about people who pronounce cayenne "kye-ann"

[GrandTheftQuarto]

They should all be shot.

See also: chewmeric, cardamon, and cummin.

Yes I know this is unreasonable. Especially for cummin.

[BringMeTea]

Oh Perpendicular are you referring to my 'graph' post? Got confused for a moment. Incidentally, I have seen another thread on here about mispronunciation where a poster was chipping in about their dislike of mispronounciation and noone callled them on it. I like to think it was manners.

[Pip]

Car-tune always makes me laugh.
Kept waking in the night and thinking of random words that people regularly mispronounce. Of course I've forgotten them upon waking!
I once worked with a girl who regularly talked about the 'army corpse'.

It's definitely 'curcumin', I know because I have to buy tons of the stuff for my mother which costs a small fortune (helps her Myeloma and makes chemo more efficient apparently)!

This thread has made me laugh so much. And I've realised that I've been saying 'marshmellow' my whole life...

[MademoiselleG]

isnt't it 'kurkuMA' rather than 'curcumin'?

bringmetea

[Gautami]

bringmetea

[BringMeTea]

I think you'll find 'Livin' on a prayer' is a car-tune.

[Pip]

Cartoon?

Car-toon or car-tune?

[Pip]

How about curcumin?
Kur-cumin or kur-su-min?

[GrandTheftQuarto]

Saying wallah is okay by me - it sounds like that to me sometimes when French people say it anyway. French pronunciation is weird. I once completely confused a waitress by only slightly gurgling at the end of biere. She said, "Ah, bieeerrrcccrccccrrrccccchgcgggcchre!" Spelling voila as wallah or wa-lah or whatever (other than on pronunciation threads) should, of course, be a capital offence

[Fishandjam]

I used to know someone who said "wallah" after things. Baffled me a lot until I realised she meant "voila".

And I still snurk at the (well educated, professional) mum who always referred to those big useful squares of cloth as "muslims". I thought she was being funny, but no. She asked me once to pass her one, I handed it over with the words "allahu akhbar", and I got the tumbleweed response.

[LLJ4]

DH's presence reminds me he says oll-monds instead of ah-monds.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

Oh, ok, I can see the i sound, I was thinking of a hard 'y' for some reason.

I'm not objecting to the spelling at all - just don't think it's the only one, and I suspect I partly say it 'short' because I spell it short.

MrsK - I know someone who says 'barzaaamic'. She thinks it's very the posh way.

[LLJ4]

-yee- comes from an elision of -ee-ee-. Linguists use the letter [i] for both the y and the ee.

And yes it is a squished ae which doesn't show on my phone unless I download another keyboard and probably wouldn't work anyway.

I do little medieval now (and that's how I prefer to spell it) but the first half of my degree had Mediaeval in the title so as you can imagine I've typed and written it many times!

[MrsKravitzFromAcrossTheStreet]

That reminds me, my DM uses bal-SARM-ic vinegar while I use ball-SAM-ic.

[MademoiselleG]

I have a friend who really loves BASMATI vinegar on her salad.

(A bit beside the point of this thread, but never fails to make me chuckle!)

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I am fine with REN-assonse and Re-NE-sanse.

Though the former does make me think of fairs rather than history.

[SconeRhymesWithGone]

And then there's "renaissance." When I was a student in the UK many years ago, I really tried to avoid having to deal with the difference in US and British pronunciation of this word, but that proved a bit difficult in that I was studying early modern European history.

[GrandTheftQuarto]

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

Ahhh, that might explain it, as lots of my colleagues are American and I could well have picked up their pronunciation.

I like playing amateur linguist too. And I'm always fascinated by what you say about US language.

[SconeRhymesWithGone]

Thanks, Jeanne and everyone else who answered. As much time as I spend playing amateur linguist, I was not aware that the "wine/whine" merge was so predominant. It seems that the majority of English speakers merge the sounds, with the main exceptions being people from the US South, Scotland, and Ireland.

I say "med-evil," but in my accent the "med" sounds more like "mid."

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

It does for me. I'm a medievalist.

[CalamitouslyWrong]

I would pronounce it med-ee-evil. It doesn't come up often in conversation though.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

Thanks, LLJ. All I know is, the way she does it has too many letters in! I think strictly it's an ae joined together.

I don't like 'med-yee-vul' - where does the 'y' sound come from?

[BringMeTea]

Ha LLJ4. Regardless of spelling, pretty sure it is still meddi-eeval. You are correct. I always preferred the 'media' spelling as an undergraduate. (Not had much call for writing it since).

[LLJ4]

My mum would still spell it medieaval (and has corrected me gently on this point).

::cough:: mediaeval ::cough::

Medieval is surely pronounced med-ee-ee-vul or med-yee-vul if you're quick.