Discussion on:

10 mispronunciations that make you sound stupid

I didn't know #10 -- I'm not sure I can undo 50 years of mischievious mispronunciation...

I've got a few more for you:

issue -- isssss sue or is u
schedule -- ske jul; ske ju el; sai jul
harass -- HAR us versus her ass

Actually, I can't come up with a phonetic representation of the the last version of schedule -- it's a soft ch instead of hard.

Which is correct?

I always had a problem pronouncing exhaust i always break it up into ex....haust

Jewel is pronounced joo-uhl. Jewelry is pronounced JOO-uhl-ree, not JOOL-ree as in drool-ry. The second syllable is very brief, though.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/jewelry
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jewelry

And if sounding intelligent is the desired ends of your advice then perhaps omitting the use of "supposed to" and "used to" would be more appropriate since neither is best practice in grammar.

the second reference you cite states
Main Entry: jew?el?ry
Pronunciation: \ˈj?-əl-rē, ˈj?l-rē, ˈju̇l-; ?ˈj?-lə-rē\

Nothing like JOO-uhl-ree.

ˈj?-əl-rē, ˈj?l-rē appear to me to be correct, perhaps this is why yanks often resort to the term 'bling' as they cannot pronounce jewelry!!!

You may want to check that again.
Everyone is correct, all 3 are acceptible according to the pronunciations listed.
JOO-uhl-ree, JOOL-ree, JOO-luh-ree
It appears that this word should not have appeared on the list in the first place.

Well, I looked right over that. Sure enough my Meriam Webster shows ˈj?l-rē to be a method of pronunciation. However I must say that the Cambridge pronunciation is my favorite, and the pronunciation listed in this article is still low on the list of dictionaries that claim that to be a proper pronunciation. Though I should shut up before a bird dive bombs my nose hole.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/results.asp?dict=A&searchword=jewelry

Both pronunciations of February are widely accepted and used. One does not make the other sound stupid.

Feb?ru?ary
Pronunciation:
\ˈfe-b(y)ə-ˌwer-ē, ˈfe-brə-\

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/february

Maybe check some dictionaries before posting about 'mistakes'

I will agree that the link you followed has my preferred pronunciation, however the manner in which I spelled its phonetics is exactly how the pronunciation is displayed at the first link to dictionary.reference.com. "Uhl" is a bit brutish sounding.

Why would you make such a sloppy argument? Come on man, stay with me!

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/division.html

Many non-Americans would also point out that the Yanks can't spell *jewellery*, either.

\ˈj?-lə-rē\ makes sense as a pronunciation given that spelling.

To really rectify this in anyone's mind, break it down to the root word: Jewel (it is 2 syllables to some, but still the root is jewel (Jool) its not Jew El so take the root and add ree jewel (jool-ree)

I'm very fer-mil-yer with those pronunciations of realty and realtor. I've always grouped them with the ju-le-ry pronunciation. (It's made by a jew-ler, right? From jewls.)

The other thing about "supposed to" is "suppose to", similarly, "use to". Should of, could of, wood of.

I hate ree-la-tor, too, but why do people insist on pronouncing it realTORE, like you tore something. We don't pronounce author auTHORE, or refridgeraTORE. Is it just because these people are snooty a$$holes that make a lot of money?

And that's the pronunciation preferred by the National Association of Realtors®

And because the derivations are different. Author and refrigerator came from Old English; Realtor®: was coined in 1916.

I doubt it's old English, seeing as refrigerators weren't made until recently, and it's been a long while since people have even spoken middle English.

re??frig??er??a??tor???/r????fr??d??????re??t??r/ Show Spelled[ri-frij-uh-rey-ter]
noun
1. a box, room, or cabinet in which food, drink, etc., are kept cool by means of ice or mechanical refrigeration.
2. the part of a distilling apparatus that cools the volatile material, causing it to condense; condenser; rectifier.
Origin: 1605???15; refrigerate + -or2

Too late Mike realized that it wasn't the realtor he was telling off after all... it was the REAL THOR!

Did you eat?

is not "Jeeet"

There is a long standing radio ad in Southern Oregon where the announcer obviously has trouble pronouncing the letter 'L' - The ad he's recorded is for a jewelry store, but he can't say the letter 'L' so each utterance comes out 'jew-ree' (my mother-in-law also pronounces it that way : -)

A glide is a non-syllabic vowel that's appended to a syllabic vowel. Like the word "like" ['laik].
In the "jewelry" case the vowels are quite similar in quality, but there's a tonal rise towards the "l".

How so many educated people can feel the need to pronounce it this way *regardless* of the correct word.

Yours belongs in the grammar/spelling thread, not the phoneme department. Besides, even I can't mispronounce "irregardless".

People mispronounce "regardless" by adding the "i," so just like several of the words on the article are the result of adding letters or syllables when pronouncing them, so is "irregardless." I'm surprised it wasn't part of the list.

It's al-you-MIN-ee-um - not al-OO-min-um.

You're in the north-west hemi-demisphere. North America kicked out that extra "i". It was confusing us.

...Helum; Lithum; Beryllum; Sodum; Magnesum; Postassum; Calcum; Titanum; Chromum; Gallum; Germanum; Selenum; Strontum; Yttrum; Zirconum; Rhodum; Palladum; Cadmum; Cesum; Barum; Iridum; Polonum; Radum; Thorum; Uranum; Neptunum; Plutonum; Americum; Californum; etc.

Not for everyone, but some visionaries seem to have gone that route already.

Most likely because of the lack of dueling u,i and iu. Far too confusing. "Prurient" confuses us as well. Axe me anudder one.

Nomenclature history

The earliest citation given in the Oxford English Dictionary for any word used as a name for this element is alumium, which British chemist and inventor Humphry Davy employed in 1808 for the metal he was trying to isolate electrolytically from the mineral alumina. The citation is from his journal Philosophical Transactions: "Had I been so fortunate as..to have procured the metallic substances I was in search of, I should have proposed for them the names of silicium, alumium, zirconium, and glucium."[27]

By 1812, Davy had settled on aluminum, which, as other sources note,[citation needed] matches its Latin root. He wrote in the journal Chemical Philosophy: "As yet Aluminum has not been obtained in a perfectly free state."[28] But the same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium, "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound."[29]

The -ium suffix had the advantage of conforming to the precedent set in other newly discovered elements of the time: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy had isolated himself). Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time, as for example platinum, known to Europeans since the sixteenth century, molybdenum, discovered in 1778, and tantalum, discovered in 1802.

Americans adopted -ium to fit the standard form of the periodic table of elements, for most of the nineteenth century, with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. In 1892, however, Charles Martin Hall used the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new electrolytic method of producing the metal, despite his constant use of the -ium spelling in all the patents[24] he filed between 1886 and 1903.[30] It has consequently been suggested that the spelling reflects an easier to pronounce word with one fewer syllable, or that the spelling on the flier was a mistake. Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America; the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913, though, continued to use the -ium version.

In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications; American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as a British variant

Thanks. Pretty good Wikipedia article, that.

The "british" way also used in Ausie and the Canadian/US way used locally. At least that one is not adding extra imaginary sylables.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aluminum

?

...ya furry foreigner. Learn how to spell, then maybe you'll learn how to pronunciate.

or how hirsute he may be. It's all about the language difference.

We speak American. He speaks English.

I live in Southern West Virginia. I can not for the life of me prounce (or spell for that matter) Aluminium. It usually enda up sounding like "uh-loom-in-num" (and usually to poke fun at myself there are a few extra "num"s at the end)

I can't pronounce the correct name for Massachusetts... usually ends up sounding like Mass-uh-two-shits

"Irregardless" makes me insane, and I pride myself on tolerance of many things "grammar-ly" (hee hee)...

Ugh!!!!

I think we could really talk about this further offline. Let's recircle the wagons later and really hack it out.

Having said that, ...

(eesh.. I don't think there's a phrasing in there that doesn't make my ears bleed a little; especially irregardless and the back-peddling of "having said that")

Before I open my mouth I always pull down my websters. If we DON'T stop saying something the WRONG way, it becomes part of our language. Websters has a NICE way of saying (to whomever chooses to use the word "irregardless")HEY BUBBA...THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD! (LOL) Websters has in fact incorporated the non-word, as it has become used by so many, so often, that you simply can't just do away with it. So here is websters nice way: Irregardless: Regardless: a nonstandard or humorous usage.

I almost fell over when a woman in front of me on an elevator said to her partner: Lets go get a Ji-ro (it sounded like "High Road" in her pronunciation) and we can have some buh KLA va!" (It's a greek pastry pronounced BA klaVAH. Stay tuned for another post from me....you'll love it, I promise!

.. I've an extremely smart (reads quantum physics books textbooks as personal casual reading) whom I hear the term from most.. usually followed by "that being said".. which is probably second or third on my list of thinks that make babby webster cry.

I was going to mention the same thing. If you break it down, *irregardless* is really a double negative:

REGARD is self explanatory
REGARDLESS means without regard so I guess
IRREGARDLESS would mean NOT without regard
witch I'm pretty sure gets us back to where we started.

hadn't fully formed as an idea until now but I popped open your comment and went "drat, that was how I was going to respond".

Orientate is MY big pet peeve. It is ORIENTED, not orientated.

I also hate conversate instead of talk, and axing instead of asking.

DIS-orientated

When you pronounce it mischevious it sounds so much more mischievous because then it rhymes with devious. It might be wrong but it is also certainly more fun.

Library - li berry. Aarrggh.

Amalance (AM-uh-lance) which so many Midwesterners say instead of Ambulance (AM-byoo-luns)

That's what my company 'manafactures'! Woot!

?

I hear this one from newsreaders quite often.
"The Secatree Genral of the UN..."
It's *SEC-ret-ary GEN-er-al* - just like it's spelt.

On Wenn'sday I go shopping, and have buttered scones for tea.

This article made me giggle more than once... along with the witty, and sometimes defensive, responses. While I will agree that we can be overly critical about small things, bear in mind that this is a collective list so it's not like the author pointing her finger at everyone all the time... just a few of us... some of the time

The thread does bring to mind a former employer who was very picky about who answered the office telephone. He 'dit-ant' want someone saying things like 'axe' instead of 'ask'!

my LAST NAME!!!

How hard can it be to pronounce "Krzyzewski?"

I can't keep track anymore

How do you spell your name?

S-z-m-a-w-h-z-j-z-w-i-t-z

And how do you pronounce that?

Smith

My last name gets mangled a good bit too. Although most people misread it as "nelson," there's the occasional imaginative type that gets "nye-ell-son" from it.

I've heard the similar twised used in other passing jokes. Well done bringing it up here though, that was good squish..

(an now for something completely different)

'And what's your name then?'
"Michael"
'That's a bit confusing, do you mind if we just call you Bruce?'

He spelled his name H-e-n-3-r-y. The 3, of course, was silent.

you'd think no one could pronounce a name with 6 letters...

Of course, it is a Germanic surname.

Auf weidersehn! lol

.. That confirms it; the second Z is silent!

In German, all letters must be pronounced, even if they are compounded.

I remember a friend telling me that in conversation. The grammar is much harder espcially with trinary gender (feminim, masculin and 'other') but the reading of words is easier because you say what is written.

It didn't fit with the joke though.

I can eat, drink, travel and get my face slapped "auf Deutsch."

I can only get slapped "auf Deutsch" (I knew I had that one spelled incorrectly before)

Well, maybe not slapped if the person's relationship with there mother is strained enough that they don't take offense.

I'm starving to death sobber without directions to the pub though with my limited vocabulary.

Is that not just pronounced Krizooski? Add one z and people turn into retards. Geez.

The guy I borrowed it from pronounces it the same way his family has for centuries - "sheh-shev-sky" - and doesn't use the bastardized "I'm too much of a retard to ask how you pronounce your name" American pronunciation.

Not wishing to be picky.... the correct (English, not American) spelling of the word is jewellery; that's where the other syllable comes from!

my maiden name was virtually always mis-pronounced. My current married name isn't correctly pronounced very off ten.

title change

I named him Schuyler (prn: SKYLER) and people are forever calling him shooler, or shoo-ee-ler. Poor baby... I'm such a bad mom.

by H. Allen Smith. Very bad recap coming on. A kid named Guy shows up for school the first day. The teacher asks each student to introduce themself to the class. Guy's turn rolls around, and he introduces himself as Gooey. G-u-y.

Oh, ok. I thought it was hilarious. H. Allen probably tells it better than I.

Americans can't read!

Imagine you're from upstate New York: Hi, I'm Schuyler from Schenectady! (Or Schoharie! Or Schodack! Or many others...)

You could always legally change his name to alter the spelling a little.

You're probably a nice person, and I'm not trying to pick on you personally. Way too many people do it these days. I'm more attacking celebs. Why is it that lately people have to make up the most f@cked up names for their kids? Seriously? I'm so damn sick of it. And all the kids these days have last names for first names.

fahrty
cahrn

I hear it so often it slips out of my mouth now and then. Aaurggh!

Interpretation please...

I will have another ear of cahrn.

To get to such and such, take Highway Fahrty west until you get to such and such exit.

a Chic-a-go accent?

LOL. My hubby insists there is no such thing as a Chicago accent, but yet when you listen to someone born and raised there, you can hear the difference from the Suburban inflections.

Don't think I've heard those...and I'm a full-blown midwesterner! Lived here most of my life with only a short 4 year stint on the East Coast.

Maybe it's more southerly midwest? (I'm Far NW IL)
Tink

but I have certainly heard it a few times at work on my very urban campus.

LOL.

I've lived in Suburbia all my childhood, and then rural as a grownup. To me that inflection sounds more Southern or Chicagoan, then Suburban. Maybe it's just me.

off-ten pronounced Misery. I heard it a lot more when I lived in the boonies than I do now in suburbia. But I still hear it frequently on campus.

re: #2, remember that there is a "rest of the world" out there. In england and most non-american, english speaking countries, the word is spelled jewellery, not the americanised jewelry

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/jewellery?view=uk

Long or short "u" to taste.

I hear it pronounced with so many variations, I have no idea which are technically acceptable, and I'm not looking it up as dictionaries like to take their own liberties with these things.

Skejl is how I hear it most frequently.

I've hard the correct school grammar pronounciation to be "Sh" Ed Ual as based on the spelling "schedual"

I have met a few people for whome "Iss U" does actually fit there stature but not as often as the pronounciation is used.

The correct pronunciation, I believe, is:

"JOO EL REE."

The accent is on the first syllable. Also if I may add another
annoying (to me) mispronunciation, the word is "FOLIAGE".
pronounced "FO LEE AHJ." There is no aluminum foil
involved, as in "FOYL UJ."

This is the one that bugs me the most. Yes, I know it's a small shot of caffeine for a quick jolt, but it's not Ex-presso or Eggs-presso. It's Espresso. If you can't say it, just order a coffee.

as opposed to gen you win.

Heard this in an advertisement tonight. 'Gen you wine leather'. Ouch.

I am just coming across this page. Mischievous is actually pronounced MIS CHEE VEE US. It comes from the 1600s when it was actually spelled mischievious.

the last one has to be her ass howver funny or inappropriate it may sound..lol

ske jule is the right pronunciation

not too sure about issue..

I work on a volunteer board with a person who is a VP at a fortune 500 company and this person ALWAYS pronounces "auxiliary" as "aux-zill-a-airy!" It drives me bonkers! This is only surpassed by their pronunciation of the plural form of the word - you got it..."aux-zill-a-air-eez!"

ssharkins:

Do you mean "shed-yule"? That's more of a British version...

I do, however, agree with your listing of harass as "HAIR-us" pronunciation (more along the lines of "Harris"):

Harris is a guy who conducts polls. Ha-RASS is what somebody does to pi$$ somebody else off...

Mack

correct: et-cet-era
incorrect: ex-et-tra
incorrect: egg-zet-tra

correct: ex-act-ly
incorrect: egg-zact-ly

Schedule with the 'soft ch' is British pronunciation, 'hard ch' is American.

My question is: Which is correct pronunciation for 'envelope'? Is it 'onv' or 'env'?

Harass : HuRazz
But don't talk about her ass-mint, that's harassment!

I hear some folks pronounce the word "birthday" as though it was spelled "birfday" or "burfday." The position of the tongue is different when pronouncing the "f" sound as compared to the "th" sound. Probably people heard it wrongly as kids, and their teachers/parents never corrected them on it.

Not that some people don't pronounce words the wrong way for whatever reason. (Laziness, lack of teeth (teef/teefus), silliness, or group microculture.)

In places where such pronunciation is more widespread, you'll find that there is usually a suite of changes, e.g.:

teeth - teef thing - fing
than - tan or dan that - tat or dat
slither - slivver mother - muvver

Anyone only pronouncing one or two words with a phoneme change is just playing around or picked up a weird habit.

Guess I'd peeve you off often enough. I looked it up and found this page, among many others: http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/List-of-words-of-disputed-pronunciation.html

I'll give you most of them. But you can't have ociffer and pasghetti. And you can't have reflection of (my) correspondent rather than correction. And there's no "should" in "often".

ax in place of ask. Painful.

She was a student teacher at the time...

THANK YOU! It drives me crazy to hear American "intellegent" "educated" people say 'nu-cu-lar'! You hear that so of-tun.

Glad somebody else feels the same.

Uhg! Don't get me started on the nucular subject! I'd say well over half of the people in my region believe that is the proper pronunciation.

I know a person who pronounces pneumonia la-monia. Sadly, that's not the only word he's phonetically butchered. I've also heard miwk instead of milk.

I'd never ever heard it pronounced that way.

So to be the pedant you all know me to be, I had to do some research.

MSN/Encarta - has both pronounciations.
Merriam Webster - has both.
Cambridge dictionary has both.
Wiktionary has both.
Wordsmyth has both.
Infoplease dictionary has both.
American Hertiage dictionary has both.
Dictionary.com has both.

But most importantly....as JD would confirm, in My Fair Lady (which is all about eloqution) they pronounce the T.

Perhaps the T is silent where you come from.

James

In the UK it's most off-un pronounced "off-un" but I agree that both pronunciations are correct.

And if you believe Dick Van ****, you can buy "tuppins-a-bag" to feed the pigeons, as well. I hear at current exchange rates, that is about 4 cents/US for a bag of bird feed, which is quite a bargain.

"E-lo, guv-nor, and 'ow are you doin' this fine day, then? I off'en enjoy a walk in 'ide park, I do..."

This is, after all, a country where the word "fanny" is among the most vulgar of slang possible, whereas you throw the US version of "fanny" around as if it were "damn" or "hell". We'll not even get started about what you blokes call cigarettes.

I was in a pub in Houndslow, one evening, having a pint with a South African fellow. He couldn't understand me, and kept asking me to "speak English".

Finally I told him I couldn't speak English, they only taught me American in school.

Most often I hear Americans pronounce the word with a hard T - but the fact that (many of) the English drop the T seems more like accent, like adding an R to "wash", than any "proper" pronounciation of the word.

How fitting, that the bad-word filters here at Tech Republic didn't mind "Damn", "Hell" or, most tellingly, "FANNY"...

But it didn't like Mr. Dick Van "Not a slang term for Lesbian"'s last name and censored it out. I'm surprised it didn't care about his first name.

Mr. **** Van ****.

I'm sure if I had asked for an English cigarette, it would have censored that, as well.

"Would you care for a ***"?

"No, I gave them up, they made my teeth yellow".

God knows, if I used the American version of "Fanny" (four letters, spelled like Aunt), the filter probably would have locked out my account.

dcolbert wrote: Most often I hear Americans
pronounce the word with a hard T - but the fact that
(many of) the English drop the T seems more like accent,
like adding an R to "wash", than any "proper"
pronounciation of the word.

Really? I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and nobody ever
pronounced the 't.' What region of the USA do most of the
people you've heard come from?

Well, here in the southwest, I encounter it with the "t" and almost never without it.

Besides, the dictionary.com entry provides a history of the pronunciation. According to them: the original pronunciation is *with* the "t." It fell out of favor in the 17th century (England), but has come back into common use.

The West. I grew up in California. Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho.

But I've spent a lot of time on the East Coast too - Maryland and D.C. up through Pennsylvania, New York, Jersey... Boston and Marlboro...

Currently I live in Ohio. I guess I hear it said both ways, when I really think about it. Really, it seems like a Tom-a-to to-ma-to kind of argument, to me.

Somewhere a long time ago I heard something along the lines of: Midwest dialect is the most common American English used - especially for foreigners who are learning English.

Another non-existant word I have heard from the mouths of supposedly educated professional types....

Orientate

The proper verb is orient... or oriented

Drives me nuts when I hear it

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Orientate

Both orient and orientate mean to get one's bearings, and share the same etymology in the latin names for the eastern point on a compass. I wonder why we don't have borreation at University and new employment, seeing as compasses tend to point north.

Lets face it, Americans bastardize the English language and then say they speak English, which they don't, they speak American-English or simply American.

Others do it to but I don't see it to the ignorant extremes as people in the US do. Especially kids. Should I say Expecially or just 'specially kids?

Words are made up of rules, and the rules define the sounds. Making up new words is not learning a language it is simply being too lazy to learn the language to begin with.

A fe wthat bug me are:

Axed- OUCH, can't you simply ASK me?

Fittin' - You try it on and I'll get to 'fixing' it.

Ditn't - Nope, there's is a D not a T in the middle.

And then there are the sayings that EVERYONE seems to screw up , my #1 pet peeve...

"I could care less"
GRRRRRR - DAMN, that one pi$$ses me off.

Are people THAT stupid that they don't understand what they are saying?

When you wish to describe that something means nothing to you, then you say you COULD NOT (couldn't)care less. If you COULD care less then you obviously care and the entire statement is worthless...that one REALLY gets under my skin. The part that gets me moet is its a sayign that is usually quite flippant, kind of a nose in the air, 'it isn't good enough for me' comment.

I also saw a US grammar page from WSU that had similar terms and explanations but even those are American pronounciations and spellings.

Like Annunciate, A-nunce-e-ate.
Not announciate - An-ounce-he-ate? (you'd be pretty stoned).

Many are due to changes in spelling, such as;
Airplane in America, Aeroplane in the UK.

These I can deal with they are differences in written language, not just a lazy use of it.

din't. Aarrgggh!

Or is it di'int?

I love the pronunciations that come from "contracted phrases": prit'neer for "pretty near(ly)", which is a bit of an odd construction anyway. Wungo out? (Do you want to go outside?)

Wungo, over and out.

and you reminded me - pertneer being common rurally 'round these parts - crick (creek).

got a quarter?
good, call someone that cares.
[ my own way of saying I couldn't care less. ]

It's not Quarter as in kwar-ter it's kaw-da'
.

Gaw-da kaw-da?

. . . point me to the dictionary that contains "GRRRRRR" and "pi$$ses".

Plsthx.

Grrrrrrr, is actually found in the Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=GRRRRRRR
If you prefer, perhaps 'groan' or 'shucks' would suit your tastes better, I thought you'd work that out yourself though.

As for pi$$es, that is due to TechRepublic's dictionary. The $ is there to replace S so the word is not asterisked out, which I also thought you'd figure out by yourself; I suppose you have proven me wrong though, I now see that some people can't sort out even the simplest issues.

It pisses me off, too...



Still, with my uncanny ability to beat that ******* auto-censor, at least I can say so properly.

I noticed that pisses, piss, pissing and pissed off all seem to work these days.

Wonder when phuque will be okay?

I could care less... but I don't.

Thanks for a great list; they are all on my pet peeves as well, along with a few more that other readers have mentioned here. We had a friend who constantly said "supposably" and drove us crazy - but we looked it up, and according to Merriam-Webster it IS actually a word. Encarta says no, though; sometimes these colloquial pronounciations get added to dictionaries over time (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em theory).

Not to be pedantic, but I distinctly recall being taught in grade school that the first r in February is silent. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary both pronunciations are correct.

#1: Realtor: I don't hear REAL-uh-tor. I hear Reel-ter. Reel-tor. and Re-AL-tor or ter. The realtors themselves usually say Re-AL-TOR. The TOR sounds funny as I think most people say TER.

#3: Jewelry: I always thought the real pronunciation is JOO-el-ree, 3 syllables. Think it sounds better than JOOL-ree too. So not sure where you're coming from with "making things harder by turning a word into three syllables."

And as for OFTEN - I hear both Off-Ten and Off-En. Don't here Off-UN. LOL.

Local Peeve: It's not Illinoiz - the s is silent.

Mr Webster has BOTH listed for February as acceptable pronunciations. Do you know more than "he" does?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?februa02.wav=February

In this day and age the majority wins on most things, including pronunciation/dialect and new words. If everyone continues to pronounce (or mispronounce) a word, somewhere down the line it'll be added.

Like GINORMOUS.

and EWW - they have "oiz" as a possible pronunciation for Illinois! Yuck. It sounds bad.

I can see why people would NOT pronounce the "S" at the end of a word....

It is EASY to remember the "correct" way because people that live there are ILL and they ANNOY the rest of us with their crazy spellings!

And yeah, you can tell someone from Michigan because they WILL use the "oiz" every time.

No one in my southern Michigan family pronounces Illinois with a z.

The s is silent? Nooooo!

Now, if only somebody can tell me how to pronounce "Des Moines."

Is it 'dess moynz'?

Or 'dey moyn'?

Or some combination of the above?

If you want to pronounce it the way it was intended by the French, it would be "day moyn". But of course if it was Iowa, it was likely Metis (french canadian/native) and they might have a totally different way than formal French.

In French, often the trailing S is dropped, unless the next word starts with a vowel. For example, "Les Miserables" is pronounced "lay mizerable", but "The Oranges" would be pronounces "layzorange".

James

I don't recall learning the rule in school that dealt with identifying and pronouncing a silent "S".

If someone insists on not knowing how to correctly spell something, they have no business crying about it being pronounced they way did decide on how to spell it!

Guess then the only think to do would be to remove any and all place names in the US that originate in a foreign language.

Guess the southwest will have to get busy. Lousiana too...

Reminds me in Canada, we had a large German population in southern Ontario and there was a city called Berlin (we have London, Paris, Moscow, Warsaw too). During WWI, they decided to change the name because they wanted to show their "unwavering" support. They chose Waterloo, which happened to be where the British were aided by the Germans in defeating Napoleon.



James

If a word in brought into a country and translated, why would it not translate the speeeeeeling as well as the pronunciation?

If a language (written) has RULES, then they should be followed.

The reason I was always a horrible speeler was because we have rules that you speeeeeel something according to this rule, unless you don't. Frick it all. Thankfully FF has a built in speel cheeker.

.

I give, not receive....



Did I mention I like girls?

But the Southeast, Northwest, and Northeast, not to mention the Midwest.

In fact, if we want to get sticky about it, the "foreign" names are the names like New York, Boston, and San Francisco. Names like Alapaha, Monongahela, and Puyallup are the "native language" names.

Note: I laugh at your mispronunciations!

you are so close to Ohio, you are barely considered Michigan residents!

ILL-Annoy - that's funny. My co-worker liked it too.

However, back to the problem. With both of us being "native" Illinoisans (uh-oh is that a word?) we, and most people we know, don't pronounce it ILL-annoy. But ELL-Annoy.

A little touch of Mexico? El Toro!

Heard on the radio that down in Texas there is a city having problems with an over abundance of skunks. One of the DJ's said Pepy La Pew and the other corrected him to say Pepy El Pew.....

And would it not be Illinoisians?

How do you get an EL sound out of ILL????? I am feeling Ell just thinking about it...
At least we agree on the annoying part....


edit because the TR font makes upper case "i's" look the same as a lower case "L". X-(

It's very common, at least where I grew up in the west
Chicago suburbs, to change certain "short i's" to "short e's,"
though I couldn't describe the phonological rule. I just know
I have a tendency to pronounce "milk" "melk."

"milk" just sounds funny when you've been saying and hearing "melk" all your life.

of that state. It's illegal to mispronounce it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ginormous

Not plural, and probably only the adjective.

'nuff said.

Every time I hear it I want to wring the speakers neck. Unfortunately, my mother-in-law says it.

Self-control is desperately important.

Self-control is highly overrated!

One that you missed out is "pronounciation". In my experience, many people hear "pronunciation" but think that the speaker has abbreviated the second syllable rather than the fact that he/she has correctly pronounced the word!
Another one which I've encountered twice among employees where I work is the use of "brought" instead of "bought".
This raises the question, "Should I tell the offender(s)?" If I don't they'll go on demonstrating their ignorance to their own disadvantage. If I do, they may be offended and I'll possibly lose a friend.
My favourite worst is "nucular". In the UK a TV programme about nuclear submarines was commentated by Quentin Wilson who throughout the program used the incorrect pronunciation! Whoever produced that programme needs severe censure for not correcting Quentin Wilson's pronunciation in the first place.

It's 'ne vad uh' not 'ne vaah duh'. Ask Mrs. Obama about that one.

get the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble.

Then it's you that has the cheek checker.

The residents of a small town in central Missouri (on HWY US-54) pronounce it:

Nuh-Vay-duh.
I guess that's how they tell the locals from the "foreigners"...

Sorry to raise this dead post, but I just stumbled across it during another search.

What about "about" (a-bowt) vs. "a-boot" or "a-boat", used along the norther tier and into Canada?

named Japan. The residents pronounce it Jaypan.

...Dumas? No wait, that's in Arkansas!

Understanding that these are pet peeves...have you taken into account the dialectical differences in American English? Also, have you considered the phonetic differences or cultural origins of the people speaking? I never did, until I married a speech pathologist. Some interesting reading and audio are here http://www.otago.ac.nz/anthropology/Linguistic/Accents.html and at asha.org Not only are there different vowel mergers that occur when listening to English speakers from different regions, but there are also the dialectical differences to consider. While to you, the speaker may sound stupid or poorly educated, you could be considered just as stupid/frigid/ignorant as the speaker when being heard by someone outside of your region. How about "10 mispronunciations that make you sound stupid...to an overly critical person"?

I have to add this one, though few will agree, and you'll almost never hear this pronounced correctly.
It's HAR-as-ment not her-ASS-ment.

"I'll master your language. . . and in the meantime, I'll create my own." - Tricky, "Christiansands"

Language is not some chiseled, static, deified god-stick we need to be shaking around at one another. No, it's a living, breathing entity that evolves every hour of every day. (And, oh yes, I totally just said 'EV-er-ree'). Tuh-MAY-toe, tuh-MAH-toe, eh?

For example: If I were to wave my majestic, textular [ --not a word?] god-stick around, mayhap I might just suggest that jewelry is not JOO-la-ree, nor is it JOOL-ree. . . it's JOO-ul-ree. Jewel being her root.

But I won't [ -- colloquial contraction; Data's head just asploded].

It seems we oft forget that communicating is not the most important aspect of communication - interpretation is.

Do I get upset when I hear somebody say "Warshington"? Yes, (even though that pronunciation seems quite ironically appropriate) I do. Missouruh? Yes. Lie-berry?? Yes! I'm a hypocrite... but I digress, that's what my Xanax is for.

My point is, language is a blessed [--that's BLESS-sid] thing. To be embraced in all forms. Even though I admit to having my own linguistic pet-peeves, I do believe that we must cherish our ability to communicate. And that we should put more emphasis on interpreting others than we do on diabolically dictating diction and dialect.

"It seems we oft forget that communicating is not the most important aspect of communication - interpretation is. "

Ah, but interpretation is more likely to be correct when we all use the same words and pronunciations to convey our thoughts. Unfortunately or fortunately depending upon your viewpoint, spoken language as a means of communication was developed and works best when it is entire sentences, phrases and paragraphs that is being interpreted as opposed to the individual words.

yes yes. language is a blessed and beautiful thing to be embraced. I missed this post before I commented and was horrified to see most people seemed in agreement with the creator of the list. Open that coat and flash these prigs with more nekkid truth.

Pronunciation changes over time. That's just how it goes with any language. If this were not the case, we would all still be speaking flawless Latin. if it weren't for "bad" grammar there would be no Spanish, French, or English. Fretting over commonly used mispronunciations or phrases is essentially impotently shaking your fist at the inevitable change.

By the way, pretty much everybody says "nucular" where I'm from, which seems pretty regional to me, whether you buy it or not.

Possibly because "nucular" is not even close to how "nuclear" is spelt.

Hmmmm

One thing I've noticed when listening to that master of mispronunciation, George Bush, is that some words he mangles by inserting a syllable - nucular - and he removes syllables from others - unceptable.

Make him stop...

he could be saying "All y'all".....





Oh, the humanity....

There was a poster during the Atlanta Olympics that said "Ya'll come back to see us.".

I mean. For God's sake...

Humanity, indeed.

unseptable - a septic tank that no longer functions correctly and that cannot be repaired but must be replaced.

Change the k to a c and add -er. Or -ar if ya wanna git all fancy-schmantzy.

No one had ever heard of a nucleus of anything before we started a-makin' them bombs.

By the way, pretty much everybody says "nucular" where I'm from, which seems pretty regional to me, whether you buy it or not.

I don't buy it. Why do people say "nucular" when they have no problem saying "new clear?"

I consider it a trifle uncular, too...

None of the people I've met who work in designing building or running a nuclear plant, both commerical and academic, say nucular. Not one. Many of those people were born in Canada, but quite a few were from the US, Britain, India and China.

So take that as you will.

James

Have you noticed in your association with the industry that our (now) Twenty-First Century, best-shot, emerging expertise with innards of the atom fails so often for its dependence on settled 19th Century plumbing technology, wherein no one anticipated things like neutron capture section?

Just offhand, I assure you, with no analogies in other pursuits contemplated.

In the examples of realtor, "supposed to", and "used to", it seems to me that the transitionary sounds either cause the "extra syllable" or cause it to drop.

Real-tor. If you're not very careful to enunciate, the phantom "uh" is caused by the transition from the ending L to the T in tor. Same for transitioning from supposed and used to the word to, except the D kind of gets lost between the sound of the S and the T. Actually, in this case, a D sound and a T sound are real similar. You really see the same kind of thing happen in Spanish, where "mi hija" becomes "mee-haw". (And "mee-eee-haw" sounds wrong). Although perhaps they're all regional things.

On February... I'm suspicious. Do you call pronounce it "Wed-nes-day" or "Wendsday"?

Additionally, as a kid, I spent years in speech therapy because my English accent was so galling to the ears of American kids. I think the majority of Americans would laugh behind your back if you spoke as "properly" as you suggest. You'll come across as superficial and pretentious. Examples in media that come readily to mind are Thourston Howle III, Madonna with her new fake English accent and any English celebrity every on an American TV show, ("Toni, you ARE the weakest link"). The stereotype of a "monied American" with the nasal, british-esque voice is all about the perception of "proper enunciation" among Americans.

From my own personal perception, calling someone "stupid" or "ignorant" because they do not speak in the well defined limits that you consider "proper" is dangerous at best. Many great contributions to society have been made by people with regional dialect that might be seen as having roots in ignorance. Ain't that the truf.

Karoke...
This is a perfect example of how someone in the media (who couldn't pronounce the word to begin with) makes everyone else think that is the right way.
I lived in Japan for 4 years where this was first introduced way back in the mid 80's.
First, notice there is NO letter e in the middle of the word. It is pronounced Ka-ro-ke with the tounge emphasizing the letter r against the pallet.

Sigh

Geez...you guys will never give up on the red states!
Don't forget that I have a good "ideal"...

I'm sorry, off-un is the American pronunciation.

off-ten is the English pronunciation, and if you are going to quip about soundings, then frankly you should at the very least accept English spellings and pronunciation, no?

I mean, it IS English and not American, right?

You misspelled "y'all." It's a contraction of "you" and "all." Where people get "ya'll" from I have no idea, but most Southerners can't even spell this one right.

This was really funny. You should've given a test or something with titles like "Do you mispronounce these 10 words?" "10 of 10 correct = Invite this person to dinner parties" or "3 out of 10 right = Leave at home in the hollowed out tree trunk"

This is a somewhat silly article that confounds mispronunciation with some standard English pronunciations. The author is posting her personal issues. Unfortunately she runs afoul of the people trying to teach English pronunciation, especially English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers.

"Used to" is the best example where the ESL teachers don't want the hyper-articulation of the the extra "t" but rather want the flow of the words linking together. "did you" going to "didjew" is another linkage example. Hyper-articulation makes you sound unnatural.

I can't disagree with "supposably" though.

Great list of my pet hates. One point I'd disagree on; Jewelry is American English. In British English the word is Jewellery and the mispronunciation you list above is actually the correct one in this case. There is nothing incorrect about it at all.

Don't forget library, there are two r's. Not LI-ber-ee

I would have been interested in this posting had you have focused on nonexistent words that are commonly used but rather then do that you chose to mostly nitpick about peoples accents. How you made it to the front page of Digg I will never know. If you ever make it there again I sincerely hope you have something more interesting to say.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned these below. They seem very common to me.

larynx: LAIR-NIX
lackadaisical: LACKS-UH-DAYS-IH-CULL

and the one I hate most:
comfortable: CUMF-TUR-BULL

What's so hard about pronouncing all four syllables in "comfortable?" I was in Oregon recently and noticed I always heard it said the right way. Is this an ignorant east coast thing?

This post is full of Nguyen.

I had this one girlfriend that would pronounce parmesan "par-mee-jun." Everyone at the table would get an embarrassed look on their face, but hey, she'd get her cheese!

accomodation not accomodations when looking for somewhere to stay. In this sense accomodation is a mass noun. There is a pluralized form of accomodation i.e. accomodations but it doesn't relate to somewhere to stay

All you blowhards should read Stephen Pinkers books (M.I.T Cognitive Scientist and Linguist).'Language mavens' is how he refers to people who write lists like this one. He makes their stuffiness seem as idiotic as they think mis-pronunciations make other people seem. I understand the need for a relatively fixed spelling of a word. However, language and word pronunciations are not fixed but evolutionary in their development and adaptation. Many 'correct' words we use now have their origins in the mispronunciations and misappropriations of the past. People often mispronounce things because of an identifiable and reasonable process in the way a language evolves. No one invented english and no one person can define it. If the majority of people are 'mispronouncing' a word then I would say it is fair to suggest that the accepted pronunciation has changed.

I think I will email this list to Prof. Pinker since he enjoys lampooning stuck up prigs like most of the people who replied to this article.

Now, stop it, blowhard, lest you frighten away the natives.

If the changes are just due to ignorance and stupidity, that is not evolution of language.

We should stop teaching language arts in the schools then, right?

Sad. I am so embarrassed for you....

How would you know and judge that the changes are just due to ignorance or stupidity? I think you are presupposing the reasons and I think that is far more indicative of ignorance. There are a myriad of reasons languages change and they are not only about ignorance. Do you imagine you speak and write with the same accepted formal structure they used 150 years ago? I doubt it. I spent 3 years going to a British colonial style prep school then when I moved to Canada I had to relearn many language conventions (written & spoken). Neither was right or wrong they were just different. It is also kind of strange to say that I suggest abandoning language arts. How on earth did you pull that from what I wrote. I think language is beautiful, I think there is a place for formally recognized language structure (academia, law, the workplace etc..) because it helps reduce ambiguity and improve overall clarity in communication and interpretation (or as often in the case of Law to increase ambiguity) . I also believe that dialects, colloquialisms, mashed up-made up words, slang, and plain old mispronunciations are also beautiful and used to communicate in ways you seem deny have merit. The smartest person I ever met with an IQ of 142 who could write in any style he chose with flawless grammar and spelling, yet spoke with a thick non-affected ghetto articulation. How you speak might make you sound stupid to others but it is not an accurate indication of intelligence, only the listeners bias.

So you are embarrassed for me?.... that is hilarious. A*****e

a place for formally recognized language structure (academia, law, the workplace etc..) because it helps reduce ambiguity and improve overall clarity in communication and interpretation (or as often in the case of Law to increase ambiguity).

Why should clarity in communication be limited to 'formal' social structures? The informal social structures are as, if not more, problematic to us than the formal.

Hell, we don't even communicate effectively with ourselves in consistent fashion.

etu

then I would agree with your point.

Unless and until such occurs then I don't.

I note with interest Pinker?s need to speak and write standard English in order to express the complex ideas of his thesis that allows him to deny the need for a language that is sufficiently fixed to permit him so to do.

I wonder if he believes what he writes - he surely doesn't practise what he preaches. Personally, I reckon he's climbed high on the PC bandwagon where the destruction of moral and social distinctions - dumbing down - is proof of the very best intentions.

Language is a tool. As with all tools, you use it well and you can make wonderful things with it. Use it badly...

Have you ever read anything he has written? I doubt it, because one of the last things Pinker could be described as is PC. 'Standard English' is a tool to be used to remove ambiguity and introduce clarity in formal communication. The English language as is spoken and used in its worldwide everyday non-formal manner is a wonderful evolving thing that has never been and never will be 'standard'. Use it well/ Use it badly.... those are subjective depending on the context. If you go to a backwater where they speak with a thick dialect your insistence on proper pronunciation will not serve you 'well'. For more read my reply to the numbnut that replied right before you. He was embarrassed for me...I think he really thought that would make me feel bad or illustrate to others my ignorance. Hmmm... "Destruction of moral distinctions" are you serious...... You sound like you have a closed mind and arbitrary personal standards. Why do people imagine they are sole custodians of what is proper? I can't knock that you promote what you believe to be right but seriously you sound ridiculous.

If you're going to debate then at least check out where I'm from. Hint, it's underneath my post in the "Location" field. We don't use "Dude" so from the first word of your post, I'm not sure what you're saying because "Take the stick out" isn't something we use, either.

Whatever...

Yes, I've read some of what Pinker has to say. Most of what I've read comes from his debates alongside Richard Dawkins where his main points weren't centred on his particular linguistic theory. I was intrigued enough to read around a bit but decided that what I'd read wasn't something that I believed to be true. He reckons nature, I reckon nurture has more to do with it.

Pinker's theories state that the form of mental activity follows and may be deduced from its function. Just as we may deduce, for example, what a heart is looks like from what it does, Pinker believes that human behavioural norms are forced on us by mental processes built into the mind by our genes and that these are shaped directly by Darwinian evolutionary processes.

The main criticism of Pinker are coming from a number of fields, biology, learning theory and neuroscience seems to point to the mind not being modular, as it would have to be to fit Pinker's theory and that though is not computational and behaviour is a mixture of the predictable - as Pinker would propose - and the unpredictable because of of general purpose thinking mechanisms and other far more ancient structures that predate any language "evolution".

I so totally like know he's like a Harvard Professor but it's so allowed to like disagree.

I'm a bit embarrassed for you as well. You're getting a bit excited. Calm down.

Neil

a pedant without a stick is no fun at all.

. . . and you end up pronouncing procrastinate as prevaricate. And then you risk getting sued for libel, slander or defamation (depending on your jurisdiction and the medium used).

So far, it seems to be a specifically British misuse, but I have heard one American confuse the two words. I don't get it - the two are scarcely homonyms *shrugs*

One of my pet peeves is a common grammatical barbarism:
"If I would have..." instead of "If I had..." For example "If I would have known that, I would have told you about it." The correct form of the verb in the the first phrase is "had," not "would have."

Here's something I'm trying to teach myself to say correctly: "Twenty." My whole
life I've pronounced it "twunny." Now that I'm a math teacher, I'd like to learn to
say it correctly! Anyone else do this?

Why is Bret Favre pronounce "Farv"?
Why do some people "Axe" a question?

Language is a socially learned neuronally stored verbalization, that may or may not resemble the written word. Our brain processes spoken and written words differently... People can write the word correctly, but pronounce it differently...that's nature (and nurture).

Get over it...it's how we're wired.

Dr. Rings

I had to stop reading at #2 because you misspelled "y'all". It's short for "you all" not "ya all" or "ya will."

It is a registered trademark.

While I agree that certain pronunciations may be inappropriate under certain circumstances, alternative pronunciations are a part of any living language--especially a language like English that has more regional dialects than the beach has sand.

The issue at hand is not so much, "which pronunciation is correct" as it is, "which pronunciation is appropriate". If I were to walk into a bar in East Texas and start talking about a nice piece of "jool-ree" that I bought in "Feb-roo-ary" near the "nu-clee-er" plant, I'd get ridden out of town on a rail.

Language is about communication. If you're communicating, you're fulfilling the purpose of language.

And you're wrong about the pronunciation of "often". Either pronunciation is correct in both the American and British dialects.

Supposably IS a word. See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supposably

My old boss would apprach me and want to "aks"[sic] me a question.

The right word is Ask. there is no such word as aks (Axe).

This is one type of word that the media has decided to make us dumb by.
It's kind of sad when journalists begin to slaughter the language they were taught to write correctly.