

(only in the last five years realized "naive" is like "Nye-Eve" and not like "Nay-Vuh" ...)

Ah, and when I was younger I was sure Miss-Sell-A-Nuss was a word that curiously no one ever seemed to say aloud, only write; and for some reason I never saw that "miscellaneous" word in print, although people spoke it all the time ...

>302 magnumpigg:, my favourite is: "ke-niffy" instead of "knife" My wife is still wondering when I'm going to stop thinking that's funny.

I'm watching the TV coverage of the Olympic Equestrian event and the commentator has just referred to a rider's Ackerley's Heel. Took me a moment to realise he meant Achilles's Heel!

#302 magnumpigg

I think you have triggered a subject worthy of another thread.

One of my favourite mispronunciations is from the film, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

The meet the philosopher Socrates and pronounce his name, "So-crates".

I always refer to Capuchin monks as Cappuccinos.

It is fun to change the emphasis on some syllables and see the result.

Economical can become "ee-con-o-mickle".

#303 Cecrow
I would say, "nye-eve-ity".

#304 CDVicarage
There are some English accents that appear to add in random Rs. The word "saw" comes out like "sawer".

> 303 / 306: And I would say "Nah-Eve".

But I once spent an entire hour listening to a lecture by some guy about new rules of the Dutch Film Fund. He kept talking about a "trekwekker" - in Dutch that would mean: an alarm-clock you have to pull at (what????). Only afterwards it became clear he actually meant to say track record.

p.s.: Always reminds me of Monty Python's Life of Brian.

This is a good link to have as it pronounces all those pesky words you're not sure about.
http://dictionary.reference.com/

>303 Cecrow:

ny-ehv-it-ay

#307 Well, I am English - I speak Home Counties English! - and I've not heard that before. I think it was just a change of emphasis on the first syllable rather than the second, which is where I would have expected it to be.

#307/312 When I worked in adult education and also attended art classes there both my boss and my art tutor were from the Midlands and both insisted on calling what we were doing 'dro-rring'. It drove me slightly nuts but you can hardly tell the guy who's teaching you how to pronounce his own subject.

#313 Yes, I remember when I was a Cartographic Draughtsman (before inclusive titles!) my team leader, otherwise very well-spoken, said dro-rring. I'm afraid we young things used to snigger behind her back. I would be better behaved now.

On a similar, but unrelated complaint (and I realise that this isn't Pedants' Corner), it annoys me when people hear and therefore say and write things like "a chest of draws".

Similarly, a book can have a foreword - not a foreward. Mildly annoying.

or a forward. Equally mildly annoying.

>313 Booksloth:, 314 : and similarly, David Hockney.

> 315 : or even worse, Chester Draws.

jbbarret: Chester made me laugh.

312

Sometimes the r is added to the end of one word when the first letter of the next word is a vowel or (sometimes) a soft consonant.

I saw the boy.
I sawr a boy.
I sawr him. Or: I sawr 'im.

Common in Eastern New England in the U.S.

As a young reader of Gothic novels, I often came across this word: tester bed. I always thought it was just like it looked, short "e"; and I had no idea what exactly it was. Two years ago, I was taking a tour of a historical home, and the the tour guide pronounced it "tea-ster". I also now know what it looks like. For those who didn't know either, it's a kind of canopy bed.

Until you mentioned it I had never heard the term "tester bed". I Googled for images and it would be called a four poster bed here.

It appears from the Google search that the term half-tester bed is used to describe one of those beds with a canopy over the pillow end of the bed only.

#321 Being a tour guide doesn't necessarily mean you get everything right, I've heard some very strange pronunciations from some of them and I've certainly never heard of a 'teaster' bed despite numerous visits to historical buildings. The COED has the pronunciation as 'tes-tar' with a short 'e'. Sometimes I wonder if guides just get so used to repeateing the same thing over and over again that they start messing with the pronunciation just to keep themselves awake (or continually refer to themsleves as 'myself', regardless of context - but that's a whole 'nuther' topic and definitely one for Pedants' Corner!)

Indeed, don't rely on tour guides too much.

I was one, many years ago. And I admit I even got flippant occasionally: pointing people to the "world largest bonsai tree" for instance. What can I say: wasn't cut out for the job ;-)

ETA: Don't worry, I was responsible enough to quit the job.

I'm sure there are a lot of great tour guides out there but, having been bored to death by too many of them, I would have really enjoyed your versions Matt. Seems to me you're a great loss to the breed.

On a tour of Dunree Fort (one of the Treaty Ports relinquished to Ireland by the British in 1938) the tour guide was showing the group a carbon arc search light. The search light was positioned to sweep across Lough Swilly and one could see the town of Rathmullen on the far shore.

To describe the power of the light she said, "...and with the lamp on you could see a man reading a newspaper on the street in Rathmullen".

I somehow think she meant to say, "...and with the lamp on a man could read a newspaper on the street in Rathmullen".

:-)

My favorite tour guide malaprop: was in England and guide was speaking of a king who became so angry his was catatonic with rage. My friends and I had fun after that trying to be in a rage while being stiff and in an unexpressive stupor. Kind of comes off looking like a stage frightened ventriloquist trying not to show his lips moving.

Years ago when I used to work at Macys a woman stopped me and asked me where the 'lin-ger-ee' department was. I had to ask her again what she said, then I happened to look up and see the wall that said 'lingerie' and after staring for a second and sounding it out in my head did I realize what she meant. I actually said to her, 'Oh, you mean the lingerie (lawn-jer-ay) department' ... She looked at me like I was an idiot then walked away.

A couple Greek derived words always tripped me up.

Antipodes as antee-poads rather than an-tip-uh-deez. Still sounds wrong to me.

Octopodes as octo-poads rather than ock-top-uh-deez. The correct form of that one is fun though.

Luckily I've never found myself in the position of saying them out loud.

>246 unlucky:: Quote: "But today I found out that Ayn (as in Ayn Rand) is pronounced Ayn like the ine in mine. Before I had pronounced in like -ain like in pain.
How annoying."

Actually, it seems strangely appropriate that her name should rhyme with "pain".

On the subject of the deliberate malaprop, I saw a parody of Shakespearean drama at an outdoor theatre festival several summers ago which was called "Testicles and the Sack of Rome". Testicles was pronounced "test-i-cleez" (the i is short sounding). I always thought that was a strangely appropriate pronunciation as they are quite tickle-y.

*giggles*