Words you realised you pronounce different or wrong?

[heartbroken22]

What words have you realised aren't pronounced the way you pronounce them? How did you find out? Tribute was pronounced try bute by me. Only realised when a child corrected me 😂

Our language exams at school used this pronunciation distinction for oral and aural. Presumably so we knew which test was which. This was in NW England in the 80s.

When my daughter was about 8 she asked me "what's a poffle?" (That's what it sounded like). We went back and forth and I said sorry but that's not a word, can you spell it? And she said p-o-t-h-o-l-e! So cute!

Seeing as it's meant to be us mispronouncing though I will add that I thought oligarch was ogliarch . To which same daughter now older said "don't be ridiculous mum it's oligarch, from the latin x (can't remember word!)" Haha 😂

@SummerLightning , it's from the Greek oligarkhēs, from oligoi ‘few’ + arkhein ‘to rule’.

Oh hi @KirstenBlest didn't realize my daughter was on here now lol 😅 I never got to do Latin/Greek.

I thought of two more today.

egregious (ee-greg-ee-ous)

ascertain (ass-certain rather than ass-cert-tane).

I worked with a Hermione many moons ago but she pronounced it 'harmani'. I was consequently rather confused by HP's Har mye o nee..
My own problem was with scythe and scissors which I pronounced with a k sound. Hilarity ensued and my husband will never let me forget.

I'm pretty good at knowing how to pronounce things usually, but I had horrendous problems with the word 'cholesterol' at one time, due to thinking it was spelt chloresterol....

That's interesting, I pronounce it the Scottish way despite living in the south of England for a large part of my life.

@enchantedsquirrelwood , I'm not Scottish, and I say it as doo-ur. The rhymes with sour seems wrong.

Beauchamp pronounced Beecham (ah, the English and their struggle with those pesky 'foreign' words!)

schedule is shed-ule not sked-ule (latter being American)

As a kid I used to read a lot of books of Polish fairy stories. I thought Polish was some kind of fairytale country on a par with Arabian nights. I would pronounce is as poll-ish. I was in my 40s before one day randomly realising it was poh-lish stories from Poland 🤦🏻‍♀️