I used to think Hyperbole was pronounced Hi-per-bowl

[activate]

As self-professed pedants do you have any equally embarrassing admissions?

[walkinginaWUKTERwonderland]

Please say it's really Hi-PER-bolly?
That's what I say. Are people going around laughing behind my back?

[werewolf]

So did I until I actually heard someone say it.

[werewolf]

As a kid I used to pronounce 'h' as haitch, rather than aitch, because my mother did. Her stepmother used to take the mickey and it took me ages to work out that mum couldn't actually say it properly.

[catinthehat2]

portakabin
which I read as portakka bin

Miniseries
Which I always think of as something like miseries, but I've never said it wrongly

[NorbertDentressangelOnTheTree]

I just had to look up how to pronounce it on a dictionary site as I realised that I've never heard the word spoken.

FYI it said hahy-pur-buh-lee

[TheFarSide]

I used to pronounce epitome as epitome ie without the eee at the end.

[Ealingkate]

I was working on the Beer, Wine & Spirit dept in Sainsburys as a student and always called Rioja, Rio-ja until someone corrected me Rio-ka (I didn't do Spanish at school!)

[Marlinspike]

Is the hyperbole bigger or smaller than the superbowl?

[NormalityBites]

When I was a child, reading, I used to pronounce Hilary and Phoebe wrong in my head. HILL-airy and Fo-eeb.

And I recall the first time I came across the name 'Hermione' on the credits at the end of Cold Feet and thought - ooh HERMY-own, what a funny name

I have a bad habit of pronouncing neanderthal 'nee-a-thand-ral'

[HeroShrew]

Givenchy was ger-vinch-ee to me until I was corrected at 19 by the gorgeous fashion student I was trying to pull

[Shodan]

I took a Spoken English option at O-level. Part of the exam was to read a selected passage out loud. Mine contained the word 'lustre'. Not ever having come across it before I emphasised the 'lust' part and did a sort of French 'rrrrr'/ lion growl combo for the second syllable.

It took a good few years to discover why the examiner went a bit red and covered her mouth with her hand...

[werewolf]

Arf at lion growl combo!

[plupervert]

I'm laughing at the idea of the HyperBowl (well, in the US, there is the SuperBowl, so why not?)

I can admit to thinking "syncophant" was a word. However, this was a typo the first time I read it: I didn't straighten this out for myself until university. Of course it's sycophant! D'oh!

C'est dur d'être pédant...

[OldLadyKnowsNothing]

I recall my sister falling about when I said "flunctuate" instead of "fluctuate".

I was about 10.

[plupervert]

Ahhh, I like your 10-year-old ambition, OldLadyKnowsNothing.

[Preggersplayspop]

I used to think Cecil in Dennis the menace was pronounced with hard cs, like ke-kill

Don't even get me started on Siobhan

[Habbibu]

I used to think misled was pronounced myzz-ld. Still think it is in some was more apt.

[AvengingGerbil]

I was sure until an embarrassingly late age that 'indecorous' was pronounced 'In-dee-CHORUS' - was mortified when man I was trying to impress at college did Jazz Hands and fell about!

[WilfShelf]

I still don't know how to pronounce synedoche. Or what it means

I have a friend who was convinced the german female singer was Ooot Lemper.

[WilfShelf]

Or even synecdoche

[VivaLeBeaver]

How do you pronounce hyperbole?

[Maisiethemorningsidecat]

I once made a complete tit of myself by talking about Nava-joe native Americans, and I also didn't discover until fairly recently that hyperbole was pronounced the way it is - OP, I share your pain ad infinitum

This thread reminds me that I must start another thread about BTs website which talks about people "who're"

[twirlymum]

We went out for dinner once and a man we were with asked for a bottle of Muscadet, with a hard T at the end.
Moet champagne is a tricky one. Most people pronounce it without the T at the end, but DH insists it has a hard T, as he did some design work for them and said that is how it is supposed to be pronounced.

[activate]

DH is right its a hard T on Moet

it's germanic not french (name not champagne, champagne of course is by definition french)




I just remembered sojourn - never sure how to pronounce that - soj-un sounds terrible to my ears but I believe that's right as opposed to so-journ which I always wantt to say - luckily it is not a regu