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One of the oddities in English is the tendency to insert extra "n"s into words. Ravager turns into Ravanger (or more commonly Ravenger), turret turns into turrent.
I love the word trebuchet because...
- It's a siege engine and even though it was horrible in real life - I love it in movies.
- My favorite font is Trebuchet MS. It's easier to read for dyslexics.
- It's a symmetrical chess situation where the player who must move loses. Oh, man - it's too hard to explain so it's Wikipedia to the rescue. It's a kind of zugzwang.
tribucket
Death to America
So many, but the funniest has been "meme" (English is not my first language). My online friends who are English speakers were eternally amused by it, sadly my audhd brain has forgotten how I pronounced it.
my audhd brain has forgotten how I pronounced it.
Maybe "mehmeh" or "meemee"?
I used to go meh meh
Me me
Something like this probably.:D
My first encounter with it was from the Selfish Gene, where Dawkins describes it as a "mind version of a gene", so he thought meme sounded fine. Hearing Maymay was bonkers to me.
I had a similar thing where I learned the pronunciation of meme and then proceeded to say the name of Pepe the Frog in the same way, like "peep". I still do this, but I've been informed it's wrong.
While we're on the subject who the fuck decided lingerie should be pronounced
lawn-jer-ay? Petition to stop letting the French decide how words are spelled because if I have to try to correctly spell burgiouisey one more time I'm going to flip.if the english were managing their language so well why did they lose the battle of Hastings?
I gave up and have started to just opt for calling them bourge. Can't pronounce it either.
Not trying to troll or creep. I didn’t realize what instance I was on at first. But I read your spelling and my head immediately jumped to the Borgs from Star Trek. Got a solid cackle from me. It’s been a long disappointing day so genuinely, thank you for my laughter. I’ve seen too much RISA maybe. Have a great one
It's "lɛ̃ʒ.ʁi" in French with the "ee" instead of "ay"
is a theme in the etymology of the words in this thread.
All of them (technically)
I'm ESL
Paradigm. I pronounced it para-dig-m, like an idiot
To me that makes it sound like an insect - It's kinda like a no see em but bigger with a worse bite.
No see em is another name for biting midges
I like that one. It was one of mine. Two others were macabre and segue.
There were a LOT more. I read a lot so I saw a lot more words in print than I heard growing up.
Segue, how the fuck are you supposed to guess the pronounciation of that when there's hardly any other english words like it? I pretty much didn't learn the actual way to say it until university. I always said it "SEGG" and just assumed the rest was silent because it's ridiculous.
I remember mispronouncing Montague (from shakespeare) for the same reason.
Everyone in my elementary school pronounced zealot as zeal-lot.
Now I wish that was the pronunciation.
ennui, but really do french derived words count
Parable of the Sower... I thought it was a book about pigs (sows). I still mispronounce it in my head.😅
Sower Patch Kids
So many author's names
You just resurfaced a horrible memory of being an awkward lit nerd who wanted to fit in but also did a lot of reading alone. I was dunked on so relentlessly first year of college when trying to discuss “Go-eth”.
Fuck you other lit undergrads from my class. Wherever you are. Hope you all stub a toe.
don’t have a good answer to OP’s question but i just want to give a shoutout to my fellow IPA literate sickos in this thread fighting the good fight
Death to America
IPA
My brain interprets that as a horrible foreign language so if I want to share a pronunciation for simplicity's sake I use dictionary.com. An example...
SEG-wey
It's not perfect but it's the best site I know.
if it's not on my computer keyboard it's a made up sound!
Melee
I still say it wrong
There's a significant population of 20- and 30-somethings who know the proper pronunciation of
meleeentirely because of Smash Bros.pls no dox
leave me be
but the announcer in the game says it wrong! the emphasis is on the second syllable and the first e has a circumflex, so it rhymes with get.
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same :(
What is one word you realized you were pronouncing wrong until you heard someone else say it?
Mine: affidavit
Pronounced it a-fit-a-vit (not unlike "a Fitbit") for about 3 months in college trying to get out of a dorm contract I wasn't happy with.
I'm dyslexic so my relationship to words like "affidavit" is a strange one. My first exposure to the word must have been via a tv series. I watched an insane amout of tv as a kid. So I heard the word many years before I ever saw the written form. With such words - there's confusion in my mind when I see the written form. If I were to look at the word and try to pronounce it - I'd likely mispronounce it like then I was a kid coping with pretty easy words that still gave me grief.
"Calliope". I thought it was "Kal-ee-ope". I found out like last week it's "Kal-I-Oh-Pee".
Kal-ee-ope
My favorite online dictionary is usually spot on. It has two pronunciations. The only way I've heard it pronounced is the first pronunciation - kuh-LAHY-uh-pee. The second is KAL-ee-ohp which I don't think I ever heard until a minute ago in that digital voice.
It sounds Canadian in my head, but it's an American rocket tank
i think that's closer to the greek ironically
Call-whap
I only know this one because of that boomer rock song
the calliope crashed to the ground and she was BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
ptolemy. and ptolemy.
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Dachshund and indicted:
Dash-Hound In-Dicked-ed
Even though I heard people pronounce dachshund I didn't connect it to the written word until I was in my 30's probably. I knew that a weiner dog was a "doc-sun" but didn't know how it was spelled
Since I'm a fucking idiot, for some reason I used to tell people our dog we had when I was a kid was a dashhound/docsun mix. So yeah this one hits home lol.
Oof
that's the funniest thing i've ever heard. kid-you was a genius.
I used to pronounce respite as re spite.
I think that one is allowed
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Both are OK according to Wiktionary
Worcestershire sauce. If it was meant to be pronounced wooster why did you add the rce bit
Same goes for Leicester.
Reminds me of the bit in How It's Actually Made - Worcestershire Sauce (cw meat) where he pronounces Worcestershire differently every time he says it.
All of them. I read everything phonetically and then my brain jumbles it up for extra word flavor. I mispronounce words you can't even imagine
Ironically, shibboleth.
Took me way too long to realise that colonel is pronounced like kernel. Even while writing this very post I had to fact check it in the dictionary to make sure I'm not posting it wrong like a fool. Like, c'mon... there's THREE vowels in the word... three vowels three syllables! What the heck!
Colonel should objectively merge with kernel, there would be nothing of value lost
I knew to pronounce awry aloud as "uh-rye", but whenever I read it, for some reason, I would say it as "aw-ree" in my head. This happened for years. Embarrassing.
epitome
mischievous
I thought "chattel" as in "chattel slavery" had French pronunciation, like "sha :tel," partly because the term was never really taught to me in any US history classes despite its importance in understanding historical modes of production and the particular brutality of slavery during that period.
It was quite embarrassing and cemented in my mind that, when I see an unusual-looking word in text, I should look up the pronunciation to avoid feeling like a dummy.
I used to say "ex-cab-er-ated"
I've studied a lot of dead languages, so I have a very unique problem where my brain will randomly use one or another pronunciation set on a new word. It produces some strange results.
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Caveat
Inventory: "Invent-ery" having only seen it in runescape. Live in the US where it's "IN-ven-Tory". tbh doesn't come up that much.
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Vice in the expression vice versa has to be pronounced in Latin, not as in vice, I have a vice.
In American English vise (the clamp) is pronounced "vahys" and the vice in vice versa is pronounced the same.
British English? I have no idea.
No, not vise. Vice. Like the vice of drinking, etc. Vice in the expression vice versa is a Latin word and like versa needs to be pronounced in Latin.
I’ve never heard an American say “versa” the correct Latin pronunciation when saying it — I’m pretty sure this entire phrase has changed to an Anglicized pronunciation in the US
Well, versa sounds much much closer to what should be. Vice, they are just taking the English word.
Gyros. Always ordered it with a hard g.
I massacred Bruges buying my ticket to the movie. I wonder how many variations the person at the window had deal with
Gyros. Always ordered it with a hard g.
I did that the first time I ordered it when I was ~20. My friend really laughed.
Bruges... how many variations
Lots. There must be many Youtube vids about it.
