Mispronounced words that drive you mad

[puds11]

Just overheard someone ordering an ‘expresso’

What mispronounced words drive you mad?

Secetary instead of secretary

Particularly bad on Radio 4, their employees should know better.

How SHOULD you say turmeric?! When I buy it I call it haldi.

Yacht pronounced "ya-cht" instead of "yot".

This was by an english teacher.

*Any-think instead of anything angry same for nuthink rather than nothing.

That's not wrong, but a common feature of a Birmingham/Black Country accent.*

No it's not. People just remove the g if anything.

The only person I've ever heard use anything similar was from Redditch and they used 'fink'

Oh that's interesting about 'empathetic instead of empathic'. I've always used empathetic and have just looked it up. It appears that both were uncommon until 1940, when empathic took off. Empathetic started to become popular in the 1960s. Empathic is still slightly 'ahead' but empathetic is catching up.

What I find very weird, is when people say they're 'an empath', which as far as I'm aware is some kind of psychic alien on Star Trek. I think they mean that they're very empathetic. (Usually they are not). The confusion makes more sense if their usual useage would be 'empathic'.

Turmeric is turmeric rather than tumeric. It's just about including that first 'r'. People who miss it out usually emphasise the fact by saying 'tue' as in Tuesday.

@Drizzzle - it's just our family joke way of saying it. In public I'd say forehead

Mis-CHEEV-EE-ous drives me mad! And yes I know it’s language change and also I can see how it’s happened (because of other words like devious, previous etc) and we’ll probably all be saying it by 2040. But still when someone says it I think “fuckwit!”

“this-shear” from news reporters. i.e. this year.

And that kind of posh accent where people ca’t say an “oo” sound and it comes out as “ee”. Presenter I was watching recently said something was “apseleetly byeetifil” aargh.

lottie totally agree about self-proclaimed “empaths” . If you were that much of an “empath” you might realise you’re making people feel like you’re a twat.

I’ve been thinking about empathy recently because I have a family member like this. Going on about how painfully empathic they are (they’re really not). I think deciding you experience others’ pain doesn’t actually mean you care about them, and is maybe just yet another way to virtue-signal.

Yes, I think self-proclaimed empaths are more like 'emotion-suckers', seeking to claim other people's fellings, usually pain, as their own. Emotional vampires is the term, isn't it.

My son, who is in the army, says LOOtenant, and there's no telling him any different! 🥵

Ama-tcher for Amateur

Also uninterested and disinterested are two different concepts. Lots of MPs were mangling those recently.

As to disinterested/uninterested, actually, the "not interested" meaning of disinterested is older than the "impartial" meaning of the word going back as far as 1600 or so. It shifted later and grammarians began to insist on a distinction between the two. The meaning is now shifting back. "Dis" and "un" mean essentially the same thing. It's different meanings of "interest" that keep the distinction alive.

Crips.
It really grates on me. The word is crisp.
It's even worse when the person is buying a bag of cripses 🤦‍♀️

Lootenant is an acceptable American pronunciation that is actually closer to the original French.

I'm glad you said that daisypond I was starting to doubt myself.

Tuth instead of tooth.
Bulcany instead of balcony
Toona instead of tuna

Nuclear pronounced nucular, arrrh

Chewsday instead of Tuesday.

Marshmellow.

I came on to say EXpresso 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Could of
Should of
Would of

There's a lot of examples in this thread where the PP are saying "it's not wrong, that's how it's said here".

Just because you're all doing it, doesn't make it right

Not really the same but when people say I writ it down. Argh!

@FalalalalaloreanFortescue "Just because you're all doing it, doesn't make it right"

Well, language being what it is, unfortunately it does make it right. Go see the depressing acknowledgment of the change in "literally" in the OED just a few years ago.

Language is fluid, and what more people use does indeed become correct. If "correct" is really a useful term anyway.

It's all just meat flapping and blowing, in the end.

"Just because you're all doing it, doesn't make it right grin"

Well, it does actually. That's how languages change, even if Spoon thinks it's sad. You don't tell people to call an apron a napron because that's the old word, do you?

Got to be sad about losing the correct use of "literally". Now you have to say "literally, for realsies, proper like actually so, I mean it". It's rubbish.