Just based on how often I notice someone mispronounce a word without realizing it (or have done so myself and realized it later). Statistically I’m probably still doing it with some word.
Welcome to the world of Irish names!
We got:
- Dearbhla (Derv-la, f)
- caoilfhionn (kee-lin, f)
- Meadhbh (Maeve, f)
- Saoirse (seer-shuh, f)
- Seoirse (shor-shuh, m)
- Caoimhín (kee-veen, m)
- Sadhbh (sive, f)
And many more!
Hope do you pronounce Siobhan?
Shuh-vawn
My American accent pronounces it “Shove-on”.
There’s meant to be a fada over the a (á), so it’s definitely meant to be a longer vowel sound.
Take the name Sean for example. Spelled like that it’s actually pronounced shan, and means old. The name that we all pronounce as Shawn is actually spelled Seán
The name that we all pronounce as Shawn is actually spelled Seán
And, fun fact, is the Irish version of the Hebrew name Yohanan (יוֹחָנָן) from which we get John and Jean and Jehan and Johan and Shane and Juan and many other variants!
Everybody’s named John. All the way back. There is only one name, just lots of different spellings and pronunciations.
It actually helps a little if you realize the Russian letter В is pronounced like an English V.
We should re-do Romanization. Start over, sound it out, have a big Anglosphere conference to decide on what letters make what noise and stick to it.
Many of the slavic romanizations have largely centralised on strict roman phonetics. There are still exceptions, but many of them can be sounded out with a bit of learning.
Yeah. English doesn’t use the “bh” and “dh” digraphs the same way we use “th”, but Irish does. One you learn that, that’s like 80-90% of the confusion.
My Irish cousin-in-law recently had a daughter and named her Blathnaid. I was very surprised to learn it is pronounced Bla-nid
Worcestershire
I believe it’s pronounced “wstr”
Close, that’s Worcester. Worcestershire is “wstrshr”!
Woosta! :)
Wuss-ter
Wuss-ter-sheer
The whole word is silent
sauce?
That one isn’t silent
And nearby Leominster
Lemon Stir
And Cirencester
and Towcester (“toaster”)
Map Men have a few more examples
Sern Stir?
It’s pronounced “siren sester”.
“-cester” is usually pronounced “stir”, I’d assume then “Sir In Stir” if I got the first part wrong
It’s English. The only rule is that actually in some cases the rules are different.
Wash your sister sauce
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There’s a Worcester in Massachusetts, local pronunciation rhymes with sister (which is in turn said like “sista”)
One of my friends once called me pedantic, and I got to correct his pronunciation of it - he stressed the first syllable. One of the high points of my life.
Someone is peDANTic, but they themselves are a PEdant. Probably why they made that mistake
But did they say Ped-ant or PEE-dant?
Like how we can reCORD some music and release a a REcord
Or make some COMpost by putting those scraps in the comPOST
I still put scraps into the COMpost, but only the comPOSTable scraps.
I had a similar thing with the word contrarian!
Ghoti
I remember this one! They’re was another one as well which I’ve sadly forgotten. I believe I tried to make a couple up myself once upon a time.
Ha I don’t even know what that is so I will never say it.
GH is pronounced F like in “enough”.
O is pronounced E like on “women”.
TI is pronounced SH like in “action”.
Therefore, ghoti is pronounced fish.
You CAN pronounce it fish, but you can also just simply not pronounce it.
GH is pronounced _ like in high.
O is pronounced _ like in jeopardy.
T is pronounced _ like in potpourri.
I is pronounced _ like in receive.
Therefore, ghoti is completely silent.
Fun fact: every letter except V can be pronounced silently.
That’s interesting! How about Q?
Lacquer. (Which I believe is the only word in English with a silent Q. Proper nouns don’t count.)
Do you mean stuff like acquire? There are a good bunch of ‘cq’ words.
T is pronounced _ like in potpourri.
Kind of a cop-out, since that’s a straight-up French loanword. “Soften” would be better. Or “often,” if not for the fact that it’s so commonly mispronounced.
True! I just remembered that there was a way to make the whole word silent but didn’t remember the T bit so I looked it up. This was the first example. Soften is much better!
for fuck’s sake
For me it isn’t “some” word it is “many, many” words.
charcuterie (shar-KOO-terr-ee) (TIL)
potable (POH-tah-bull)
prerogative (preh-ROG-ah-tiv) – wait, wat? Damn. I say it (pur-OHG-ah-tiv)
preternatural (pree-ter-NAT-chur-al)
remuneration (reh-myoo-ner-AY-shun) – I’m not admitting how I say it lol
surprise - let’s just say I spelled it suprise for ages. sigh
victual (vittle) - wait, that’s how you spell it??
Indefatigable (IN-dih-FA-tih-gə-bl) not in-dee-fa-TEEG-able
Primer: \PRIMM-er\ – small book / short informative piece of writing. (Brits can use long-i for both the paint undercoat and the book).
Mischievous: \MISS-chuh-vuss\ though mis-CHEE-vee-us is a non standard alternate pronunciation.
Interlocutor: \in tuhr LOCK you tore. I had no idea how to pronounce this so I never said it.
I think some “mispronunciations” are down to regional pronunciation. Like, I say miniature as MIN-ih-chure by habit though I’m well aware of how it’s spelled and “should” be pronounced. I swear that’s how I heard it growing up.
Maybe it isn’t regional and it is just me. That would explain some things lol.
And uh, yeah I have a bunch more, some I know but am forgetting at the moment. Undoubtedly I mispronounce many more while having no idea. What must people think of me? Lol
Look, I was on board until you started throwing out made up words like preternatural, victual, and indefatigable, then I knew you were pulling my leg.
Horatio Hornblower would like a word if you think Indefatigable is a made up word!
In war we’re tough and able [steps on cat]
Quite indefatigable
Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate Clark Gable
Clearly pronounced in-de-fa-tee-gable
But many times, they’re given rhymes that are quite un-sing-able.
Looks like you’re mainly struggling with words of french origin, which is fair, the language is fucked up.
TIL it’s “prerogative”…
I’m American and have never heard “prim-er” I’ve always heard “prime-er”.
I say miniture when it’s an adjective like a smallish thing, but mini-a-ture when I’m using it as a noun, like the pieces used in tabletop gaming.
The only time I have actually heard someone use indefatigable is in the Monty python, where they intentionally pronounce it wrong
victual (vittle)
I knew that “vittle” was from the word “victual,” but I never knew that they were actually pronounced the same!
Mischievous: \MISS-chuh-vuss\ though mis-CHEE-vee-us is a non standard alternate pronunciation.
I hate that alternate pronunciation. How do you get “vee-us” from “vous”?
Idk. Likely some people misheard or misread it way back and then repeated.to others and it spread. How does any word change over time, right?
/prəˈrɒgətɪv/ Huh. I guess usually when a schwa and a rhotic is involved, my dialect drops it. I pronounce it /prˈrɒgətɪv/ which could be romanized to pur-ROH-guh-tiv. But there’s no actual separation between the u and the r there.
Interesting. I find the combination of rhotic - schwa - rhotic rather awkward. That could explain why it is commonly mispronounced.
its aluminium
I’ll concede aluminium when the Brits adopt platinium
theyll adopt aluminum as soon as you wrap your lips around a fag
Don’t threaten ME with a good time.
[dies of smoke inhalation]
Only if you trust the French more than the guy who named it.
i do. coughs in jpg
aluminum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium
tomato tomato lets call the whole thing off!
oh what, that’s an actual spelling? I was just saying that
Yes, “aluminum” is the original, and “aluminium” was later adopted to make it sound more Latin.
really its just geographic thing. i prefer the european version
Are you European?
No I’m not European, bein’ all I can
I’ve been waiting 31 years for that question
nope
I was like 25 when I found out it was wheelbarrow and not wheelbarrel
It’s pronounced ‘gif’
The German girl Ginger gave George gross gelatin.
Giblet
Jiraffe
/ʒaɪf/
Gnocchi
Not exactly related to the question, but as a non-native English speaker, whenever I read something related to weights in imperial, e.g., 150 lbs, my mind reads it as 150 lubes.
I know it’s pounds, if I would read it out loud, I would say pounds cause I’m not a weirdo (well…). But still, my internal monologue has lbs = lubes
I feel you. My inner voice reads this as “libs”.
Elbs
I love your brain
I love your brain
Right? I’m a native English speaker (Aussie, so…loosely native English speaker) and my first exposure to “Lbs” was for the weight of Pokemon in the physical red Pokédex handbook, so I always just said they weighed “X labs”, still don’t immediately correct it in my head 25+ years later.
If anyone is wondering why this is abbreviation for it, it is because the full name for pound weight in latin is libra poundo. We use the libra part for the abbrievation into lbs but pounds for the actual common name.
I was the same except I said it as “ibs” was quite a while I was thinking that when I was younger. My internal monologue still says it this way anytime I read it even though I know now
For me its always been “limbs”
Worcestershire.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiasis.
I must be pronouncing them right enough for voice to text to understand me because I certainly cannot spell those.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiasis.
I must be pronouncing them right enough for voice to text to understand me because I certainly cannot spell those.
Except voice-to-text spelled “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” wrong. It did “iasis” instead of “iosis.”
You can’t pronounce worcestershire right. Nobody knows how it should be pronounced.
We just say “pass the what’s-it-here sauce”
It’s wash your sister sauce
/s
More sense than any other pronounciation I’ve heard really.
The pronunciation is easy, but seemingly completely disconnected from the spelling.
Wooster Shur.
I hear so many people pronounce “cavalry” as “calvary,” which is a different word altogether.
A coworker of mine always says chipolte it boils my guts
I pronounce Chipotle with the same emphasis as Aristotle
Do it the other way around and it will sound closer to the original pronunciation of Aristotle.
Same as you, but in my defense I’ve never heard it out loud. A mexican friend taught me the correct way, I then understood the word comes from Nahuatl
Similarly, chocolate and coyote and tomato are also Aztec/Nahuatl words in origin. Which means our pronunciation is likely inaccurate
Avocado is our English speaking ancestor’s poor attempt at the Nahuatl word “ahuacatl.”
cool !!
Xipoodle
wat
For the C/C++ nerds: Clang. There are still many people pronouncing it “Cee-lang”.
Wait but…but that means I’m supposed to pronounce it like the sound of slamming metal doors? but it’s for the C language!
am I seriously getting gif’d again?
Why is it pronounced gif when it should be pronounced jif? It’s so much clearer when you say jif! AND YES, I DO SAY GIRAFFICS! AAHHH!!
What about “Jay-feg”? The Joint Photographic Experts Group.
There is probably lots of stuff like that in coding. Href could be “huref, and it took me a while to realize that it was ‘em’ and not just ‘m’ after hearing it.
URL pronounced Earl
Charset like charamander.
Sequel server grinds my gears.
Wait until you hear stuhd, that’s how we agreed to pronounce
stdbecause “ess tee dee” would have been awkward.Well fsck that.
I like pronouncing numpy so that it rhymes with lumpy just to make people uncomfortable.
That’s how I’ve always read it…
Lol at my job someone referred to “E T C” and I was completely baffled until he actually typed it out, /etc… I just call it “ets” because it’s short for “et cetera”…
Squeal server even more
I made the mistake of pronouncing epitome as “ep-i-tome” for a while.
Sometimes I like to pronounce it “lingerie” just to piss people off
Mine was “daschund”. I always thought that was a separate breed from a “doxen”.
Even after being educated on how the word is actually pronounced, I still purposefully pronounce it literally “daschund”. Fuck 'em - should’ve spelled it better.
Daschund is pronounced like “daak’ snd” in case anyone else didn’t realize this. My mind is blown.
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It is spelled Dachshund (Dachs-Hund, German, lit. Badger-Dog, as the breed was created to hunt foxes and badgers in their burrows)
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It is pronounced Dax Hunt (good example by a native german speaker: https://youtu.be/6aveG0N6Jtc?si=mzCsfrVA95VJZggG )
Funnily enough though, in Germany they’re mostly called Dackel, not Dachshund!
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Daschund is pronounced like “daak’ snd” in case anyone else didn’t realize this. My mind is blown.
