There's probably a word I've been pronouncing wrong my whole life that I don't know about

Welcome to the world of Irish names!

We got:

Dearbhla (Derv-la, f)
caoilfhionn (kee-lin, f)
Meadhbh (Maeve, f)
Saoirse (seer-shuh, f)
Seoirse (shor-shuh, m)
Caoimhín (kee-veen, m)
Sadhbh (sive, f)

And many more!

Worcestershire

One of my friends once called me pedantic, and I got to correct his pronunciation of it - he stressed the first syllable. One of the high points of my life.

Ghoti

its aluminium

A "niche" is not a "nitch"

For me it isn't "some" word it is "many, many" words.

charcuterie (shar-KOO-terr-ee) (TIL)

potable (POH-tah-bull)

prerogative (preh-ROG-ah-tiv) -- wait, wat? Damn. I say it (pur-OHG-ah-tiv)

preternatural (pree-ter-NAT-chur-al)

remuneration (reh-myoo-ner-AY-shun) -- I'm not admitting how I say it lol

surprise - let's just say I spelled it suprise for ages. sigh

victual (vittle) - wait, that's how you spell it??

Indefatigable (IN-dih-FA-tih-gə-bl) not in-dee-fa-TEEG-able

Primer: \PRIMM-er\ -- small book / short informative piece of writing. (Brits can use long-i for both the paint undercoat and the book).

Mischievous: \MISS-chuh-vuss\ though mis-CHEE-vee-us is a non standard alternate pronunciation.

Interlocutor: \in tuhr LOCK you tore. I had no idea how to pronounce this so I never said it.

I think some "mispronunciations" are down to regional pronunciation. Like, I say miniature as MIN-ih-chure by habit though I'm well aware of how it's spelled and "should" be pronounced. I swear that's how I heard it growing up.

Maybe it isn't regional and it is just me. That would explain some things lol.

And uh, yeah I have a bunch more, some I know but am forgetting at the moment. Undoubtedly I mispronounce many more while having no idea. What must people think of me? Lol

I was like 25 when I found out it was wheelbarrow and not wheelbarrel

It's pronounced 'gif'

Gnocchi

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

Par-mee-zee-in

Worcestershire.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiasis.

I must be pronouncing them right enough for voice to text to understand me because I certainly cannot spell those.

Not exactly related to the question, but as a non-native English speaker, whenever I read something related to weights in imperial, e.g., 150 lbs, my mind reads it as 150 lubes.

I know it's pounds, if I would read it out loud, I would say pounds cause I'm not a weirdo (well...). But still, my internal monologue has lbs = lubes

I hear so many people pronounce "cavalry" as "calvary," which is a different word altogether.

For the C/C++ nerds: Clang. There are still many people pronouncing it "Cee-lang".

Mine was "daschund". I always thought that was a separate breed from a "doxen".

Even after being educated on how the word is actually pronounced, I still purposefully pronounce it literally "daschund". Fuck 'em - should've spelled it better.

I made the mistake of pronouncing epitome as "ep-i-tome" for a while.

I had a roommate in college that pronounced "epitome" like "epi-tohm." He also pronounced "tome" like "toom." Drove me nuts.

Hyperbole, not ‘hyper-bowl’ (like superbowl)

As a non native EN speaker, this website helped a lot. Even has regional variants

https://youglish.com/

You could record the times when you find out a new word that you've been pronouncing wrong. You should notice less and less new mispronounced words as your list of known mispronounced words gets longer and longer. If you graph the data out, you can extrapolate the curve out to infinity, and you can estimate how many total words you're mispronouncing.

Permanently Deleted

Chip-o-tot-el

So swaive vs suave or deboner vs debonair? Maybe 'fisticated vs sophisticated? You could be a swaive, deboner, 'fisticated urbane 'burban urbanite.

Personally, I blame the French for the short comings of the English language, just because I randomly can.

I once spoke with a Southerner about favorite books. They recommended a series they called "The Will of Time".

Only later I found out they were talking about The Wheel of Time.

Banal sounds like canal

And that is fine, when/if someone corrects you, you explain that you have never heard the word spoken, just read it.

Tri-ummm-vir-ate

It’s okay guys. OP meant to write pronunciating.

Peregrine. It was only last week that I realized it has two r's and doesn't rhyme with penguin.

I pronounced puddle as poodle up into my thirtys. Maybe I didn't use it too often so it wasn't noticed. My second wife did. Absolutely scundered!

Thing is, language is constantly changing, so if enough people say it wrong, it makes it correct over time.

As an example, people have been using nauseous incorrectly for so long, that it's now correct again.

February

Insurmountainable - Michael Scott

I pacifically told you!!!!

ITT: people who care about how you represent yourself are evil, apparently.

I suspect people got a little butt-hurt when they discover their shirt is a little stuffed.

Açaí

Supposably

Friends Joey Supposably

Kibosh

I don't know if this is weird, but someone told me I say "ideology" weird because I say "id-ee-aa-luh-jee" instead of "ai-dee-aa-luh-jee", and I still never changed the pronunciation anyway.

First time I saw giraffe in a book I thought it was pronounced Grr-Ah-Fee.

I would say you're actually witnessing the very real phenomenon of language-drift. Languages evolve for a billion reasons, but there's no right or wrong state of language.

That's why we distinguish between language, dialect, idiolect, sociolect. Each bearer of language is also a producer of language. Their version is just theirs, in whatever many ways that makes that version unique.

(Check linguistics to better understand this process of language-drifting )

My teacher told me that he'd fail me if I mispronounced "Data" as "Da ta" and not "Dait a". So I always mispronounce it

Ja-lap-e-no chips

My wife pronounces ‘foliage’ like ‘foil-adj’.

My wife says "wheelbarrel" and I giggle every time.

My favorite example of this happened during a D&D game years ago in which the DM kept pronouncing the word portcullis as PORK-YOO-LISS.

To this day, the word causes the image of some sort of ancient Roman pig gladiator to appear unbidden in my mind.

Though I want to know why Wednesday is pronounced "wendsday" or "wensday". The n is after the d!

Panacea. I pronounced it incorrectly for a long time. Never knew because no one corrected me. Fortunately it didn't come up too often.

The channel this video is from can be a useful resource.

You can just look up words in the dictionary and look up the phonetic pronunciation key to refresh your memory. It pays to do this every once in a while.

genre
only
gif
croissant
Aloysius
Edinburgh

I got Linux wrong for a while

I said automaton wrong for years. I said auto-maton instead of au-tomoton. I still cringe a bit thinking about it :-/

Trough?

We've probably all said a sentence that no other person in history has ever said.

At some point in my life I started enunciating every syllable of the word "comfortable," where as most Americans opt for "kuhmf-tr-bl." I don't remember when or why I started doing otherwise, but I can't go back now.