Boyfriend corrects my pronunciation

[Onetoomanytimes]

This has happened quite a few times over the course of our two year relationship, most recently this evening. I wouldn’t say I’m below average intelligence, equally not the sharpest tool by any means

Each time he had corrected me I’ve brushed it off and thought ‘oh well at least I know for future’. Tonight it hit a nerve for some reason. I mispronounced a word during dinner, a fairly commonly used word, fair enough I said it wrong. However he understood what I had said, so it didn’t affect the conversation in any way, but he repeated the word back to me correctly afterwards which made me lose my train of thought for the conversation, which inwardly pissed me off. I didn’t say anything as we were out and I wanted to enjoy my meal but I was noticeably quieter afterwards.

It doesn’t happen often, maybe once every couple of months or so. It is quite possible that I’m being over sensitive about it, as I’m sure he doesn’t mean it maliciously and just wants me to not sound like an idiot.

I kind of wish I could think of something quick-witted to say back to him when he does this but I tend to feel too defensive.

I’d find that condescending too. The good-etiquette way to do it is ignore the mispronounce and say it correctly in your own sentence later - helps the person out without humiliating them. Just completely ignoring other people’s grammar/pronunciation errors is also a viable strategy. That he makes a point of it suggests he likes to be perceived as the smart one and establish a status difference between you. I am unconvinced - if you mispronounced a word it means you learned it by reading. Well done on being highly literate.

If he does it again, perhaps make it more obvious what impact it has - ‘oh, now I’ve lost my train of thought because you had to correct my pronunciation in the middle of it. That was a bit pedantic and unnecessary, don’t you think?’

Once every couple of months is quite often. Do you really mispronounce that many words? Or is he correcting your perfectly acceptable accent or dialect? If so, he’s a dick 🤷🏻‍♀️

If it’s genuine mispronunciations and this is his only bad point, you need to decide if you want to be told - and if so, how? (immediately vs at a pause point)

I work with an international team and I’m regularly asked to correct if I notice - I never do it immediately.

My exh would do this all the time and it drove me nuts, he used 'big' words to try and sound intelligent, but would either mispronounce or use the wrong word. It is condescending to pick you up on this, in the way he does op, but it can be annoying if you're using the wrong words in the wrong context or mispronounce

My dh did this to me recently. I felt really stupid as I’ve been saying the word wrong all my life! However, he doesn’t do it too often & it was during an argument.

Am I pronouncing shut the f up correctly? 🤣

I agree with the above post. Why does he feel the need to correct you all the time?

oh gawd, my husband does this to me, it's very annoying!

Tell him to fick uff.

Is it the word segue?

I joke. I find the more you read, the more likely you are to pronounce words incorrectly, because the higher chance you’ll have read them first rather than heard them spoken.

That’s my excuse. I mispronounce everything except segue, which my husband gets wrong but refuses to believe it!

...if you said Pacific instead of Specific then be glad he just corrected you instead of divorcing you xD

But if he feels the need to correct you regularly then he's maybe a bit of a prick.

Opening self for humiliation, but... how do you pronounce 'segue'?

Is it like 'seg-way'?

I'm the arsehole who always corrects pronunciation. Can't help it. It's like an internal firework goes off and I have to correct it.

I think it depends on how it is done. Do you correct him on anything? DH sometimes corrects me but I also correct him.

Personally I would rather someone I'm that close to tells me I've made a mistake, it saves embarrassing myself in public.

That said, if he is routinely patronising to you (or even of you just don't like it) you need to tell him firmly.

Ugh. I dated a guy for a few months who did this and he definitely did this to feel superior. The difference was, I have moved around a lot and pick up accents/dialects/colloquialisms easily, and sometimes get them mixed up. He would pause after I finished a sentence and just repeat really slowly the "correct" way of saying the word (for where he had lived all his life). I felt it was deliberately not letting me get above my station, and it it came from a position of insecurity as I was more well read and highly educated compared to him (not a stealth boast).

Are they genuine mispronunciations, or just a regional accent thing? DH does the latter to me (I’m from Derbyshire, he’s from Surrey) and it used to bother me but now I just roll my eyes, and say “alright Henry Higgins!”

I’ve heard the thing about mispronunciations being a sign of being widely read too, and having encountered vocabulary on paper before hearing it spoken.

@MizMoonshine

I'm the arsehole who always corrects pronunciation. Can't help it. It's like an internal firework goes off and I have to correct it.

You could help it, you just don’t want to.

depends on the words, if he worries you would look stupid using it in front of work mates/boss, then yes, best to tell you the correct pronounciation of words. Why would you keep letting someone say it wrong.

I said to my boss that "you do know that word isn't pronounced at all like that" when someone else was telling him what to say in a talk he was doing later. (ie was hyperbole which the first person had said like - hyper-bowl). Boss probably did know it wasn't said like that but i didn;t want to run the risk of him sounding daft in a big meeting.

Are you a native English speaker and do you have children? Our children have started correcting my foreign partner's English.

It's a tricky one to get the balance between learning and annoying.

Interesting point about learning words by reading rather than hearing. I prefer to learn by reading and have mispronounced words because of it. A recent one was 'bezel'. I thought it was bee-zel

What was the word?

I would rather know I’d said something wrong, to be honest.

It wouldn’t bug me (if he was right). It’s useful to have the correct pronunciation.

I was about 20 before I realised chasm isn’t pronounced with a ch sound.

Urgh my ex husband used to do this. It always made me feel small. I now realise he did it to make himself feel better as I was more intelligent than him and it pained him.