To NOT say Miss-CHEE-vee-ous?

[MerryMarigold]

So ds1 AND ds2 both claim 'Mischievous' is pronounced thus. I do not say it like this and it is causing problems for ds1 who struggles in spelling at the best of times (it's on the Y6 spelling list ). He keeps spelling it 'Mischievious'. I have told him if he said it properly he would probably spell it right, but he (and ds2) said 'all the teachers' say it this way, so now I am doubting the way I was brought up by my well-spoken (but occasionally mistaken) Mother.

She says, and I learnt, 'MISS-cha-fus' (stress on first vowel and ending like 'superfluous'). Is that wrong?

I think I could just about handle 'Miss-CHEE-vous', but not with the extra 'ee' in it.

So, what do you say? And are you right?

You are correct. As is the pronunciation of con -TROV- ersee.

I think of con TROV ersy as American - Eminem "we need a little controversy" and controversy as English, to match controversial. So interested to see I might have just imagined that!

Still... sKedule or sHedule?!

Just because something's been done since the 17th Century, that doesn't mean it can't be annoying.

Notsure, if it should be written 'mischievous' in school papers, I think it should be pronounced correctly in school too.

Is it wrong that I thought they were two different words with the same meaning?

Merry - If that's how his teachers are saying it (as your post says your DC state), you need to take it up with them, not your DCs. Telling them their teachers are wrong is an unfair message to be giving them.

A better way to deal with the misspelling issue would be to come up with a mnemonic (Think 'Richard of York Gained Battle In Vain' for colours of the rainbow etc.).

You are right. The stress is on the first syllable as in MISS...etc.

I use both depending on context. Sorry!

Mis-Chie (as clearly that part is agreed upon) vacuumed our ugly socks
Mis-Chie values orange unicorn socks
Mis-Chie vetoed orange umbrella shoes

...or the like.....

Well, that killed an hour.

Thanks OP!

ConTROVersy is the US pronunciation. It's become the norm though. UK is CONtroversy.

You're completely right about mischievous OP.

To a pp - I think it IS iss-you and tiss-you. I pronounce them with a 'sh' in the middle though. I am irretrievably common...

Merchant - guess it depends on the source: dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/issue (Ish-oo)

Common as muck here too :)

You're correct. Your kids are wrong.

Don't give in to it.

Absolutely loads of words have changed in spelling and pronunciation over centuries- often many times for a single word. So it's not highly signicant that mischievous has been spelled and pronounced differently in times past.
There's only one way to pronounce 'ous'. To make an extra syllable it would need to have another vowel in it

Yanbu I hate this too! Heard it read on a cbeebies story time the wrong way once (several years ago I don't hold a grudge honest) so clearly it's a common irritating as fuck mistake.

Notsure, if I took everything up with the teachers i'd be a right nightmare. I stick to actual spelling mistakes on homework from teachers rather than debatable pronunciation mistakes! 'Haitch' and 'pacific' are other major bugbears of mine, but I just correct them at home. Teachers aren't perfect like parents, they may as well learn that sometimes mum knows better than the teacher!

I mean teachers aren't perfect and neither are parents. They learn stuff at school I couldn't teach them and likewise I am to know some things the teachers don't.

Caz323, pronunciation is also on the y6 spelling list!!

Mip,mip,mip - in which contexts do you use the different pronunciations?

It's actually quite an old fashioned word. I never hear anyone use it these days.

Sorry I didn't come back to you Merry. The answer is... I don't know! There's quite a lot of words that I pronounce differently depending on what I'm saying. But then I am weird.

Our cat is Mischief and I've never been sure if it's pronounced Miss-Chief or Miff-Chuff , but he only answers to Mischa (Mee-sha) anyway!

MISS-chee-v'ss = correct;

MisCHEEvous or MisCHEEvious = very common, acceptable according to some dictionaries, but really not the correct version!

Also tiss-you / iss-you are the correct, albeit very middle-class sounding.

The people who say tiss-you rather than tish-you tend to be the same ones who say Mun-dee, Tyoos-dee, etc, rather than Munday, Choosday.

And I'm one of them! Although in certain situations I try to remember to tone down the middle-class pronunciations a little bit, since I'm aware they irritate quite a lot of people

Merry, I entirely agree about 'haitch' and 'pacific'.

I briefly worked as a TA in a Primary School, and it bothered me that several teachers would say 'pacific' and 'would of' instead of 'specific' and 'would have'. Not a helpful contribution towards teaching grammar and spelling!

You are correct.

I can't stand miss-CHEE-vee-us. The word comes from 'mischief', and ends in 'ous', not 'ious'. It's MISS-che-vus.

The people who say tiss-you rather than tish-you tend to be the same ones who say Mun-dee, Tyoos-dee, etc, rather than Munday, Choosday

I'd agree that Choosday is not sloppy pron and it should be Tyoosday.

But why on earth should days of the week be pronounced ending in 'dee'? They're days, not dees.