Can you get me some Euthanasia tablets?

[OdeToTheNorthWestWind]

Just seen a slightly rattled friend, whose 88 year old mother made the request. After a bit of gentle questioning, she promised to buy her mum some Echinacea tablets to fend off winter bugs, the next time she is in town. 😄

What strange requests have you had?

I thought falafel was pronounced fal ah fell

Me too!

I also read epitome as eppytome. I knew the word epitome when said outloud. In my head, but didn’t connect the dots until I was 30+, eppytome and epitome were the same thing.

Hyperbole is, and probably always will be, pronounced "hyper-bowl" in my family. We can't even remember who said it that way first.

I always read 'halcyon' as hally kon, so I wasn't even getting the order of letters right.

I thought segue was pronounced seeg and was a totally different word to segway.

I once read a quote that went something like, 'Don't mock someone if they pronounce a word incorrectly, because it means they've learned it through reading.' I liked that!

Wait…….its not pronounced hyper bowl???

That Is very true.
However it betrays a bit of a double standard if people are mocked for trying to write a word or phrase they’ve heard but never come across in writing. Not normal words and grammar you’d hope everyone would have come across but more unusual ones. Not everyone is raised with an abundance of books and encouraged to read widely.

Some spellings are pretty arbitrary, just whatever got crystallised from the fluidity of spoken language into a dictionary.

I was just about to write this! I thought it was hyper-bowl.

High PER Bo Lee

Found out after thinking it was hyper bowl too

I thought Alumni was pronounced a-loo-min-eye!

Blame the Greeks - hyperbole, epitome etc are like Penelope and Hermione

As a small child my mum told my gran that she couldn't go to school as she has 'very close veins'

That reminds me of when my son brought me home a card he'd made at school on Valentine's Day when he was 5 or 6, saying 'Happy Veins Day'.

These are hilarious 🤣
my Nan was worried about a dog across the road as he was ‘one of those big Rockafellers
(Rottweiler)
apparently on holiday in Greece when I was ten, I wouldn’t try the fried octopus as I didn’t like ‘all their little testicles sticking in the air’

My very elderly aunt admired the “gangerees” (dungarees) my daughter was wearing. And thought “mangolia “ was a lovely colour to paint her sitting room.

I'm sure about half of these never happened...

I've read this one before but I think it's my favourite.

So segue is pronounced “segway”? I am 53, consider myself educated and well read and thought they were two different words. I’m in shock! 😆

I didn’t know how to pronounce segue until about 7 years ago.

English spelling is very peculiar and irregular. Even allowing for this, I don’t think many native English speakers would ever pronounce segue as Segway at the first pass. It’s an unnatural cluster of vowels and consonants, and the ue letter cluster never makes a “waaay”
sound.

Se- goo was my guess before I knew the acceptable pronunciation.

Se goo😂

It’s a very odd word.
Fugue, league ..it should surely just be like the first syllable of ‘seagull’.
though seg-ew would make sense analogous to ague

A friend went on a walking tour on which the guide told the group that Laurence Olivier led the Arab Revolt. My friend said, "don't you mean Lawrence of Arabia?" "No", the guide insisted, "Laurence Olivier". My friend, a military history buff, was aghast. But I have to admit that had I been on the tour, I wouldn't even have noticed...

Pawn and porn are completely distinguishable in my accent.

One of my DDs came home from school.one day at age 4 and told me there was a new girl in her class, named Catholic. She and Cathleen eventually became friends.