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 😂

Hermione here too!

I was reading the book to my mum when I was younger and she was like "let me have a look at that name" because I kept saying Hermoyne and she thought it was odd - showed her and she finally told me.

Can't say waitrose for some reason, comes out like a novelty "ye olde farmer" accent...

Ahh it would seem I have been saying it wrong all these years, nobody has ever corrected me either.

@Caledoniadreaming ,
I've yet to meet someone who can tell me why, if you follow the rules regarding the "Cesters": Bicester, Gloucester, Leicester, Towcester etc., etc., Cirencester is not pronounced "sir-en-ster"?

It's probably because of where the stress is in the name. Gloucester, Bicester etc are three syllables and the last two run into each other. Cirencester has been sometimes pronounced Cisister.

I loved reading as a child and didn't watch a lot of TV. But the constant mispronunciation of words let my vocabulary to be very limited as I only use words I am comfortable with pronouncing.
Tanzania as Tanzayneeya
Albeit as albeet
Mischievous as mischeevius

😂😂😂 that’s absolutely brilliant!!

I have a friend who can’t help correcting mispronunciation. I frequently mispronounce words just so she can correct me. She has never realised.
DS was nicknamed the “grammar police” at school. He is brilliant at spelling and grammar, I never need a dictionary or spellcheck.

For a long time I wondered what miniseries were, of course it is mini-series but for some reason my brain reads it as min-eyes-ories.

"Mis-cheev-ee-us" has always baffled me - where do people think the extra "ee" sound comes from?

Many decades ago I was reading a bed-time story to my mother (that's how we did it!) while I lay in bed and she sat beside me. My favourite book at the time was 'Bobby Bear And Friends' and we were barrelling along nicely every night, until one chapter had Bobby and friends go into the attic and find an old trunk which was full of costumes and clothes from long ago. So they all got dressed up.

I then came across a long word I'd never seen before, in fact it was probably archaic even when I was reading it. Bobby and friends pranced in front of the mirror and admired their 'frills and furbelows'. Hmmm. So I thought logically and confidently announced they admired their "frills and fur elbows". My mother laughed and laughed until she gently corrected me.

It does to me! 😀

Eh?

i always thought it was keen-wah, not kwinoa!

Yes! Are you Welsh by any chance?
Struggle with remuneration/renumeration
anemone and anenome.

I agree with these two.

The wrong pronunciation of anemone is much easier to say. I'm in my 60s and I only found out a couple years ago that I have been getting it wrong all my life. I still say it wrong.

I think renumeration is more logical than remuneration because of the word enumeration. I learned that one in my 20s though, so do get it right now!

And PennyLowpee. Great name for a girl.

@StillWantingADog ,'appen.

Even though I knew the word 'determined' as a spoken word, I still read it as 'detter-mined' in books. All ok until I had to read it out in class😬 I just didn't seem to be able to connect the written word with the spoken one at all.

Same when I came across the word 'heifer' in a Seamus Heaney poem, which I read out as 'high-fur', even though I'd been jokingly called one many a time!

Doo -r isn't wrong, it's the original old pronunciation - and still said in the North of England. Rhymes with tour.

"Maurice emphasis on Reese…"

All the Americans I know do use that as the correct pronunciation and Morris appears to be a different name altogether.

I shall go back to saying doo-r with great conf-EYE-dence!

Same. In my family, we also say grotteskew and burleskew. As a child I also queried why Penelope wasn’t pronounced the same as antelope.

Sean Bean is either Seen Been or Shawn Bawn in this household

Segue is a tricky one for me, I still want to say "seg-ewe" 😂

Don't get me started on the spellings of locations within the UK. Just the other week I discovered the town of Towcester (pronounced 'Toaster')

No. Scottish 😁

I always called dahlias "dahhh-lee-ahs" until mum corrected me the other week! I can't pronounce skeleton even though I know I'm saying it wrong... I call it a skelington, and I just can't say it properly, no matter how much I try. And miniature, I know I'm saying it wrong, but have to really think about it, otherwise it comes out as "mini-at-chure" (I blame this one on grandad pig and Gertrude his "miniature" locomotive) as that's all I can ever think of when I see the word 😄

I believe some Americans use that pronunciation of dahlia. It's quite a logical pronunciation.

I agree that for many people, dour does rhyme with sour and that's quite correct. It sounds very old fashioned RP to rhyme it with tour, to my ear at least.

When I was very young, I thought Penelope was Penvelope.

I once got really badly shamed for saying precis wrong. I won't forget that in a hurry.

I recently corrected someone for saying gar-rish (gar like a pirate would say) instead of garish though so I've managed to pass the shame on to someone else 😁

I say almond - all mund, but lots of people seem to say ah mund.

When I was about 7 I can remember saying determined as deter-mind-ed in my head when I was reading.

A work colleague pronounces ibuprofen as eye-bup-ruh-fn rather than eye-bew-pro-fen