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said ‘Ar-Kansas’
Understandable, if not forgiveable, considering the other state is pronounced Kansas, just like it's spelled.
Anyway. One from our household.... marsh-mellow. As in Birds. No amount of discussion will persuade her otherwise, so I just go with it.
I live in Hawick.
Most people outside of the borders seem to find it impossible to pronounce.
Hoy-ick
The rules of what letter makes what sound are different in different languages. It’s amazing how many anglophones don’t get that. And in some languages they have different letters altogether!
I'd say it's more a case of being monolingual and monocultural rather than an Anglophone (though a general perception that you don't need to speak another language in many cases doesn't help)
@Cougar to refer back to my previous visual aid, car/card like Carr, war/warden like Corr. No *’ idea where ford comes into this mind you.
I was right with you until you suggested that corr and ford sounded different.
[why is * censored? It’s a pre-watershed word! (Father Jack’s favourite word. After drink.)]
There's a legacy to this particular word. It's fine in itself, it was added to the swear filter because of rampant abuse by a former forum member who is now baned.
Hah, good christ, I spelt 'banned' with a y in the middle and the filter autocorrected it for exactly the reason I was parodying.
this has just reminded me of my youngest who when he was 3-ish couldnt say fox. he always mispronounced it as box. We figured he was still having trouble with his Fs, until he told us about someone at nursery called Freya.
So you can say Freya?
Freya!
But you cant say fox?
box!
Can you say Freya fox?
Freya box!
Ok son, you do you, I guess.
Hyperbole (hyperbowl)
Never watched the Dukes of Hazard?
Not since I was a kid and I can’t remember what happened a couple of hours ago 😀
Never watched the Dukes of Hazard?
Hah, exactly my first thought also.
Nowadays epidemiology is a word that we're all used to but after find the epidummyology Instagram account (it's very good BTW) I use that word instead
Not me, but on behalf of 97% of the British population, I give you: chorizo.
Where's the T?
Espresso. Very often pronounced as “eckspresso”.
No. That’s Tabitha and Alasdair’s little boy. He’ll be joining Octavia at prep school after their summer in their chateau in the Dordogne. Poor little thing.
When I worked in the housing department, we had a tenant with a young lad called (and this was how it was written down) Joe-A-Quinn.
She was a fan of River Phoenix's brother.
The one that winds me up the most is how Johnson says the word necessary.
Ness-is-ree
I know it's probably correct because he's more educated than me, but it makes my skin crawl.
She was a fan of River Phoenix’s brother.
Full birth name, phonetically, "whackin' bottom"
And along with the Johnson mispronunciation thing, have you noticed that all the ruling class people like randomly to pronounce "to" as "ter".
We're going ter level up the north and we're going ter sell off the NHS to chaps who went ter the same schools as us.
Ibuprofen, always seems that I need two or more goes to get right, even knowing that I have to take care…perhaps it’s the pressure of failure.
Same for tamsulosin…
Take some brufen, release the pressure
Where’s the T?
First thing you hear. "tchorizo", tʃoʁiso, Spanish innit.
I was right with you until you suggested that corr and ford sounded different.
Ford sounds like core ya big weirdo!
“No Alan you can’t”.
NSFW
Cougar. Can you actually speak English?
First thing you hear. “tchorizo”, tʃoʁiso, Spanish innit.
No, I'm talking about the invisible T in the middle. Choritzo, or even choritzio.
But I get rolled eyes when I make it sound shoritho. And the tuts I get when I say paella.
You mean pie-eh-a
As my brother points out: ordering food in French, Italian and Spanish restaurants using the correct pronunciation makes you sound educated and liberal. Less so, though in Chinese, Indian and Caribbean restaurants.
On the aspirated/unaspirated h, yes Irish people speaking English will tend to aspirate the h at the beginning of words. So we will rarely use “an” before a word beginning with h. Though our t’s at the end of words can sound a bit funny, especially with the preponderance of the glottal stop these days for words ending in t. I don’t even know how to spell the pronunciation phonetically. It’s made by not quite touching the back of the front teeth as you would for a hard t, and pushing a tiny bit of air through. 😀
Crisps ...
quips
Cool Whip
Cougar. Can you actually speak English?
I don't think 'corr' is actually a word outside of three attractive sisters and an anti-vax roaster.
On the aspirated/unaspirated h, yes Irish people speaking English will tend to aspirate the h at the beginning of words. So we will rarely use “an” before a word beginning with h.
I didn't even know words beginning with h could be 'an' until a few years ago. Just didn't make sense, mind you I don't speak like Danny Dyer so 'a historic home' makes perfect linguistic sense. Put 'an' on the front and I can't say it out loud without sounding like a Dalek reading a teleprompter. Or Danny Dyer.
One thing I've noticed a lot, relates to mountainbiking, is that when riders talk about riding in a World Cup, the rising part tends to be on 'World', not 'Cup' as it usually is when someone is on about football.
wORLd cup instead of world cUP
I've noticed Steve Peat do this a lot and I think the Athertons.
Neither is wrong, just different intonation for some reason..
Dealing with software you’d think I’d have sorted this in my head by now, but some mental block constantly renders “Deprecated” as “Depreciated”.
I thought "toe the line" was "tow the line" until my 50s.
I guess it comes down to whether you've heard a word and read it.
Dealing with software you’d think I’d have sorted this in my head by now, but some mental block constantly renders “Deprecated” as “Depreciated”.
I have a friend who says “self-depreciating” when they mean “self-deprecating.” I’m not ever correcting them as I love it so much. 😀
My dad refers to his bald spot as his bold spot. His pronunciation of Solskjaer is hilarious, soksjar, I sometimes pretend to not hear what he said and get him to repeat it.
The wife always thought the name Penelope was pronounced (and no joke) pen-e-lope. I discovered this after we married.
kayak23
wORLd cup instead of world cUP
I’ve noticed Steve Peat do this a lot and I think the Athertons.
Neither is wrong, just different intonation for some reason..
Could be to differentiate it from some other cup I suppose.
OH has some brilliant mispronounciations and words that don't exist but I'm not gonna share them as she missed out on a lot of education through no fault of her own.
When talking to pretentious people I like to lay on my dales accent and deliberately mispronounce connoisseur as con-osser, rhymes with tosser.......does that make me pretentious?
some mental block constantly renders “Deprecated” as “Depreciated”.
My boss does this all the time and it drives me round the bend.
@cougar I also can't type "exchange" quickly - it constantly comes out as "exchnage" & somehow this has entered my workstation's custom dictionary.
Dictionary poisoning is a problem for sure.
In loosely related news, I read earlier today someone saying they had a "softs pot" for something.
I remember the first time I saw the word paradigm.
Have we had 'segue' yet? I was amazed when a friend pointed out, just a few years ago that it is pronounced 'segway' not 'seeg'.
But I get rolled eyes when I make it sound shoritho. And the tuts I get when I say paella.
Don't get a job as a cycling commentator. You'll get no end of flack on Twitter for pronouncing foreign riders' names correctly.
In loosely related news, I read earlier today someone saying they had a “softs pot” for something.
We had a guy at work with one of those, he had a tank fall on him when he was in the army (REME) and only had a one minute notice for bowel movements on a good day.
I'm reminded of one of the guys at my college. He was German but an excellent English speaker. He did have one blind spot, though. He told me a story about when he first moved to England and lived in a shared house. He suggested they could to the local pub, The Plough, only he called it The Ploff. From that point on all the lads in the house called it The Ploff. The only trouble was he couldn't actually recall what was the correct pronunciation so kept alternating the story between Plow and Ploff without quite knowing which was the right one and which was the joke one and correcting himself wrongly.
the other day my eldest asked which “rowt” (route) we were taking. 😖
One assumes he got the hiding he deserved?
Have we had ‘segue’ yet? I was amazed when a friend pointed out, just a few years ago that it is pronounced ‘segway’ not ‘seeg’.
Sigway Sigway Sputnik pictured recently...
Have we had 'fine tooth comb'?
As we're well into 6 pages. Have a go at this yiddish word;
Tchotchke
Tchotchke
Gesundheit.
I was always slightly disgusted by the phrase 'falling between two stools.' You have to be careful.
Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, "shassey".
It doesn't bother me when folks mispronounce the words they know they want to use half as much as the previously alluded to folk who don't know what the word they're trying to use actually is: Upmost respect, tenderhooks, pacifically, "literally" etc etc!
That's a point actually. Names of foreign origin give us a quandary, do you pronounce them Anglicised or do you risk sounding like a pretentious arse?
Take car marques. Skoda should be "schkoda" (sounds like you have a speech impediment) Porsche is "pour-shuh" (gaining wider acceptance), Dacia "datch-ia" (likewise because yay Advertising) and VW is "falks vahgen" (pretty much unheard of in the UK). Then we see fit to mock Americans for pronouncing Notre Dame as it's spelt, at least they're broadly consistent.
Funny old thing, language.
Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, “shassey”.
Uh, that's correct... ?
Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, “shassey”.
So do I
Uh, that’s correct… ?
I was going to say thank god someone else can speak properly but, you know 😉
You also forgot Perjo
As we’re well into 6 pages. Have a go at this yiddish word;
Tchotchke
Chotch-ki?
Like auntie in Polish?
Sash-Say as opposed to Sash-cee is, i think what chr15 is suggesting his mate said.
Tchotchke is pronounced Chat-ka (if you're interested)
How about "Braun"?
"Subtle" always caught me out on those 1970s primary school word lists we used to have read at school. I seem to recall that teachers didn't correct me for a couple of years.
Apparently it isn't "sub tilee"
How would you pronounce “?
I would call it a quotation mark, compared to a ‘, which is an inverted comma, or a speech mark, depending on whether it’s used in a word like ‘it’s’, or if emphasising something that isn’t a direct quote.
After over thirty years in print and publishing, with many, many hours spent proof-reading lots of text, I tend to be pretty obsessive about correct spelling, pronunciation and usage, inverted commas should show as 6 9, and quotation marks as 66 99, which they actually do on my iPad keyboard - ‘’ and “”
There is a book about correct usage that my studio director was always using for correct spelling and usage in print; he took great delight in correcting poor spelling, punctuation, and general type layout mistakes provided by agencies.
Not that I always get it right, but most pronunciations I’ve learned to say correctly, despite being brought up in the West Country. 🤣
Tchotchke is pronounced Chat-ka (if you’re interested)
Now that’s interesting, I’ve seen the word used by William Gibson, and I know what it means, but I’ve never heard it spoken, so I didn’t know how it’s pronounced. Thanks for that, much appreciated.
Have we had ‘segue’ yet?
That one I learned the correct pronunciation years ago, from radio DJ’s.
Hyperbole (again) is the only word that I can remember really catching me out in an embarrassing way, when I was trying to sound smart about something at uni. Oh how my housemate laughed.
On the reading side, for years - years - I misread 'Rincewind' in the Discworld books as 'Rincewood'. I still prefer my version.
For several years, I pronounced exacerbated as excaberated having misread it at some point. Possibly reading too many Arthurian stories.
Ex girlfriend .......
I was going to say thank god someone else can speak properly but, you know 😉
🤣🤣 well played.
You also forgot Perjo
Oh, yeah. Correctly pronounced poo geeot, of course.
Sash-Say as opposed to Sash-cee is, i think what chr15 is suggesting his mate said.
I think at least one of those is some form of dance move.
It's still not right either way, anyway? It's "shassie," no?
How about “Braun”?
Lost me there. Oh, wait, is this another German one, so it'd be a homonym(*) with "Brown" I think?
I would call it a quotation mark, compared to a ‘, which is an inverted comma,
Aye. Today I'd likely refer to them as "double quotation marks" and 'single quotation marks' but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Dictating computer game instructions, "type LOAD double quotation mark MANIC double quotation mark and press enter."
Inverted commas always sounded weird to me. The whole "66 and 99" thing from GCSE English - The opening 6 is an inverted comma symbol, but the closing 9 is the right way round just higher up.
(* - shut it, Squirrelface)
Always pronounced awry correctly, if using, but I never really knew it was spelled that way, as whenever I read the word I pronounced it “aw-ree” in my head. Then one day, it clicked that they were one and the same word. 😂
According to wifey, who ran their payroll, Braun is pronounced Brauwn. But then Kronberg is get posh like so who knows.
Stoic.... and stoical, I suppose.
stoike? Or stow-ick?
I've always used the latter, but a vet pronounced our elderly dog as being quite stoike a few weeks ago (he has a touch of arfur-itis) and that just sounded bloody weird to me
I believe you're right, and your vet should stick to vetting.
Yeah, fair enough, my phonetic spelling was ambiguous. He said 'Sh-say', with a flourish. It's shassee, like Massey (Ferguson).
Oh, another was the pompous twazzock who asked me for 'Cal-va-doth' when wine waiting at some toy-sellers guild meal in Manchester back in the 90's, explaining that it's 'Spanish apple brandy' I suppose assuming I'd neither heard of it nor knew it's in fact French.
Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, “shassey”.
I think there is either 'Sch-assy' or 'Ch-assy'.
Steve Jones off GMBN is always saying Ch-assy.
Might be a Welsh lilt.
I say Shassy me.
Tchotchke is pronounced Chat-ka (if you’re interested)
I was. Huh, found this on a quick google just there:
tchotchke comes from the Yiddish tshatshke of the same meaning, and ultimately from a now-obsolete Polish word, czaczko
So it's actually an American word which is derived from a Yiddish word which is derived from a Polish word. And amazingly still as unpronounceable (in English) as when it started!
How about “Braun”?
German innit? Brown. Not brawn.
(* – shut it, Squirrelface)
🤣 🤐
I once heard someone in a seminar pronounce French philosopher Saint-Simon as 'Saint Simon'. I was discombobulated wondering whether Marx ever debated with zealots from the bible.
Similar to that,
Stringfellow Hawk's deceased brother in Airwolf, "Sinjin." I read the book and spent half of it wondering who the hell this Saint John bloke was that they kept mentioning.
Have we had ‘segue’ yet?
That one I learned the correct pronunciation years ago, from radio DJ’s.
I learned that one from Frank Zappa who described a particular link between two tunes as "a rickety segue".
Oh and I'm delighted the STW massive know how to pronounce Braun. Shame the masses don't seem to.
I remember the first time I saw the word paradigm.
Never a word I use so I wouldn't mispronounce but for a long time I never made a connection between the word as as heard and the word as read and must have imagined they were different words that meant the same thing.
Dictating computer game instructions, “type LOAD double quotation mark MANIC double quotation mark and press enter.”
I think young people would find it quaint that we used to use cassette players to load computer games - but actually dictating them is properly oldschool
Not a mispronunciation, but I have mixed up etymology and entomology in conversation (and I just had to google now to confirm which meaning is correct for each word).
Aitch or Haitch?
Aitch or Haitch?
'H' spelled 'Aitch' but 'Aitch' is pronounced 'Haitch'
The pronunciation of 'Aitch' is an example of 'H-adding' - the opposite of dropping the H - verbally we add an H where there isn't one.
I'm not sure if H-Adding has fallen out of use - featured in things like My Fair Lady "'Ampshire, 'urricanes 'ardly hever 'appen" - makes me think of Drill Sargents - dropping Hs where they belong and adding them where they don't
'Marchin hup and down the square'
I have mixed up etymology and entomology in conversation
People who can't distinguish between etymology and entomology bug me in ways I cannot put into words.