Pronunciations you had wrong!

[WeirdArchitecture]

I am ashamed to admit that I previously struggled with 'froth' and actually pronounced it 'throff' .....there needs to be an eccentricity emoticon, I'm not that daft, I promise!

I also know someone who until her late 40's struggled with 'canopy' and pronounced it 'canape'.

DP was convinced that Moët was 'moway' as opposed to 'mwett/mowet'.

I had also previously pronounced the composer Saint-Saëns as 'san sayens' as opposed to the correct 'sahn sonz'...or something.

Anyone have any amusing ones to share?

Accent isn't really the right word there, more pronunciation/rhotic r/non-rhotic r and accent differences.

I couldn’t figure out how to say anxiety. If anxious is pronounced ank-shus, I always wanted to say ank-shutey rather than ang-ziety. Was baffled for years!

Apparently halcyon is not pronounced "hally-con" 🙄

Quinoa and Quay 😳 I live in the south west, there’s so many places that I know I’m mispronouncing!

my brother, over 60, still has problems distinguishing soldier and shoulder.
i think it's a man thing. i've noticed it in others too.
never with women though.
maybe the notion of soldier is nearer to a man and therefore more stressful. i mean it would have been as a child, a boy, maybe soldier represented a far off unattainable manliness. or maybe i overthink.

@OldTinHat

I've pronounced suduko as 'sodoko' for years 🙄

It’s sudoku, though, Old ( Suh doh koo)

On the pronunciation of 'chaos', there is a (probably apocryphal) story about Derrida giving a lecture. The entire talk was about cows; everyone was flummoxed but listened carefully, and took notes about...cows. There was a short break, and when Derrida came back, he said , “I’m told it is pronounced ‘chaos.’”

@Thunderpunt

Incognito is one, I always pronounced in in-cog-neeto... although to be fair that's probably because people it's the anglicised version of a forrin word innit

How is it meant to be pronounced?

Not relevant anymore as no one uses faxes but I remember being blindsided to learn facsimile was fax-im-a-lee and not, as I’d had it for years, fass-ih-mile.

@LadyMacduff

Oh god, i've always said "moway" for Moèt. Not that it comes up in conversation much tbf.

I used to say 'protajonist' for protagonist.

Still don't really know how to pronounce 'archipelago'.

Still quite bitter that I got marked incorrect in a reading test in primary school for pronouncing 'meLANcholy' instead of 'MELancholy'.

Archie-pel-Argo of course

I'd pronounce it 'moway', with no emphasis on the T, in all honesty.

My most embarrassing was the word albeit. I totally stuffed that up and pronounced it as one word, with an emphasis on the 'I' as you would with a German word. Kind of like 'albite' .

I also thought a popular piece of furniture was called 'Chester drawers' until I was about 28.

@WeirdArchitecture

It’s more ‘sanson’ if you want to say it properly.

For some reason I used to pronounce Trastevere as ‘Travastere’. No idea why! I think I just glimpsed it on a map and the pronunciation stuck!

My worst was working in a bar at uni and we sold a beer called Bombardier. I would always pronounce it in the French way and got a lot of weird looks 😂 my friends still take the piss out of me about it!!

the derrida one reminds me of a rather painful tutorial group where an undergraduate was reading out his essay.
i'd come in a couple of minutes late and presumed that's why i couldn't make head or tail of it, despite we all having the same title that week.
it was about determinism.
i was baffled, beyond my usual bafflement re philosophy.
his essay seemed to be about casual something or other.
whereas my essay grappled with the notion of causation.
the lecturer asked no questions when he'd finished, and went on to the next week's essay topic.
he'd obviously copied chunks out of books without understanding even how to pronounce the words, let alone the concepts.
other tutors would have ripped into him; but she was a true philosopher, where discretion was the better part of valour.

I do not say it out loud like this, but I always internally read stomachache as stoma-cha-cha

I just can't help myself.

My 21 year old son had a laugh at me and friends my age as we all pronounce Billy Joel as Billy Jo-el....Not that I listen to his music as cannot stand it but maybe it is the Irish accent and the way we put a strong accent on ends of words.

I cannot say Mirror right and my son says it as mirr..we have a good laugh about it.

‘My MIL says gillet as in fillet for gilet 🤦🏼‍♀️‘

Oh god I do this too! How do you pronounce them then? I say them as jeelay and feelay.

the joel one reminded me of a strange encounter with a nurse once.
asked for next of kin, the patient gave a name of her sister, beryl xyz.
the nurse repeated it as burl, and wrote down the phone number.
sounded like a male name, as in burl ives.
so we thought she'd misheard, and we repeated no, beryl.
she looked puzzled, said that's what i wrote, and she had, yet she pronounced it as burl.
anyone irish, how would you pronounce beryl. do you say it like burl. rather than beh-rill. ?

I am usually quite good with words, Essex accent notwithstanding, but I have never got that 'segue' is 'segway' so much so that I can't use that word. Also struggle with 'dour' . Fortunately neither word is overly necessary in my life

@WeirdArchitecture

Ok the very worst one of all, is SEGWAY (segue). I can't take it seriously at all

When I heard people saying "segway" I thought they actually meant segway. It sort of fits in the context - to segway into another topic :)

I think there are loads of Scottish placenames that catch people out. Also places like Kirkby and Skelmersdale.

But I said Godalming with the emphasis on the alm, rather than the God and DH laughed at me.

Just remembered that my partner can't sat tiramisu. Always says tiramisuloo. He tried to ask for it in Sainsbury's once as a treat for me and the assistant took him to the taramasalata.

Milngavie. Near Glasgow, I remember dying a little inside when corrected as a teenager when I pronounced it miln-gav-ie as its written.

Nope, Mill-guy.

Well I've learnt Belvoir Castle today. There is a new(ish) parkrun there, so at least I will know it's Beaver Castle if I mention it to anyone now

My DH told me he'd never heard of communism when I was asking him about it. Then he was like " wait, how is it spelt?" before bursting out laughing. I had been putting the emphasis on the wrong part. 🤷‍♀️

what about keighley in yorkshire.
that's another stumbling block for the unwary, like kirkcaldy, and pontypridd.
these used to be taught in school, but what with essentials like fronted adverbials, there is no time for such fripperies as general knowledge and speaking confidently now.
and probably the teachers are as clueless as anybody.
guess that's how pronunciations change over time, fewer people know how the original was.

what about keighley in yorkshire

'Keithly'