English words you have mispronounced for a long time

[Sojourner]

My next door neighbor says "libary" instead of library. When I was a kid, I said "chester drawers" instead of chest of drawers. I also said "res-PIE-t" instead of respite. Several people I know say "expresso" instead of espresso. And many people I know confidently say "real-a-tor" instead of realtor.

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

Archipelago.

 

[sengsational]

I pronounce "aluminum" as al-you-MIN-ee-um, just for fun. In fact, around the house, I pronounce a lot of words in a way other than I would pronounce them in a more serious context.

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

My wife pronounces "towels" as "talls". No amount of correction by our children would get her to change.

May I ask where she grew up? I grew up saying that in Philadelphia. I have lived elsewhere for 40 years, and hve gradually lost that one, but it was a struggle.

 

[Tetto]

I recently became aware that the Carole King song "Jazzman" wasn't Jasmine.....

 

[Gumby]

Often true. But try these:

cubetti di ghiaccio che si sciolgono (Cubes of melting ice)

cinquecentocinquantacinque (555)

or "gli" -- gli Stati Uniti (the United States)



-BB

koo betty dee (hard g)ee a cheeoh kay see shee ol go no

ching kway chen toe ching kwan ta ching kway

almost but not quite "yee"


Admittedly not easy until you know the language, but to my knowledge, the same combination of letters is always pronounced the same way, unlike English.

 

[Beldar]

Strategery...

 

[Qs Laptop]

May I ask where she grew up? I grew up saying that in Philadelphia. I have lived elsewhere for 40 years, and hve gradually lost that one, but it was a struggle.

Minneapolis, MN. She got the pronunciation from her mother, a woman of German ethnicity that grew up in North Dakota. (I know it makes no sense...) Thankfully, our children pronounce it correctly.

 

[braumeister]

Where I grew up in Brooklyn, many people still used some of the stereotypical pronunciations:

Toilet = terlet
Oil = erl
Boil = berl

My mother made sure to correct me whenever I slipped and used one of those, but I still come out with a New York pronunciation like kawfee for coffee when I'm tired.

 

[Gumby]

Ah, but there are different dialects all over Italy, so it's not quite so simple.

The ones that utterly defeat me are Irish and Welsh.

I should have specified Standard Italian. I'm acquainted with some of the dialects, such as the propensity for people in the Mezzogiorno to turn "c" into "g" , "s" into "sh", and to drop the final vowel.

 

[MichaelB]

Where I grew up in Brooklyn, many people still used some of the stereotypical pronunciations:

Toilet = terlet
Oil = erl
Boil = berl

My mother made sure to correct me whenever I slipped and used one of those, but I still come out with a New York pronunciation like kawfee for coffee when I'm tired.

Reminds me of Archie Bunker.

I grew up in the NY/Ct area and moved to Chicago at 13.75, where I was promptly diagnosed with a speech disorder and assigned therapy. One of the few times I saw my mum loose her patience and get angry at school employees - she had to explain the difference between an accent and a defect.

And then there’s this memorable scene

 

[NW-Bound]

Very interesting to read about people admitting mispronouncing the word "misled".

As a non-native English speaker, I make a lot of mistakes, but not that one, because I recognize the prefix mis-, and then the word -led as the passive form of the verb lead.

With facade, it'd be helpful if we retained the cedilla in honor of the word's French etymology: façade. We won't, though, just like we don't retain the accents aigu on résumé.

Until now, I had also pronounced affluent with the emphasis on the first syllable, but Google says the second syllable. I suspect the reason is that effluent - different word but with nearly identical spelling - is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable.

With the word façade, I am helped by my much-atrophied knowledge of French, which I learned before English.

But I learned about the correct annunciation of affluent just now. Thanks.

PS. A check on the Web says that both forms of pronunciation are acceptable, with the stress on the first syllable being more common.


https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/affluent

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2006/11/how-do-you-say-affluent.html

 

[SecondCor521]

Well, and then there's grammar, which I think CNN just messed up in their headline here:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2022/03/09/endurance-shackleton-ship-antarctic-lon-orig-tp.cnn

(I thought the correct usage would be "sank".)

 

[skyking1]

Ah, but there are different dialects all over Italy, so it's not quite so simple.

The ones that utterly defeat me are Irish and Welsh.

Welsh is delightful to listen to, if you don't need to know what is actually going on.
We were in Wales on a few day trip, and every night we went to a nearby pub in a small village. The proprietress had been to Italy and fell in love with real pizza, and imported a proper oven and served great pies.
We sat in the empty dining room and played cards and ate pizza, and listened to the locals in the pub through the doorway. It was mostly unintelligible but for a scattering of words like "computer" that had no gaelic equivalent.

 

[Gumby]

...

Until now, I had also pronounced affluent with the emphasis on the first syllable, but Google says the second syllable. I suspect the reason is that effluent - different word but with nearly identical spelling - is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable.

Merriam Webster disagrees with Google and agrees with you and me. The accent normally is on the first syllable, although it acknowledges that it could be on the second.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/affluent

 

[ProspectiveBum]

Until now, I had also pronounced affluent with the emphasis on the first syllable, but Google says the second syllable. I suspect the reason is that effluent - different word but with nearly identical spelling - is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable.

That’s a pretty clever hypothesis for the difference in pronunciation. I’d bet you’re right.

 

[Aerides]

I grew up in the NY/Ct area and moved to Chicago at 13.75, where I was promptly diagnosed with a speech disorder and assigned therapy. One of the few times I saw my mum loose her patience and get angry at school employees - she had to explain the difference between an accent and a defect.

My sister was 9, and in our first few months after moving here from England, her teacher pulled that on her! And we didn't even have complex regional accents.

I have been known to fib after a mispronunciation with "well that's how we said it in England"...from time to time.

 

[KCGeezer]

I'm Canadian and when I was a kid thought that Arkansas was pronounced "Are Kansas".

Surprisingly that’s the correct pronunciation for the river. Well, at least for me.

 

[Chuckanut]

Click and Clack, the car talk guys, tell the story of a young man trying to help his mother by fixing her car. However, he needed a tool he did not have. So his prime and proper mother goes to the local hardware store and gets very embarrassed asking the clerk for a 'rat sh!@t' wrench.

After a few laughs they figured it out and she brought home the ratchet wrench.

 

[timbervest]

One of my friends used to say he was "gruntled", the opposite of disgruntled...

Gruntled is actually a word although perhaps archaic

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gruntle

Classic of course are the many misheard lyrics of "Rock the Casbah" by the Clash ("lock the cashbox", "knock the catbox", "block the taskbar" etc.)

 

[skyking1]

+2 for bringing the Tappet Twins into the convo

 

[aja8888]

After WWII, my dad got back home (thankfully) and Mom and I were living with grandma in a "coal company house" in Pittston, PA while he was at war. I only spoke Lithuanian as a 4 year old as that's what Mom and grandma spoke.

That worked until we moved to Connecticut and I was sent to grade school. I was promptly sent home as I could not speak English like all the other kids. I recall Dad taking me to visit my first cousins and spending time with them to learn English. While not much of this time in my life is re-callable to me, somehow I made it and even got an engineering degree and MBA in finance some years later.

Even today I have trouble with some English words, especially spelling them correctly. But, then again, I am now an Old Fart, and shouldn't be required to be able to spell most anything anymore.

 

[tmm99]

I'm Canadian and when I was a kid thought that Arkansas was pronounced "Are Kansas".

I wonder if this is a Canadian thing too...? A friend of mine in Canada: "I have relatives in 'Ore-Gone'. Maybe that's the way the people in OR say it too; not sure.

 

[rodi]

The one that stands out in my memory the strongest is the word 'awry'

Of course I knew what it meant - but I thought there were two separate words - when I read it, in my head it was "ahhw-ree'. But in conversation I knew it was uh-rye. (Phonetics aren't my strong suit). I had no idea they were the same word I'd just been mispronouncing it in my head when reading, for years.

I'm sure there are more - I was (still am) an avid reader when I was young. So my vocabulary of words I'd learned through reading was probably larger than my words learned through conversation when I was in elementary and middle school...

 

[W2R]

I really don't know what to post here. If I *knew* I was mispronouncing a word, then I probably wouldn't continue mispronouncing it, would I?

Assuming, of course, that I wasn't on a crusade to change the pronunciation.

If somebody tells me I am pronouncing a word incorrectly, I refuse to believe that until I have verified that my pronunciation is absolutely incorrect. Then I'd change it.

I still say "Kee-EV" for Kiev, although apparently "Keev" is more acceptable lately. But I checked online and both pronunciations are still used. I have pronounced it "Kee-EV" for over half a century so it's going to be hard to get me to change.