No can speak well
When speaking informally, I am not very eloquent. Words evade me. I ramble. I stumble through what I am saying, rarely getting my point across. And I mispronounce words all. the. time.
Some of the top culprits on my mispronounced list? The words February, plethora, glutton, hierarchical, reconcile… and I am sure many others that I cannot think of right now. It’s bad. Like I never learned how to speak (and to a greater extent, read).
I do feel better after reading this list of commonly mispronounced words – there are a lot of words on the list that I say correctly (although I am guilty of pronouncing the “t” in “often.”).
And there is one word that many mispronounce and I do not – mischievous. I think I learned in high school that it is not “mischievious“* but I still hear many people pronounce it that way. In fact, before the holiday, I was at Hallmark looking for a specific ornament I always buy for my mom – the Mischievous Kitten ornament. A lady working at Hallmark asked if I needed help finding something, and I told her yes, the Mischievous Kitten ornament, to which she replied “Oh, the Mischievious* Kitten ornament?” thinking she was correcting me. I didn’t say anything at the time, but later asked Steven if I had pronounced the word correctly, and he said that I did. Phew.
This is the 1999 ornament, not the 2010 one
Are there any words you habitually mispronounce? Or do you go crazy when people mispronounce words?
I go crazy when people use words that don’t exist, or say idioms incorrectly!
*Dad, this is spelled incorrectly on purpose.
Themocracy
That list gets into the nature of prescriptivism–AKA telling people how to speak. It is also very ethnocentric as it points out some culturally-based pronunciations, e.g. “bidness” and “aks”. Language is one of the easiest, most acceptable ways to judge people’s intelligence and overall “quality” in society. For example, you can’t say, “He is black. I don’t like him.” but you can make fun of the way that person speaks English.
For example, people often say, “Oh, ‘aks’ is wrong. The word is a-s-k, ‘aSK’, not ‘axe’.” However, you still know that the person is communicating the word ‘ask’, so what is *wrong* about that? Isn’t the point of speaking to communicate one’s intent without misinterpretation?
Additionally, the writer of the list has something against “syncopation” (which I would call elision), which is stupid. This would just make you sound pedantic.
P.S. This isn’t a jab against you, of course. I actually make judgments about language all the time, just like everybody else. However, I think that list writer was too prescriptivist for his/her own good.
The funny thing is, I typed in “Commonly mispronounced words” and found many, many identical versions of this list. I was just trying to grab something to use as an example. I see what you are saying about it being ethnocentric, but I don’t really want to talk to someone who slaughters the english language, unless they have good reason to (they are learning it, etc.).
I’m guilty of accidentally saying “acrossed” or “accrost” instead of across. But in my defense, that’s how my Dad says is to I grew up hearing it! I know better now but it still slips out sometimes.
I notice sometimes when people mispronounce things but usually it doesn’t bother me. If I’m close enough with the person I may correct so they know for future use. My friends definitely let me know! They all grew up in the same area and I am the outcast with the weird dialect (even though I only grew up 2 hours away!).
I always used to say “bag,” and “pillow” incorrectly because of my parents. It drove Steven nuts and was one of the first things he talked to me about, ha ha.
I have such a hard time with ‘agriculture.’ Somehow I trip over the ‘gr’ combo.
I don’t micpronounce any particular words over and over, but I DO have trouble speaking in general – I trip over words and stutter and ramble. I get stuck a lot, almost as if my mouth just CANNOT keep up with my brain.
This goes right along with my phobia about public speaking. I just never got good at that…
And I grew up with an extended family who said “warsh” and “gorsh.” Um, there are NO R’S in those words people!
Is “gorsh” like “gosh”?
I am the same way with speaking. It’s so bizarre!
Growing up in Malaysia where English might be a 2nd national language but is not spoken good (haha), I grew a huge vocabulary from reading, but didn’t know how to pronounce the words because, well, I never heard them used (and the whole concept of looking up pronunciation in the dictionary? I didn’t know we could do that! :p ) .. so here are some words that over the years i have come to realise I was saying them wrong:
– many of the Greek names: Persephone isn’t “per-suh-fon”, for example.
– awry isn’t “aw-ree”
… strange, my mind is blank… but let me assure you there are plenty more… so much so that sometimes I find myself in conversation with a word at the tip of my tongue and I realise I’m not sure how to properly pronounce it (oh yes – Manglish vs British English vs American English differences are many, too!!) so I end up stumbling and paraphrasing/substituting on the fly. Ugh. I hate sounding wrong, y’know?
Ah, like cicadas the insects: I said “see-kah-dahs”, I was corrected “you mean ‘suh-kay-duhs’!”. Urgh.
And that time in a library in Chicago I was trying to tell a person on duty that their copier wasn’t working, they had no idea what I was saying until it finally clicked, and the lady said “Oh! You mean the KAAH-pier!”
Ooh and now I have an instructor named Don. Every time I talk to the hubs about him, the hubs steps in to check that I’m talking about “Dahn” because he says I pronounce it like “Dawn” instead. Urgh!
Oh look at that, I did manage to dredge up some more examples for ya 🙂
What an interesting perspective! I bet there are lots of people in your situation! And for the record, I think it is hard to read pronunciation and figure it out!
Dahn. Ha.
When you come to NY, let’s spend some time picking our accents and pronunciations apart. : ) I’ll do my best Long Guylawn accent just for you!
Yay! We still like to say coffee the way you said it to us 🙂
For all intensive purposes
That’s the one that drives me batty! I mean, I know what they mean but I wonder if they realize they aren’t making any sense.
I find it fascinating, though, that for “spitting image” the reference he gives that you should not use it actually has “spitting image” listed as an actual phrase. Hmm.
My stepdad mispronounces “penguin” and “Venezuela” all the time. It’s sort of become a joke.
I’m sure there are words I mispronounce, too, but they’re probably ones that other people screw up enough that I fit right in 🙂 Although, I’ve been told I can’t pronounce “barrette” and for a long time I pronounced “sundae” as “sunduh”.
I totally mispronounce mischievous and actually used it in a sentence this morning…oops! Will definitely be acutely aware of that in the future!
In my job, I’m guilty of getting extremely frustrated when people ramble, stumble over their words, and insert a lot of “uh uh ums”. It’s a bit unfair on my part, I think. I’m too quick to dismiss sales candidates who tend to ramble. 😉
I think there’s a difference between “mispronouncing” words and just pronouncing them in a generally accepted way. But maybe I’m just saying that because I am guilty of not knowing how to pronounce words on a somewhat regular basis.
That is a good point. Some words are so mispronounced, like mischievous, that why would people know how to say them?
I always thought mischievous and schedule could be pronounced two different ways. MISchievous or misCHIevous. Shhhedule or SCHedule. But maybe I’m wrong?
I mispronounce words all the time.
I am not sure – are you just putting accent on the CHI part? The part that annoys me is when the end is changed to “vious” instead of “vous.”
If I cant pronounce something, I just wont say it. 🙂 Im stubborn like that.
That said, I cant for the life of me say February properly, and Ive said onion wrong my entire life. My mom always tries to get me to say it because she thinks its “cute”. I guess I kind of cross the english version with the french version of the word.
I had an anatomy professor who would always pronounce muscle as “musk-ull” (to be funny & help us remember!) and now I can’t say it any other way, ha!
Oh! And I hate when people don’t pronounce the letter “h” in words like human, humble, etc. Drives me crazy!!
I have never been able to pronouce specific. It comes out like spafic or spacipic
I used to drive me crazy that my husband pronounced the word paladin as pa-`lad-in instead of pal-a-din. Finally I pulled the world up in the dictionary to show him the error of this ways, only to discover both pronunciations were correct 🙁
At least I got him back when I was able to show him that pronouncing it am-uhnd (almond) was correct as well 😛