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Manglings and Mispronouncements

An Afternoon Comment Diversion / Dustin Rowles

Comment Diversions | April 23, 2008 | Comments (442)


Funny thing about mispronounced words: Until someone corrects you (often in a very embarrassing situation) or until you inadvertently learn otherwise, you can go an entire life obliviously mispronouncing words or mangling idioms. That’s the topic of today’s comment diversion, as suggested by Katherin: Words and idioms you learned later in life that you’d been mispronouncing or mangling for years. Common grammatical mistakes can also be included in today’s diversion (e.g., the most common one I see in these parts: commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks, people — unless you’re a foreigner — while question marks and semicolons go outside the quotation marks, unless they’re part of the quote).

For my part, it wasn’t until my mid-20s before I realized that “awry” was pronounced: a-rye. I’d always pronounced it to rhyme with “bawdry.” I have no idea why — it’s just the way I read it. And on the idiom front, I was corrected as recently as last week on this one: It’s “one and the same” and not “one in the same.” Of course, if I didn’t misspell, mangle, or screw up a couple of things in every review, Jerce and the rest of our grammar Nazis would never comment.

Also, it’s library, not li-bary.


First Saturday in May, The | Pajiba Love 04/23/08



Comments

Mrs. Riles always says li-bary, and I can't get her to stop!

Me? I'm perfect. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

Posted by: Riles at April 23, 2008 2:34 PM

So are you saying I should have been embarassed when I told my principal in 5th grade that I was positive my teacher was "impotent" when I meant "incompetent". Well damn.

Posted by: Phat girl at April 23, 2008 2:38 PM

realtor

it is real-tor (as in real estate)

not real-la-tor

Posted by: boo at April 23, 2008 2:39 PM

"awry" was pronounced: a-rye. I'd always pronounced it to rhyme with "bawdry."

Oh, FUCK ME.

Posted by: TK at April 23, 2008 2:40 PM

When I was a kid, I read "A Little Princess" and thought the father's name ("Ralph") was "Rah-luff." I read it that way for YEARS before being called out in class. Of course, there's no such name as "Rah-luff," but it never in a million years occurred to me that Captain Crewe would be called "Ralph."

Posted by: Edith at April 23, 2008 2:40 PM

I got a good one. Possibly offensive.

I grew up in Texas and went through a phase with my friends where we loved to go knock on people's doors and run away. Hilarious right? We called it "Nicker Knocking" or so I thought. I figured it was a singsongy thing: nick nock, like tick tock...

Yeah, actually, it was "Nigger Knocking." I was horrified when corrected and never said it or did it again.

Fuckin' Texas...

Posted by: Beckylooo at April 23, 2008 2:40 PM

I once read epitome outloud in class to rhyme with epi-tone. My father corrected me a few years ago that to be anonymous was anonymity not animosity. And it took a teacher in the 9th grade to finally teach me that maybe wasn't spelled mabye.

Posted by: Katherine at April 23, 2008 2:40 PM

Here's a toss-up: I've always said (accurately, I would argue) "all of a sudden." But I know a few people -- in the south, so maybe this is a geography thing -- who say "all of the sudden."

Posted by: John Williams at April 23, 2008 2:40 PM

I used to say "EH-VA-PORT" instead of "evaporate."

PEN-E-LOPE (like cantaloupe) instead of "Penelope."

And when I was a child, "seben" instead of "seven."

Posted by: Brie at April 23, 2008 2:41 PM

Is it "case IN point" or "case AND point"?

And ever since Rhianna, I've caught myself writing "umberella" rather than "umbrella".

Posted by: Ciji at April 23, 2008 2:41 PM

Expresso. That is just unacceptable for adults to utter.

Posted by: Lizardqueen at April 23, 2008 2:42 PM

For years, my "albeit" rhymed with "bite."

I guess I really only read it for years without ever hearing it used in spoken language.

Posted by: muzz at April 23, 2008 2:43 PM

Me love grammar. Me no pronouncy words wrong.

3 commonly mispronounced words that make thejodester stabby: jewelry, nuclear, drowned. Say 'drownded,' 'jewlerry,' or 'nucular'. I dare you.

Posted by: thejodester at April 23, 2008 2:43 PM

I used to date this guy who ALWAYS pronounced moot as "mute". AAAAARRRGGGHHH! Drove me crazy! I finally corrected him and he called me ignorant. I dumped him and vowed to only date intelligent men.

Posted by: Trouble at April 23, 2008 2:44 PM

Chasm = K'azm not CH'azm

also, Mr Stella and his whole family used to say How dare her/him! Drove me up a fuckin' wall until I actually mapped out graphically why that turn of phrase made no sense. Now Mr Stella will be heard to say, "How dare h--she!"

Posted by: Stella at April 23, 2008 2:45 PM

Also, I know people who interchange these:

They blew me out (instead of blew me off)

They narked me off (instead of narked me out)

Drives me insane.

Posted by: Riles at April 23, 2008 2:45 PM

OK, I don't think I'm mangling anything, but my mom drives me nuts because she refers to parmesan cheese as "parmesian" and oxygen "ockshagen."

Posted by: peachfish at April 23, 2008 2:46 PM

http://www.cracked.com/article_15664_9-words-that-dont-mean-what-you-think.html

Check out cracked.com's list of Words That Don't Mean What You Think. I myself have been guilty of these!!!

Posted by: scorzi at April 23, 2008 2:46 PM

I still remember pronouncing "wanton" like "won ton" in school. I'd read it in books but never heard it pronounced, and I assumed it sounded like the soup, even though I knew the meaning was completely different.

This is one of the hazards of being an advanced reader as a child, and as a result I have long found the dictionary to be at least as useful for pronunciation help as it is for spellings.

Posted by: KateNonymous at April 23, 2008 2:46 PM

I thought that jicama was pronounced with a hard J like in my name until a few years ago.

I didn't fully grasp the difference between its and it's until freshman year of college (oh the horror).

I saw a lot of funny stuff while working in the Writing Center in college...for instance, one girl thought that interview was two words. Lordy.

Posted by: Julie at April 23, 2008 2:47 PM

When the whole pilates craze first came about I worked in a bookstore. I read up on the subject and knew quite a bit about it. I however was pronouncing it "plate-lets" like the stuff in your blood. I have no idea why. But one day I was helping a customer and they corrected me as I was giving an in depth speech about the subject. Talk about embarrassing.

Posted by: Tra at April 23, 2008 2:47 PM

beckyloo... that's not just a Texas game...

Posted by: Riles at April 23, 2008 2:48 PM

I get really angry about using an apostrophe to make a plural. Squeegees, not squeegee's, people!

Also, don't capitalize nouns; we don't speak German.

Oh, and "is" should be capitalized in titles. I know it's only a two-letter word, but it's a verb, I swear.

Posted by: Tabula Swift at April 23, 2008 2:48 PM

Mr. Skegg pronounces orNAments, orDAments. I only noticed when he pronounced it correctly and corrected himself "orDAments". Turns out his parents say it too. He was adamant.

I've never really had pronunciation problems, I read a lot and have a good ear for linguistics. Mischevious is tricky. Not even sure I spelled it right...

My brother is a freaking goldmine of mispronunciation though. He once read "chaperones" as "cheaper ones"

Posted by: Skeggjold at April 23, 2008 2:49 PM

I almost made my mother drown in the pool from laughter when I pronounced "hernia" Her-EE-Na. I was 9, I'd only seen the word in the damn Garfield comics!

As an ashamed Romance Novel addict, I admit I have no idea how to pronounce "cravat". I only know it's something that gets ripped off the dude right before go-time. And "clandestine" is one I just heard spoken a few years back and thought OH! THAT'S how you say that fricking word. Now if I figure out cravat, I can read about a hot clandestine encounter and feel all grammer-ific.

Posted by: lilianna28 at April 23, 2008 2:49 PM

There's a couple of words that my wife consistently butchers: she says "supposively" instead of supposedly, and almost always uses the word "scald" when she means scold. I still halfheartedly try to correct her when one of these comes up in conversation, but by now it's generally for naught.

A particular friend of mine also loves to use the word "premise" in place of preface. As in: "Let me premise this story by saying..." I've corrected her, at length, at least thrice now.

Me? I'm with Riles. Grammatically perfect.

Posted by: Sean at April 23, 2008 2:50 PM

I always keep hearing different pronunciations for the word "impugn" so I'm still not clear on how it is to be pronounced. So I just avoid ever saying it. Thank God I don't argue in court.

Posted by: Lilac at April 23, 2008 2:50 PM

Unfortunately, I mispronounced the word "facade" to rhyme with arcade, instead of the correct "fuh-sahd" Although, I would hold that any word that is part-and-parcel stolen from another language (like French) can be pronounced however we as a nation decide it should be pronounced. In my book, "quesadilla" rhymes with armadillo!

Posted by: thecox at April 23, 2008 2:50 PM

Until my late 20's I thought "all intents and purposes" was "all intensive purposes." As a child, I had a really hard time with "ask" instead of "aks." My mom described that I would want to "ask her" something instead of "axe her" something, which finally made it clear.

On a related note, to this day, I CAN NOT say words like roar, drawer, etc. I can not have a friend named Rory, it would be too embarrasing.

And in reviewing my comment. I did have to correct the order of my ." from ".

Posted by: staramour at April 23, 2008 2:51 PM

I'm a word- and lyric-Nazi (as Mr. Babe will attest!) and a big time reader, but I always thought "segue" was pronounced "seeg" instead of "segway." The horror!

I also have two young kids, and my daughter, at 5 1/2, still says, rather hilariously, "mocun retroll" for remote control. So, of course, the mister and I do too;-)

A big pet peeve is inch and foot marks - they're straight up and down, people - used for apostrophes and quotation marks, which are curved. You can't always control it when writing online, but in print, pleeeeeease!

Posted by: angelbabe at April 23, 2008 2:51 PM

I had several embarrassing mispronunciation incidents growing up. My vocabulary was well ahead of my age because I read so much, but I never heard the words pronounced. The two biggest ones: I used to pronounce 'parenthesis' as parent-thesis until I was in middle school. Also, I always pronounced 'Arkansas' Ark-Kansas. My mother knew I was mangling the pronunciations, but she never bothered correcting me because she thought it was cute. I usually ended up having the ignorance knocked out of me in a classroom with 20 other kids instead of in the privacy of my own home. Thanks, Mom.

Posted by: Kris at April 23, 2008 2:52 PM

oh, i love this! until i was in college, i thought the french word "voila" was phonetic - i always said VOY-lah. It was years later i found out "wah-LAH" was the same thing. i stopped cringing about it years ago.

Posted by: amy at April 23, 2008 2:52 PM

I find it annoying what folks spell "rapport" "rappore". (Was that's period supposed to go inside the quote? ;-)

And Beckyloo don't feel bad: My grandad who fought in WWII used to call all Asians "Japs" and when I used this term with an Asian person they rightfully cussed me out.

Posted by: Ciji at April 23, 2008 2:55 PM

Phat - I had a similar gaffe with "impotent," only I meant to say "impudent." And I was referring to my father. Yikes!

In the second grade, I also described the Von Trapp children's curtain outfits as "kinky," when what I really meant was "quirky." Which left my parents very confused as to which version, exactly, of "The Sound of Music" I had just seen.

Posted by: MissMaddie at April 23, 2008 2:55 PM

My brother is a freaking goldmine of mispronunciation though. He once read "chaperones" as "cheaper ones"

Hee hee. When I was a freshman in college I had to give a group presentation, and during her segment one girl in my group kept pronouncing "organism" as "orgasm." The topic? Was euthanasia. That was a great day.

Posted by: Julie at April 23, 2008 2:55 PM

Alright, peeps. I grew up in some backwards-ass towns throughout Texas and Oklahoma and I can add a few that piss me off. Many of these come directly from my in-laws, interestingly enough...

I have heard the phrase "taken for granted" pronounced "taken for GRANITE" over and over and over again. Infuriating.

I constantly see in people's writing the phrase "must of" instead of "must have," as in "that must of been hard for you to deal with."

I don't know where this came from, but I hear people use the phrase "of a morning" a ton. People will say things like "sometimes I like to go walking of a morning." *works with evening too ("sometimes the deer come out on that field of an evening")

My mom pronounces the word "egg" like "ague" and somehow inserts a "g" into "onion" so that it comes out sounding like "ung-yun."

I have a plethora of these but these are the only ones springing into my cranium at the moment. I'm sure more will sprout up as the afternoon wears on. Good diversion.

Posted by: Mattfactor at April 23, 2008 2:56 PM

Once in middle school I was reading aloud and I pronounced the word "heaven" like HEEV-IN. I don't think anybody corrected me, but I knew I looked like an A-hole. I felt like a heathen for not knowing how to pronounce heaven, but at least I can pronounce heathen.

Also, once I was taking an exam and as I was proofreading one of my essay question answers I found that I had written "bird defects" instead of "birth defects," which kind of makes me think of the chicken lady.

Posted by: Lobstersurprise at April 23, 2008 2:56 PM

Brie, I also used to think that "Penelope" was pronounced like "cantaloupe." And I wasn't all that sure about "Hermione" when I first read Harry Potter, either. (Guess you can tell I'm not Greek.)

I made my Mom laugh out loud the first time I said the word chameleon -- I'd only ever read it, so of course I pronounced it cha-meleon, with a "ch" sound as in "Charlie."

Posted by: Lizzie (greeneyed fem) at April 23, 2008 2:57 PM

lilianna28: Cravat is pronounced cruh-VAT. "Cruh" as in crush, and "vat" as in a vat of wine, which I find generally accompanies a bodice-ripper quite well.

For YEARS I thought hyperbole was pronounced hyper-bowl, like Super Bowl. And no one could convince me when I was in grade 1 that it wasn't pronounced TRY-annosaurus Rex, rather than tyrannosaurus.

Posted by: sarahbot at April 23, 2008 2:58 PM

Ooh, I forgot to add, one thing that drives me crazy is "sanGwhich" instead of "sandwhich." I never did that, but several of my friends do and I always cringe!

Posted by: MissMaddie at April 23, 2008 2:59 PM

When I first read pedestrian I read it as pedestranian, then I never bothered to read the full word through again so I never noticed until I was in a position to suggest we cross the road at the next pedestranian crossing.
Re its and it's it took me ages to figure this out. But I think the usage is wrong. I mean the "book of Chris" is "Chris's book", but the "look of it" is "its look". If it's genitive in both cases why does "its" NOT have an apostrophe?

Posted by: ChrisD at April 23, 2008 2:59 PM

I'm from southern Indiana, where apparently we mispronounce a lot of things, and a lot of my vocabulary growing up came from books, so I often didn't know how things were supposed to be pronounced, so I have a lot of these, but my biggest ones would be:
crick. I will never be able to say creek, ever. Sometimes the i sound creeps into other double ee words too. also, the so finds it absolutely hilarious that I call those big orange squashes 'punkins.'
for which, in revenge, I'm going to reveal his worst one, because even crick doesn't come close: One day we drove by some apartment buildings and he looked at one of the signs and exclaimed "I just realized B-L-D-G means building!" apparently, when he was a kid living in an apartment with his dad he thought the 'bldg' listed on his address was an actual word, so for years when people asked for his address, he'd tell them quail run apartments, blodg 12, apartment whatever. And nobody ever corrected him.

Posted by: s. pisaster at April 23, 2008 3:00 PM

I still remember pronouncing "wanton" like "won ton" in school. I'd read it in books but never heard it pronounced, and I assumed it sounded like the soup, even though I knew the meaning was completely different.

Holy shit, I did this, too. I did this so much that my best friend and I have an ongoing joke now about ordering wanton soup. That soup! It just doesn't know how to behave!

Also, for years I thought my family's prayer before dinner started with "Call more, Jesus," and not "Come, Lord Jesus." I guess I just thought we were beseeching the Christ to pick up the phone once in a while...

Posted by: tetetetigi at April 23, 2008 3:00 PM

macabre

I still can't pronounce that damn word correctly

and grammer and I have never gotten along, so we won't even go there

Pet Peeve: people would say "idea-r"...there is no "r" in idea people!! drives me nuts!

Posted by: Bethy at April 23, 2008 3:01 PM

i never actually said it out loud, but until i was about 22, i thought the word "paradigm" was pronounced "para-diggum". oh my that's still so embarrasing.

Posted by: kb at April 23, 2008 3:01 PM

Chimney, pronounced by some as "chim-a-ley", and spaghetti, "pu-sketti".

It's one thing when it's a little kid saying either of these; I'm okay with that. However, I have heard these two mispronunciations uttered from the mouths of adults. Seriously?

Oh, yeah. Living in the south, I hear "warsh" (as in "I need to warsh my hands") a lot, too.

ENHHH!!

Posted by: Nadha at April 23, 2008 3:01 PM

I prounounced crayon as "crown." My father finally decided that he didn't want his daughter to sound like she had a speech impediment, so whenever I mispronounced the word, he would take said colorful writing tools away from me for a day and in the pocess of taking them away would say "This is red CRAY-ON, this is an orange CRAY-on, this is a blue CRAY-ON," etc etc.


In other news, I now hate art.

Posted by: Rachel at April 23, 2008 3:01 PM

OH, I also had my pronunciation of Isabel Allende's name corrected by a coworker once. THAT was super embarrassing. I pronounced the double-L in her last name (in my defense I took French in school, and not Spanish).

Posted by: Lizzie (greeneyed fem) at April 23, 2008 3:02 PM

Oh, beckyloo, I feel your pain. To this day, I can't do "Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe," since I realized that "tigger" was almost certainly just a pc gloss on the original...

Posted by: Edith at April 23, 2008 3:02 PM

God, this thread has seriously caused me to delurk...here's another peeve. This is a Britishism, and so technically not incorrect, but drives me nuts. My Scottish husband denotes companies as plural instead of singular. For instance, I'd say "Apple makes great computers"...the company is a singular entity. He'd say "Apple MAKE great computers." I've noticed it in other British writing and speaking, but I have to resist the urge to correct him EVERY time! How can ONE company be a plural??

He says "aluminium" for aluminum as well...with a hot accent, so I try to cut him some slack.

Posted by: angelbabe at April 23, 2008 3:02 PM

Yikes! Sorry for the bolding!

Posted by: Edith at April 23, 2008 3:02 PM

While on a "professional" radio station I pronounced "Indicted" In-dick-ted instead of In-di-ted.

I was 2 yeas out of college and had an English minor. Not to mention the tens of people who heard me say it.

I felt like such a dick.

Posted by: Max at April 23, 2008 3:03 PM

My freshman roommate always used to say "ironical". It drove me up a wall....

Posted by: Lauren H. at April 23, 2008 3:03 PM

At least once a day when I'm on this site, I myself say Pajiba out loud correctly, because I still think of it in my head as pah-jee-bah as I first read it long ago.

Posted by: jamiepants at April 23, 2008 3:04 PM

Ok, this is really embarrassing, but not until a few years (when I started taking French) did I connect the spoken and the written word "rendezvous." I thought they were two different words that happened to have the same meaning. Whenever I pronounced it in my head, I would spell it like it sounded - wrendezzvuss. And whenever I heard it, I never really thought about how it was spelled - I just absently assumed it would be spelled something like "rondayvu (oh god, this is so embarrassing). I mean, if I had actively thought about it, I would have made the connection, but it just never occurred to me. Thank god I never had to spell it out on anything.

Posted by: kumquats at April 23, 2008 3:04 PM

I used to work with a girl who said 'ar-chives' instead of 'archives' with the hard 'c.' She worked on a journal with the word in the title and said it wrong repeatedly in conversations with the editor.

There was much debate about whether someone should correct her but, since it was much more fun for everyone else if she continued to mispronounce it, we never did. Freaking hilarious.

Is that wrong?

Posted by: thejodester at April 23, 2008 3:05 PM

really young: pronouced the 's' in island

slightly older: rendezvous - pronounced every consonant, ren-dezz-vuss

embarassingly older: acquiesce - pronounced it as aqueeze

And it took me until the 4th Harry Potter book to stop calling Hermione Her-mee-own

Posted by: sonja at April 23, 2008 3:05 PM

angelbabe: I believe aluminium is just the British way of saying aluminum. I've noticed it in places where you wouldn't expect mistakes like that, like TV shows and books. Me, I kinda wish it would catch on over here. It's a lot more fun to say "aluminium!" than plain old "aluminum."

Posted by: sarahbot at April 23, 2008 3:05 PM

Ooooh and my dearly departed paternal Grandmother used to pronounce "jalepeno" like "japaleeno," she called cartoons "laminated," and she called her gazebo a "gabeezo." Silly grandma.

Posted by: Lobstersurprise at April 23, 2008 3:06 PM

I forgot to mention the one that makes me crazy, another from my husband and his parents.

It's not should OF or could OF, it's have people! HAVE! Should HAVE!

I can see how they get it from hearing the contraction but his mother has a Master's for chrissakes.

Posted by: Skeggjold at April 23, 2008 3:06 PM

I love my grandmother dearly, but instead of "mozzerella", she says "mootsarella". And y'know the restaurant "Fazolli's"? She says "Ferjolies".

She's getting better, but I still feel bad about slapping her when she slips.

Posted by: Skittimus Maximus at April 23, 2008 3:06 PM

My friend Amiee once tried to order "colonal" strips from KFC once, she kept insisting it was pronounced co-la-nal, until the 16 year old employee asked is she meant "kernel" strips. Good times.

Posted by: jay at April 23, 2008 3:07 PM

Ok, thank god he doesn't read this, but:

My hubs says "mortified" when he really means terrified.

And when I was in grade school, I thought that being a virgin meant you had never been kissed. So, at age 11, this little boy gave me a kiss, and I proclaimed to my entire class that I was no longer a virgin. And I couldn't understand why everyone was so horrified. Heee!

Posted by: boo at April 23, 2008 3:07 PM

staramour: Until my late 20's I thought "all intents and purposes" was "all intensive purposes."

What? It's not? Well, chalk me up for not learning that until my late 40's. Thanks.

When my husband was 5, he ran into the house and told his mother, "My independence is hurting me." He couldn't understand why she laughed her butt off.

And I still pronounce Yosemite YOS-uh-mite. It's yoh-SEM-mit-tee, but I can't get it out of my head.

Posted by: BWeaves at April 23, 2008 3:08 PM

Add me to the list of those who thought Penelope rhymed with canteloupe, and Pilates is pronounced like the guy who ordered Jesus' death.

Two of the biggest ones when I was a kid were lick-war instead of "liquor" and vay-lid isntead of "valid". I am told that I taught myself to read when I was four (?!) and didn't learn through phonics, so mispronunciations abound. For this reason, I can't really be judgmental of mispronunications, can I? Okay, maybe in extreme cases of pure idiocy...like the girl in my junior year Health class who pronounced "interpreter" as enter-pret-er.

Posted by: Aurelia at April 23, 2008 3:08 PM

and of course as soon as I push post I think of 20 more. I once asked my mom if we could make 'hors devores,' and I tend to add an extra syllable to synonym to make it synononym (which I think flows better anyway).

Posted by: s. pisaster at April 23, 2008 3:08 PM

My mom almost died when I said to her that I'd read a great tip in the paper that day, in the column "Hints from Heloise," which I pronounced "Hints from Helloyce" instead of the correct "Hints from Hell-Louise."

Not long after I said I'd like to name a daughter "Chlow" (soft "ch," one syllable). Again laughing hysterically, she informed me that the name was pronounced "Klo-ee." I said, "Ooh, that's even prettier!"

Years later and now a mother, I cannot name a kid Chloe, as my mom would call her "Chlow" all her life.

Posted by: Kermit at April 23, 2008 3:09 PM

ugh, my husband and his whole family can't seem to wrap their lips around the word bagel. It's BAYGUL not BAGGLE.
Every time they offer me a BAGGLE, it takes me a half beat to figure out what the hell they are talking about. And even when I do, I must decline as they buy them at the grocery store. Everyone knows that is just wrong.

Posted by: awtsunamigirl at April 23, 2008 3:09 PM

When I was younger I used to think that when your stomach hurt it was called a "tummy egg" as opposed to a "tummy ache." I'm from NJ, so my pronunciations on most words are a bit off, but in this case, for some reason, I sincerely thought it was a tummy egg. At my sister's 10th birthday, my 8 year old self yelled out to my mom (in front of all of my sisters older and cooler friends no less) "mommy I have a tummy egg." I was promptly corrected and have not made the mistake since.

Posted by: rachel at April 23, 2008 3:10 PM

I mispronounced chorizo sausage (korizo) to many a confused butcher before figuring out that the 'ch' is actually pronounced. In my defense I never had cause to utter this word until spending three months in Italy where it would have been pronounced with a hard C. Lo and behold the Spanish have different pronunciation rules than the Italians. Go figure.

Posted by: katy at April 23, 2008 3:11 PM

i remember being eight and my reading book for school containing the word 'picturesque'...for aaages I was pronouncing it 'picture-skyoo'. same goes for 'grot-es-kyoo'.

Posted by: amy at April 23, 2008 3:11 PM

I'm sick of hearing "Iraq" pronounced as if it were something from Apple.
I stand shamefully corrected on "awry" and "albeit", I had no idea how wrong I was about those. I used to have a big confusion about "direction", then again I blame musicians for that. Finally, for a long time I was pretty damn sure it was "Pa-jee-ba".
But as a reader from the lower half of the world, I'm not putting my dear commas inside those quotation marks.

Posted by: JC at April 23, 2008 3:11 PM

Oh! Oh! One more! One of my pet peeves is when people use "impact" as a verb, as in "the lobotomy impacted his ability to use the word 'impat' properly in a sentence".
That is all.

Posted by: jay at April 23, 2008 3:12 PM

ALSO - my third grade teacher used to mispronounce the word coupon and it would annoy the hell out of me. She'd say it like CUE-pon. AH. It's not a precursor to a pickle, it's a discount.

Posted by: rachel at April 23, 2008 3:13 PM

sarahbot: That's so wierd, I've always heard "cravat" pronounced "cra-VAHT," with the last syllable rhyming with "yacht," not "vat." Perhaps this is a Canadian thing?

Posted by: MissMaddie at April 23, 2008 3:13 PM

Mattfactor:

The phrase "of an evening" is a direct translation of how one would say it if they were speaking in old Irish (or Scottish). There are also similar variations in French and Italian. Therefore, it's not actually incorrect, it's an appropriate phrase that has become embedded in the language over generations (assuming the first generaion was translating from its native tongue). Another example would be that irish and British people say "I went to hospital" not "I went to the hospital" because the way one would say that in the original Celtic languages would not have had the equivalent of a "the".

But moving on...
I have a friend who says "that's one to save for prosperity" and refuses to be corrected.
Mr. PaddyDog has a co-worker who always says "they're going to throw me over the bus" (instead of under) which is made funnier by the fact that he's quite a large gentleman.

And worst of all, just this week, in my forties, I found out (courtesy of the never-ending primary) that Wilkes-Barre, PA is prnounced "Willsberry" not Wilks (like Milks) Bar.

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 3:13 PM

I totally did the Pajiba (pajeeba) thing for the first couple of weeks like many of you probably did. Just seemed to make sense to me. I was truly embarrassed at the age of effing 18 that genre was not pronounced Jen-Er. How the hell did that one slip by. Also when I was 4 I used to pronounce hospital, hopistal. Yeah, that's how cute I was.

Posted by: perfectjargon at April 23, 2008 3:15 PM

I can't believe I missed this one the first time around - it's the biggest offender of my whole life and it comes from the mouths of my in-laws on a regular basis...

They say the word "retch" instead of "reach." As in, "I retched down there to pick up a hammer and blah blah blah."

My brother-in-law's answering machine message actually used to say (I swear to God I'm not kidding) - "hello, you have retched the home of ... and ..., leave us a message..."

Wow.

Posted by: Mattfactor at April 23, 2008 3:16 PM

"alls i know."
i repeat it back to my friend who says this all the time hoping she'll realize i'm mocking her.

Posted by: theresa at April 23, 2008 3:17 PM

I always used to say "pique" like as "pick" until a guy I like corrected me that it was "peek" and I felt like an idiot.
And my sister used to always mangle the saying "Hindsight is 20/20" she would always say "Hindsight is 100%" Ha ha. We still make fun of her for that.
Also what drives me crazy is I work in insurance and I constantly get accident descriptions that say: "The person has sever pain to the left hand. Diagnosis sever left hand pain." So I'm like they have a severed left hand? But no it's SEVERE! Amazing what an "e" can do.

Posted by: lyricalcatt at April 23, 2008 3:18 PM

I think all of us who read the Harry Potter books in America had a fun time with Hermione's name. I went from thinking Her-mee-ohn to thinking Her-mee-oh-nee to finally hearing Her-my-oh-nee in the films.

Nu-cue-lar drives me nuts. My roommate says it all the time and he's otherwise fairly intelligent.

You can't center around something. You can center on something, but you can't center around something. I say "vast majority" a lot even though I realize it's pretty redundant. "Revert back" is redundant, too, but I use it all the time.

And I remember when I was four or five at preschool, a book said "Voila!" in it. I knew it was French and I knew how to pronounce it. The teacher reading the book did not. She came to it and looked puzzled, then said, "VOY-LAH!"

Posted by: Ben at April 23, 2008 3:18 PM

Oh, and thanks PaddyDog for the heads-up regarding "of an evening." I never knew that and it now makes the phrase quite enjoyable.

Posted by: Mattfactor at April 23, 2008 3:19 PM

College in Western Pennsylvania made me hate the following....

Usually, houses need TO BE painted. Cars need TO BE washed. Shoes need TO BE tied.

Nope...not in fucking Pennsyltucky they don't.

{why they have a southern twang in western PA is beyond me but...in a southern twang}
My house needs painted. My car needs washed. My shoes need tied.

Dumb motherfuckers! Looks to me like your brain needs taught! Or maybe just your ass needs kicked?

I swear...I've never wanted to beat the shit out of an entire region of people before. Can you possibly sound any dumber. Talking to these people gave me a fucking twitch in my left eye to no end. This is why we decided to dress up as zombies at 3am and wonder around wal mart scaring the locals. Or do a fake hanging in front of our school using a well-hidden repelling harness and a shotgun squib in the chest for effect. i swear, these people were only fun when we were fuckin with 'em or when they thought they were bein' vigilantes.

Posted by: PissBoy at April 23, 2008 3:19 PM

In the words of Casey McCall: "Remember please, if you are going out on a date and you want to impress someone, it's a 'dog eat dog world,' not a 'doggy dog world.'"

Posted by: Daniel Carlson at April 23, 2008 3:19 PM

All the voracious readers! Did anyone else pronounce "gist" with a hard g like goose?

Posted by: felix at April 23, 2008 3:19 PM

forgive me if someone already said this,
but it greatly bothers me when people say:
"for all intensive purposes" instead of
"for all intents and purposes"

Posted by: dg at April 23, 2008 3:20 PM

Of course manglings are much easier in a foreign language, I used to think 'zerstorrt' (spelling?) meant bombed because all churches in Germany (that I've seen in the ruhrgebiet) have plaques saying they were 'zerstorrt' in the war but rebuilt. Turns out it just means destroyed. I figured that word out when I saw it on a paper shredder.

Posted by: ChrisD at April 23, 2008 3:20 PM

Oh, I forgot the best one. When my former landlord was 15, he spent the summer with a family in Orgeon who let him drive for the first time around their farm. They had a tractor and a Volvo. At his wedding, his mother read out a letter she had kept from him where he wrote "Mrs. Stephens is really great. She lets me fool around in her vulva whenever I want."

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 3:20 PM

There is a laundromat in my home town named "The Warsh House." no joke.

Posted by: s. pisaster at April 23, 2008 3:20 PM

I still cringe in embarrassment when I think of passing on a witty t-shirt-ism as a 17 year old waitress (to my manager no less). Explaining my laughter, I referred to the mention of a "vast-eh-commie".

Ah the joys of youth.

In related pet-peevitude, why oh why can't people stop with excessive apostrophe use?

Posted by: Cindy at April 23, 2008 3:22 PM

My dad and I still get a laugh at saying 'dehydrenate' instead of 'dehydrate' and 'sciences' instead of 'sinuses', two words that my mom always pronounced wrong despite how many times we told her.
I'd give anything to hear her mis-pronounce those words again.

Posted by: TMax at April 23, 2008 3:23 PM

As far as I'm concerned it's Pa-jee-ba. Can't say Pa-jai-ba, as I really don't like the word va-gina, so I won't say it if I can help it.

Posted by: Stella at April 23, 2008 3:23 PM

Wilks (like Milks) Bar

That's SUCH a common mispronunciation Paddy :) And I've done it to other PA towns myself, I still to this day want to pronounce Lancaster as Lan-(as in can)-caster.

Posted by: Julie at April 23, 2008 3:23 PM

oh, since Paddy brought up town pronounciations....Native American town names abound in New England, and the first time I saw a sign for Haverhill Mass a few years ago, I prounouced it phonetically, only to be told by the Boy that it is Hay-vrill, and that if I said it my way in town I would definetly be beaten to a pulp

to this day if I am in the mood to annoy him I just repeat Have-er-hill a few times and it does the trick

Posted by: Bethy at April 23, 2008 3:24 PM

I can't beleive that no one mentioned "fustrated" instead of "frustrated" IT FRUSTRATED THE HELL OUT OF ME! GOD!

Posted by: lyricalcatt at April 23, 2008 3:24 PM

Oh...and crown vs. crayon. First person that tells me both of those words sound the same gets stabbed in the neck with my car keys.

Look in the fuckin' dictionary....cray-on. Two syllables ya stupic dick nose!

Posted by: PissBoy at April 23, 2008 3:24 PM

I think all of us who read the Harry Potter books in America had a fun time with Hermione's name. I went from thinking Her-mee-ohn to thinking Her-mee-oh-nee to finally hearing Her-my-oh-nee in the films.

My brother and I actually got in a massive argument over this. I have been obsessed with Greek mythology since the sixth grade, so I had the correct pronunciation, but he championed "Herm-oh-nine".

When I stopped giggling we spent more than an hour arguing about it, and my dad even hopped in on my side. He had to relent when the movie finally came out.

It was virtually impossible to discuss the books with him when he kept calling her that...

Posted by: Skeggjold at April 23, 2008 3:25 PM

1) I could care less... then corrected to I couldn't care les... made so much more sense...

2) people often mistake Jealousy and Envy... Jealousy is afraid of losing something you already have, envy is wanting something someone else has... Stop saying you're jealous of that guys boyfriend/girlfriend, it drives me nuts...

Posted by: Nico at April 23, 2008 3:25 PM

Anyone else think in grade school that Martin Luther was way punk for nailing feces to the door?

Also, I hate it when people say "drawling" in stead of "drawing." I go to art school and this still fucking happens. There is no department dedicated to Painting and Drawling, dumbshits.

Posted by: Lyra at April 23, 2008 3:25 PM

My house needs painted. My car needs washed. My shoes need tied.

[whimpers]

That makes my hair hurt.

Posted by: Julie at April 23, 2008 3:26 PM

I love this diversion! My friends and I talk about this all the time...self-declared word snobs. My pet peeves: supposably, irregardless and when people say, "You welcome," instead of YOU'RE...it drives me crazy.

For the longest time I thought ethereal was pronounced etha-real. Then one day it clicked...I'm glad I never said it out loud.

Some others that I have heard: wallermelon - watermelon, obeast - obese, flustrated - frustrated, dramastic - dramatic (or drastic, who knows), old timers disease - Alzheimer disease. Gotta love it.

Posted by: Nicole at April 23, 2008 3:26 PM

I mispronounce crayon and say "crown." My mom always mispronounces attitude. She says "addy-tude." Whenever I got in trouble and she tried to yell at me about my bad "addy-tude" I would interrupt and correct her. It didn't really help me any, but I just couldn't resist.

Posted by: Erin at April 23, 2008 3:27 PM

in the words of Natalie Hurley: "So help me, I thought it was a doggy dog world..."

Posted by: Bethy at April 23, 2008 3:27 PM

HOLY SHIT I just remembered a great one...

My parents' neighbor, God bless her, has a thousand malapropisms (hammer-er instead of hamburger), but by far the best one was when she kept describing something as taking place "rectal-actively." I almost choked to death on my hammer-er.

Posted by: tetetetigi at April 23, 2008 3:28 PM

As a kid reading 'Anne of Green Gables,' I could not be convinced that "beaux" wasn't pronounced "bewaks" because the woman correcting me, my ever-patient mother, still pronounces "salmon" "sal-mon."

She also pronounces "tortilla" as "tortila" (she's lived in Texas her whole life, dammit!) and I'm terrified of what I must still be pronouncing incorrectly because of her gaffes. At least she has the excuse of being deaf in one ear.

Posted by: Brook at April 23, 2008 3:28 PM

"I couldn't care less" versus "I could care less"

One means that there is nothing you care less about - meaning you just don't care.
The other literally means the opposite and only makes sense in a sarcastic statement... which most people miss entirely.

Also, the whole trailing punctuation in quotations thing? That doesn't fly in technical documents, where every character in the quotation marks carries meaning. In those cases it is appropriate to place the period after the quote.

Posted by: Anon at April 23, 2008 3:29 PM

And, I'm with JC on the punctuation thing. Just because you Yanks decided to make up your own English rules doesn't mean the rest of us have go along. Punctuation marks go inside of quotation marks only if it's a complete sentence being quoted or of the majority of the thought in the sentence is part of the quote. Otherwise, the punctuation says firmy, happily and correctly OUTSIDE of the quotation marks.

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 3:29 PM

So here's another possibly offensive one...I used to think that the word for the offspring of a mixed race couple was "milano," and that's where they got the name for the cookie.

Posted by: Barabajagalla at April 23, 2008 3:29 PM

...I'm with Stella... I, too, say PUH-JEE-BAH.

There shoulda been a goddamed pronuncimination thingamagoo... Because now, a place I love, I cannot pronounce.

And that make the baby Jesus crap his drawers.

Posted by: Skittimus Maximus at April 23, 2008 3:29 PM

A friend of mine pronounced Binghamton phonetically for the first few weeks of college in Ithaca. For those not in the know, it sounds like 'bing-em-ton.'

One for the Philly locals -- it's 'Sansom Street,' not 'Sampson Street.'

Posted by: thejodester at April 23, 2008 3:30 PM

A close friend of mine doesn't BATHE her baby, she BATHS her baby. WTF?

Posted by: courtney at April 23, 2008 3:30 PM

Pissboy: I used to work in a call center and take info from people from Pennsyltucky. I would have to get up and take a walk after those calls because of how dumb they sounded. That made me laugh!

Posted by: lyricalcatt at April 23, 2008 3:30 PM

Up until last year (I'm 25), I thought it was "For all intensive purposes."

My coworker told me that he didn't know the difference between "erotic" and "erratic" and once told an attendant at the DMV that he had gotten a ticket for "driving erotically."

Posted by: Snath at April 23, 2008 3:30 PM

Last one for me, I swear - I work with a dude who regularly uses the word "unrelentless." What the hell does that mean?

Posted by: Mattfactor at April 23, 2008 3:30 PM

: : jingles keys : : Back away Erin. Back away slowly.

Posted by: PissBoy at April 23, 2008 3:31 PM

Two mispronunciation stories for you:
1) When I was in college, I worked with a very attractive woman named Regina. I probably would have had more of a chance with her had I not thought her name was supposed to rhyme with "Pajiba."

2) Also in college, I went to a librarian's convention that included some very small-town librarians. I saw two of them studying the menu and overheard this conversation:
Librarian #1: "Kwitch?? What the hell is a kwitch?"
Librarian #2: "It's a French dish, sort of a cheese pie. And, uh, you probably don't want to say 'kwitch,' it makes you sound like a hick. I believe the French say 'kee-shay.'"

Posted by: Mr. Atoz at April 23, 2008 3:31 PM

I spelled "weird" wrong for a really long time - "wierd".

Also, I cannot for the life of me say "theatre" correctly. Most people agree the normal, dignified way to say it is kinda like "theeter" (I think- again, I always get confused here). I say "thee-a-ter", emphasis on the "a".

Also, I never do this in writing or when it matters, because I obviously know the correct way to say it, but when I'm speaking with people I'm comfortable with and being lazy, I always say "me and so and so" when it should be "so and so and I." My mom never stops correcting me on this. What can I say? I know I sound like an idiot when I say it, but it just comes out when I'm not paying attention. Very few of my friends growing up knew much of anything (and didn't especially care - I was friends with a lot of jock-ish / dumb cheerleader types) and I picked it (along with a variety of other bad habits) up from them. I certainly did not learn it from my English-and-literature-teaching mother or well-spoken father.

Posted by: tt_marie at April 23, 2008 3:32 PM

A lifelong sufferer of ennui, I'd somehow managed to never see it in print. I read it out loud once as "en-you-ee," sort of rhyming it with Inuit. Ugh.

Posted by: Amanda H. at April 23, 2008 3:32 PM

Worcester.
Herb.

Posted by: courtney at April 23, 2008 3:32 PM

to this day i get tripped up on the word "catholicism". when i was a kid, i thought "shoppe" was pronounced "shopp-y" and "hors d'oeuvres" was "whores dou-vrees". i hate it when people leave out the t's in "button"...it's not a "buh'un". and i thought it was "puh-jee-bah" too.

Posted by: kelley at April 23, 2008 3:32 PM

One for the Philly locals -- it's 'Sansom Street,' not 'Sampson Street.'

!!!!! That one makes me want to beat someone with the Liberty Bell.

Another that drives me nuts is a pretty common one: pronouncing it 'supposably.' :dies inside:

Posted by: Julie at April 23, 2008 3:33 PM

Skeggjold - the word mischievous made me lose a spelling bee in the 6th grade because the asshole moderator pronounced it "mis chee vee us" - now, who is not going to add an "i" before the "ous" when you hear it pronounced like that???!!! If only he had pronounced it "mis chu vus" I might be president today.

I did not notice mispronunciations at all until I moved to Kentucky. People here say some crazy shit. For example, 99% of the population says "welp" instead of "welt" and use it in a sentence like so: "I got stung by a bee and it welped up on me".

99% of the population here also says "ideal" when they should say "idea". I can't count how many times I have heard someone say "I have no ideal" or "I have a great ideal".

I have a million of these and unfortunately this type of thing is my biggest pet peeve ever! Here are some more classics . . . "medium" instead of "median", as in "He drove his car up on the medium" . . . . "curve" instead of "curb", as in "He drove his car up over the curve" . . . "window seal" instead of "window sill" (it's not the southern accent, I have seen it written like that!)

I'll have to come back when I think of more!

Posted by: SCG at April 23, 2008 3:34 PM

My boyfriend's mom says "I seen it over there" instead of "I saw it over there". Drives me nuts, but what can I do?

Posted by: Kelsophecles at April 23, 2008 3:34 PM

Oh, this is one of my favorite things, I especially love malapropisms, where you intentionally change a word to another similarly sounding word in order to be funny/silly. Anywho, here are several that I came up with:
When I was little and my mother had friends over, I was trying to be the hospitable little hostess and said, "Please, sit down and make yourselves convertible." I think I bawled when they couldn't stop laughing at me!
S. Pisaster - I am from the south, and I absolutely abhor it when people say crick! I mean, what the hell is a crick? I'm looking out the window right now at a creek, however...
Peachfish - my mema was famous for her silly pronunciation, Jebus love her. She used to say "parmeeesean" and "I-talian" as well. It was generally only with the 'foreign' items, and like she was trying to learn italian, but failing miserably. Also, my mother says euthanaze instead of euthanize. I used to work with a weird chick who tried to use the term versus a lot, but could only manage to say vices. That was PAINFUL. Ugh.
My two biggest grammar peeves, however, are supposedly (not supposably, dammit!), and the way some people (mostly northerners in my experience, especially Ohioans?) say "that dress needs cleaned" or "my car needs fixed". What the hell? You dropped the entire conjugation of the verb! Did yuo skip 5th grade or something?

Posted by: iheartlasagne at April 23, 2008 3:35 PM

Facetious. I heard the word all the time growing up and knew what it meant, but I didn't know how it was spelled. I read it aloud one time as "FASS-a-shuss."

Also, I only learned a few months ago that "bite the bullet" and "bite the dust" do not mean the same thing.

Posted by: nvhgirl at April 23, 2008 3:35 PM

tt-marie:

"weird" is Samuel Johnson's cruel little joke I think. We spend our entire childhoods being told "i before e except after c" and then along comes "weird", not a "c" in sight. I call foul.

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 3:37 PM

i work in a travel agency and it takes all my effort not to defenestrate my co-worker every time she pronounces "itinerary" as "AR-tenery"

AAARRRRGH

Posted by: serlady at April 23, 2008 3:37 PM

This one's for my mama:

No matter how many times over the years I've corrected her, my mom refuses to pronounce ramen any other way than "ray-min."
Drives me up the fuckin wall sideways.

Posted by: Amanda H. at April 23, 2008 3:38 PM

"Salmon."

I have a coworker who says "sal-mon" and not "sahmon." Does the same with almond. Drives me nuts (heh).

Also, this is more of a turn of phrase issue, but "begs the question" does not - I must emphasize again, does NOT - mean "raises the question" or "suggests the question." It is a specific term from logic that essentially means that the response implies the question. "The painting is trash because it is obviously worthless" is an example of begging the question. Here, begs means "improperly take for granted." Old usage of the word, but that is its origin.

ARG. Please, bloggers, newscasters, journalists, and others - stop it.

Posted by: Lollygagger at April 23, 2008 3:38 PM

As a kid, I had a hard time not pronouncing the L in "salmon." I still hate that word. Same goes for "salve." Stupid L pisses me off.

Posted by: Becca at April 23, 2008 3:39 PM

"her and I" - always indicates the talker is from the Pacific Northwest, usually Seattle area.

menagerie - former co-worker used this to describe piles of paper on her desk.

Oedipus

Posted by: katie at April 23, 2008 3:40 PM

wait, Almonds are pronounced Ahmonds???? wh-what?

Also, I totally did not know about the whole "begs the question" bit - holy crap, I don't even understand the explanation! I'm never using it again.

Posted by: Stella at April 23, 2008 3:40 PM

Oh Beckylooo, you and your friends certainly had fun times growing up. And I see you all played "Nigger Knocking" a staple in any playground in America. I'm a little curious though, how does the word "Nigger" works it's way in the equation?

Posted by: Pookie at April 23, 2008 3:40 PM

Thought of another pair: as a kid, I would insist that the "Angelican" (rhymes with "Pelican") Church was closely associated with the "Episcupelian" Church.

It's no wonder that I minored in Linguistics. I had to, just to figure out what the hell was going on.

Posted by: Brook at April 23, 2008 3:41 PM

Damnit, Skit: There is a pronunciation thingamajob right here.

You know what makes the Baby Pajiba crap his drawers? When people pronounce it PUH-JEE-BAH.

Foot stomp. Pout.

I'm gonna start pronouncing Jesus to rhyme with vagina to spite you all. -- DR

Posted by: Dustin Rowles at April 23, 2008 3:41 PM

"Flesh it out" versus "flush it out"; I don't like the word "flesh" but I'm almost positive "flush it out" is wrong, and one of my editorial directors uses it all the time.

A teacher of mine used to say "intensive purposes" rather than "intents and purposes" (thankfully, not an English teacher). I hate her. She should eat nails.

Someone above listed the use of "impact" as a verb. That sucks. Kill that person.

Posted by: David at April 23, 2008 3:42 PM

Do your ears hang low, do they wabble to and fro, can you tie them in a know, can you tie them in a bow, can you throw them over your shoulder like a continental soldier, do you ears hang low?

I thought continental soldier was "cotton picking n*gger" for years.

Posted by: embarrased at April 23, 2008 3:42 PM

I will admit I call it PUH-JEE-BAH too. *hides head in shame*
However, I will not rhyme it will vagina. I'm SORRY! I am going to still call it PUH-JEE-BAH.

Posted by: lyricalcatt at April 23, 2008 3:43 PM

Damn my lingering visitors for keeping me from the party! (Just kidding. It was my mom.)

Up until I met Mr. Pink in college, I gave the word "vicinity" an extra "n" and pronounced it "VIN-cinity". Apparently, the people in my life either assumed that was the way it was pronounced too or were too sweet (or afraid) to correct me. Enter Mr. Pink who refused to accepted my butchered pronunciation as just another of 'bama's endearing quirky qualities. He bore down on my mercilessly for about two years until I finally starting saying it correctly.

But still to this day I have to pause for a brief moment before the word leaves my mouth to make sure that interloping "n" doesn't weasel his way in.

Posted by: Alabamapink at April 23, 2008 3:43 PM

To the person who said 'epitome' like it rhymed with 'epitone'--ROCK ON! I had to read a clue in Trivial Pursuit with 'epitome' in it and I guess I hadn't seen it written enough to know that 'epitome' wasn't spelled 'epitomy'. To this day, my family STILL makes fun of me for it(and this was at least three years ago).

Irregardless also drives me crazy--it may be in the urban dictionary but it is still NOT A REAL WORD. It's REGARDLESS for fucks sake!!!!

Posted by: birdgal at April 23, 2008 3:43 PM

"Sherbert" instead of "sherbet"
"Ar-kan-sas" instead of "Arkansaw" Hey, it made sense because Kansas is, well, Kansas

Posted by: rlr260 at April 23, 2008 3:43 PM

I still don't know how to correctly pronounce gyro. When I first moved to the big city and went to the greek restaurant up the street, the employees said "ge-ro" (with a hard g, not gee-ro like gee whiz) as rhyming with hero. But it seems that most people I talk to actually say "hero" or even "yee-ro" for gyro. Did they learn it that why because they frequent a different greek restaurant where the employees have different accents?

I thought Hermione was pronounced Hermoyne.

Posted by: shelleyh at April 23, 2008 3:44 PM

I thought Pajiba was pronounced "puh-heee-buh" until I saw the IPA breakdown. I took Spanish for years, sue me.

Also, my sister once pronounced misled as "mizzled" (rhymes with grizzled). It's still a family joke. "Sorry, I was mizzled!"

Posted by: coveredinbees at April 23, 2008 3:44 PM

WITH VAGINA! God I need to read before I hit post...and yeah, it's in caps...

Posted by: lyricalcatt at April 23, 2008 3:45 PM

Also, it's library, not li-bary.

Thanks, Dustin!

Fucking "Kroger's" and "Barnes and Noble's". Rankle me like nobody's business.


Oh...and crown vs. crayon. First person that tells me both of those words sound the same gets stabbed in the neck with my car keys.

Look in the fuckin' dictionary....cray-on. Two syllables ya stupic dick nose!

HO-LEE SHIT. It's not just my sister (and now niece, though she SWEARS she didn't make her do it)???

Posted by: Jay at April 23, 2008 3:46 PM

Oh, and it wasn't until I had to describe the symptoms of an ingrown toe infection that I realized that it is Pus, not Puss...not pussy. Now I just write pus-filled when needed.

Posted by: katie at April 23, 2008 3:46 PM

That's some awesome caps lockiness there, lyricalcatt :p

Posted by: Julie at April 23, 2008 3:47 PM

My peeves mostly come from my husband-unit. He insists on saying hepa, as in hepa filter, as "HEEEpa." Helicopter is "HEEElocopter." I don't know why it bugs me so, but I just grit my teeth and keep my yap shut when he does it.

A few years ago there was a tv ad campaign for (I think) Jack in the Box and their bruschetta sandwiches. They kept pronouncing it "brew-shhhhetta" which totally grates my nerves as I'm fluent in Italian. I'd scream at the tv or radio every single time I heard it. Why am I wound so tight about tomatoes on bread?

Say it with me:
"Brew-sKetta"

Posted by: krix at April 23, 2008 3:47 PM

That WAY, dang it, not why. I even previewed.

Posted by: shelleyh at April 23, 2008 3:48 PM

So I'm from Missouri and my mom is from Mississippi. I now live in Boston and my boyfriend is a Mass-hole. Between him and my mom, I have a ton of mispronunciations to gripe about, but I'll just name a few:

My mom always refered to a "chest of drawers" as "chester drawers." She also can't pronounce Massachusetts or salmon (she calls it simon).

My boyfriend says "idear" instead of "idea" and calls a "drawer" a "drah." His aunt can't say geneaolgy and always calls it a "gee-an-ology." Morons.

Posted by: Lake at April 23, 2008 3:49 PM

"that dress needs cleaned" or "my car needs fixed".

Haha, my boyfriend will not, NOT stop doing this. He's a successful lawyer and very well-educated, but this is one awful farm-boy habits he refuses to break (along with always having a toothpick hanging out of his mouth). I think he thinks it makes him sound down-to-earth.

And Paddy, thanks for that. You made me feel a little less stupid ;)

Posted by: tt_marie at April 23, 2008 3:50 PM

1. My biggest pet peeve in writing is people who write "should of" instead of "should have" (or other variations of this same damn mistake.

2. My fiance constantly tries to tease me about a word that I still insist I'm saying correctly and she insists I'm not. The word is "often" which she believes is pronounced "off-en" but which I always pronounce the T. What say you Pajibans?

Posted by: Bistro at April 23, 2008 3:50 PM

I love these. I skipped to the bottom so I could post. My boss asked me the other day if awhile was two words. He also uses the word "irregardless" CONSTANTLY. My boyfriend pronounces office like Ah-fis, and my best friend says radiator as rah-diator. I'm a nazi about these kinds of things (not an English major, but I studied Voice and Speech in college and had to learn how to speak correctly by IPA), so I usually don't do them myself. I do have the darndest time saying anemone, however... :-(

Posted by: KatSings at April 23, 2008 3:50 PM

I pronounced facade as fa-kade when reading it. I knew how to say in when speaking but never realized it was the same word any time I read it. I also badly mangled echelon by pronouncing it as ek-a-lon. I was recently corrected by my wife for pronouncing museum as mu-zim and not the proper of mu-zee-um. She is a bit of a grammar nazi so I guess I will take her word for it.

My younger siblings used to refer to the lawn mower as a "mow lawn" and it almost made me fratricidal.

Also, my grasp on the rules that govern comma placement is tentative at best.

Posted by: Rob at April 23, 2008 3:52 PM

I mispronounce "sandwich" as "sangwich" - I have no idea why - my parents don't do it but my sister does as well. Its not intentional, I just do it. I also cannot, for the life of me, say egg as anything but AYgg and orange as rrrange(like a pirate). OH! And, ruined - I can't phonetically spell out how I say it, but I'm told I sound Scandinavian. I from South Texas. That one really annoys my boyfriend. Also, I have a tendency when not really thinking to say passport "pass-a-port".

Reading over this, I realize I sound like some kind of idiot. Oh, well.

One other thing - in Houston, there is a street spelled Kuykendahl. Its a pretty major road on the north side of town, and everyone pronounces it as Kirkindoll. No clue why - it was totally confusing to me as a non-native Houstonian when I first moved here. Along with the suburb of Humble (no H, its Ummmble) and San Felipe (San Phillippy), we have some doozies 'round these parts. YEAH TEXAS!!!

Posted by: Celly Belly at April 23, 2008 3:53 PM

Ears? I always heard it as, "Do your boobs hang low, . . ." Makes a bit more sense, actually.

If I hear W say NUKE-U-LAR one more time, to the moon, Alice. It's easy to remember because if you swap the first two letters "nuclear" becomes "unclear."

Posted by: BWeaves at April 23, 2008 3:54 PM

"Comely" -- I'm still kind of fuzzy on this one. I'm pretty sure it's "kuhm-ly," but I pronounced it "comb-ly" for decades.

It bugs the hell out of me when Patricia Arquette says "Distric Attorney" on Medium. I love you, Patty, but there's a "t" on the end of that.

When I was in Norway my army buddies and I went to a pizza place. The waitress was explaining one of the pizzas and said it had "yah-lah-peh-noes" on it. (Think about it.) We cracked up about that, which makes me feel jerky now.

Posted by: Todd at April 23, 2008 3:54 PM

I had a boyfriend who corrected me that celery was "sell-ree," when I had been saying "sal-uh-ree." Scew you, and make your own damned tuna salad.

My father uses a "tr" sound instead of "thr" and a "d" instead of "th," so it comes out like "Give me tree dem der cookies." I sometimes slip into that mode of speech when I visit....

My grandma regularly butchered words. She took us to see "Jur-uh-sick Park" when it came out in the theater. Semi unrelated, but she also was amazingly tolerant of cursing, such as when my 4 year old cousin, who had a speech impediment, asked for ice cream, and my grandma's response was, "Ass cream? What do you need ass cream for? What's wrong with your ass?"

I absolutely hate it when people say "orientated." "Oriented" works just fine.

I also hate it when people say "once and a while." Makes no frigging sense.

Posted by: frumpiefox at April 23, 2008 3:55 PM

Say it with me:
"Brew-sKetta"

I can't!! I can't. I know that's correct but no no no. I feel like I'm trying to be all pretentious fake-Italian, when in reality I am a pale-assed Irish girl. :)

And I call it sauce, not gravy. Muah ha ha.

Posted by: Julie at April 23, 2008 3:55 PM

Nice one on the TV ad mispronunciations, krix. Several years ago I saw a horribly grating, locally made ad for some discount-furniture outlet where the announcer kept informing us that they were having a clearance sale on "bedroom suits [suites]."

Posted by: Mr. Atoz at April 23, 2008 3:55 PM

I say you and your old lady are headed for a divorce before you all get married if the both of you continue being so anal.I don't have that problem with none of my bitches.

Posted by: Pookie at April 23, 2008 3:56 PM

Also, MattFactor, "of a morning" or "of an evening" is a very Irish expression. So it's possible it just translated overseas and became a colloquialism. (Which I'm nearly 100% I just spelled wrong. Womp womp.) I also remembered that when I lived in London, I found out how to pronounce queue. I used to pronounce it as "qway" instead of "Q." Whoops.

Posted by: KatSings at April 23, 2008 3:56 PM

Before I knew what sex was I used to get confused between the word organism and the word orgasm. It took me saying the wrong one in front of my mother (Oh the humanity!!) before I got straightened out. It still creeps me out that she had to explain it. Don't look at me like that, I was nine years old.

Posted by: JoelD at April 23, 2008 3:57 PM

I remembered one more:

"Palast Indians" instead of Palestinians... whew that was embarrassing in grade 9 History...

Posted by: Kelsophecles at April 23, 2008 3:57 PM

OH! And it's PANERA, not PANERA'S. There is no Panera family who owns this chain. I can't even tell you how many people say "Panera's".

Oh, and you shouldn't pronounce the "s" on the end of "Illinois". There are actually people who do this.

Posted by: tt_marie at April 23, 2008 3:57 PM

Dustin, thank you for making making an exception for "foreigners".

I was taught to put punctuation marks inside of quotation marks, if the punctuation is part of the quotation. Otherwise, even when using commas and periods, they should be placed outside the quotes.

Blame the Queen.

On another note, my name is a pretty good test of people's basic spelling skills.
"What's your name?"
"Celery."
"How do you spell that?"
"Like the vegetable."
Blank stare.

Posted by: celery at April 23, 2008 3:58 PM

Bistro: Often is pronounced off-en. When in doubt, just check a dictionary.

Posted by: BWeaves at April 23, 2008 3:58 PM

Oh Krix:

I feel your pain. Once I was in a (very pricey) restaurant in DC with my then boss who was born and raised and still living in Rome. He asked for bruschetta (as it should be pronounced) and the waiter gave him a patronizing sigh and told him "it's Brushetta actually". We left and he refused to pay for the drinks we had up until then.

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 3:58 PM

My mom insisted on ordering pizza with An-shwah, and when I gently pointed out that Americans pronounce it Anchovies, she threw me a blistering look and said, "The correct pronunciation is An-shwa, from the French, which I speak fluently."

Also, my best friend manages to mangle any proper noun he encounters while reading. Character name: Arya, pronounced Awry. Town name: Wausau, pronounced Warsaw. I used to correct her, but now I just try to figure out if I can come with the same wrong word as she does.

Posted by: Stella at April 23, 2008 3:59 PM

Hey, Angelbabe

I think the "Aluminum" vs. "Aluminium" is a case where you're either both right, or all Americans are wrong. I seem to recall that the original patent on aluminium was British and had the extra "i". When the patent was registered in the U.S. a clerk acidentall dropped the second "i" and created aluminum.

I hate, hate, hate it when people say "I could care less". It's couldn't care less, people! If you "could care less" you're implying that you do actually care since there is a lesser level of caring you could drop to.

Sheesh.

Posted by: Tatertot at April 23, 2008 3:59 PM

On the Bruschetta comment - I love when I pronounce it correctly and the wait-person "corrects" me. Love it.

Also, the word "Factoid" means something taken as true but is, in fact, not true. It does NOT mean some bit of trivia. Thanks CNN for screwing that one up for all of us.

Posted by: JustThisGuyYouKnow at April 23, 2008 4:00 PM

I'm not saying I'm perfect, by any stretch, but I actually derive some sort of perverse pleasure in intentionally mispronouncing some of these words that rile y'all up. "Idear" is one of my favorites. Also, "pair-uh-diggum" and "warsh." Pretty much anything on the list here. But I say it with a smirk, and in the right company...This makes me sound like a tool.

Posted by: coveredinbees at April 23, 2008 4:01 PM

Another sort of related one: In an English class once, the teacher brought up the phrase "people who live in glass houses..." and asked for the ending. Being the dutiful know-it-all I was, I said, "shouldn't throw parties." Thankfully, everyone thought I was joking. But I wasn't.

Posted by: frumpiefox at April 23, 2008 4:02 PM

hmmm... on my screen, my post is mashed in with three others and then cut off. here's all and only what I meant to post. Feel free to delete the first one.

Dustin, thank you for making making an exception for "foreigners".

I was taught to put punctuation marks inside of quotation marks, if the punctuation is part of the quotation. Otherwise, even when using commas and periods, they should be placed outside the quotes.

Blame the Queen.

On another note, my name is a pretty good test of people's basic spelling skills.
"What's your name?"
"Celery."
"How do you spell that?"
"Like the vegetable."
Blank stare.

The most common mistake is "cellery", but you would be surprised how many people over ten think that celery starts with an s and/or contains an a.

Posted by: celery at April 23, 2008 4:02 PM

Accidentally dropped the "i"! Accidentally!

Me no speak English good beer without.

Posted by: Tatertot at April 23, 2008 4:04 PM

Here's one . . . I thought that piece of furniture that is in your bedroom, the tall one with all the drawers, was called "Chester Drawers", not chest of drawers. Chester being a proper noun, Chester Drawers, like Wurlitzer Piano . I was 20 before I found out it was called a chest of drawers!

Posted by: Grins at April 23, 2008 4:05 PM

The next asshole I hear say "I could care less" is going to die a horrible, violent death. The phrase is "I couldn't care less". If you could care less, then that means you do care, dickhead. Think about what you're fucking saying. Okay, all better now.

Posted by: slower lower at April 23, 2008 4:05 PM

How boring this world would be if everybody pronounced everything the same way and used English uniformly. It's things like "need washed" that makes regionalism so interesting. Also, how awesome is it that "pants" and "fanny" mean something totally different in the U.K.? Thus, I'm going to admit my legitimate mistakes rather than pick on other people (for once).

My offenses:

-I thought "precipitous" meant rainy until very recently.

-I did not know what sublime meant until I was about 25. I steered clear of the word and cringed whenever I saw it and, yet, never bothered to investigate what it meant.

-I, too, pronounced aw-rie as aw-ree for years. I misspelled "a lot" until I hit my junior year of college.

-I cannot say the word "brewery."

Posted by: samantha t at April 23, 2008 4:06 PM

I live in Cleveland. (I do NOT say things like "car needs washed.")

One of our major downtown streets is Carnegie Avenue. Now, I realize that dictionaries list two pronunciations as acceptable, but it drives me fucking nuts when people pronounce it "car-NAY-gee." Fucking NUTS!

Is there anywhere else in the country where this pronunciation is prevalent? Certainly not near Carnegie Hall or Carnegie Mellon.

Godtopus, I hate people.

Posted by: Sean at April 23, 2008 4:06 PM

tt_marie- I live in Pittsburgh and people here say that stuff all the time and it drives me crazy!! I have gotten into arguments with people here who are sure that they are right! Your room needs TO BE cleaned! Not needs cleaned! I just think it makes a person sound like a fool.

Posted by: Erin at April 23, 2008 4:07 PM

Mr. Atoz - oh my god, my in laws say that ALL THE TIME. We inherited a bunch of bedroom suites after Grandad passed on and holy shit I was so confused!

But I couldn't say anything because I had argued that the word "verbiage" was spelled "verbage" and tried to correct my mother-in-law - and well, that didn't go over so well, so I thought maybe I was wrong about the whole 'suit-as-suite' business.
VINDICATED bitches!

Posted by: Stella at April 23, 2008 4:07 PM

My sister used to pronounce the 't' in Chevrolet.

My mother-in-law says Pee-nyoh Knee-ar instead of Pinot Noir. It really makes me want to rip her face off. She also can't say narcissistic. She says "narcisstic."

My mother says JurassTic Park instead of Jurassic Park. She's done this for 15 years now.

Both my mother and father use "is" instead of "are." They say, "Is there any more corn?"

I often confuse "was" and "were," although I'm getting better at it.

Posted by: Kolby at April 23, 2008 4:07 PM

Damn...another discussion I can't participate in because I'm perfect.

Posted by: Shadows of Dakaron at April 23, 2008 4:07 PM

1. chamois, I said 'sha-moise'
2. hors d'oeurvres, 'whores dee vores'
3. while in Canada, the table d'hote (should be said table doh or something french), I knew the table was not pronounced like the American 'table' but I had no clue for the d'hote part. I butchered it until the waitress corrected me.

As you can see, I have issues with French.

Posted by: acbug3 at April 23, 2008 4:08 PM

Oooh, ooh, my husband also says 'suit' for 'suite'--it drives me nuts! He also insists on calling our Netflix queue our Netflix 'K', though I've also heard other people say it that way. I still think it should be 'Q'.

And, my inlaws insist that the plural possessive of my last name, James, is 'Jameses'. As in 'the Jameses house'. I think it's acceptable to say it that way but they refuse to believe that it is supposed to be spelled James'.

Posted by: birdgal at April 23, 2008 4:09 PM

I used to pronounce facade like arcade. Because, you know, that's how it's spelled. It wasn't until high school when my then girlfriend was like "what did you say? It's fa-sahd," and then proceeded to mock me mercilessly.

I also used to pronounce wound like wownd. Because, again, that's how it's spelled. I still do it on occasion. Worst is when one of my college professors corrected me.

Fuck the English language. I'm an English major, too. Go figure.

Posted by: TeenieBopper at April 23, 2008 4:10 PM

I can't say brusKetta either. I know that's the proper way to say it in Italian, but I feel like it's become so Americanized that it's ok to say it the way it would be pronounced in English.

But along those lines, probably the worst thing I have to deal with in my life is the lingering animosity from my husband toward my parents every time they say eye-talian, instead of Italian. Especially since his Italian roots don't go all that far back. I swear he's going to explode when ever it happens. It's not pronounced eye-taly mom and dad, so why would you say eye-talian?!?

I also have to deal with the added r in wash from my family. And we live in Oregon so not only do I have to put up with hearing warsh, but also Warshington.

Posted by: katy at April 23, 2008 4:10 PM

Words: I said 'ethereal' as 'erethral' (aka, almost 'urethral') for yeeeeears, which is a particularly unfortunate disparateness of meaning.

Idiom: Just recently found out it's "all intents and purposes," not "all intensive purposes." That one made me feel stupid.

Posted by: Jess at April 23, 2008 4:10 PM

I hope no-one mentioned this one yet, but I can't stand when people say they "could care less". That's really not making much of a statement, is it?

Posted by: Lannie at April 23, 2008 4:10 PM

I was born February fifth, and as a wee one, I couldn't pronounce either of these. My family, however, thought this was hilarious. So everytime they came over, they would always ask me when I was born, to which I would reply:
"Fairy Berry Five".

God my Mom's a bitch. But it's genetic, so I love her.

Posted by: Jeremy at April 23, 2008 4:11 PM

Hegemony. As a kid I read it as "hedge-eh-moany" and didn't hear it pronounced for a long time. And for a brief time I thought there were two different words with similar meanings and being the budding English major that I was (heh), I assumed it was because they shared the same root in Greek. Finally the lightbulb went off, but if I had to read it aloud today I would likely hesitate or screw it up.

Posted by: sweetfeed at April 23, 2008 4:12 PM

Okay, I can't stop. There's a pretty famous Irish writer called Oliver St. John Gogarty and one can always tell which US tourists do not watch Masterpiece Theatre because they ask for "Oliver-Saint-John-Gogarty's house" instead of "Oliver Singin Gogarty's house". Similarly, if you're all paying attention: the family name Beauchamp is pronounced Beecham". And Worcestershire sauce? It's "wooster sauce". Don't blame me. Blame the Normans. And yes, I posted this commnent just to be able to put as many periods as I could outside of quotation marks.

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 4:14 PM

"And, my inlaws insist that the plural possessive of my last name, James, is 'Jameses'. As in 'the Jameses house'. I think it's acceptable to say it that way but they refuse to believe that it is supposed to be spelled James'."

Strunk and White say otherwise.

Posted by: samantha t at April 23, 2008 4:15 PM

Ooh, got another. My best friend used to explode on people when they pluralized Cracker Jack. In his words (after the calming): "You do not have 'Cracker Jacks.' You have boxes of Cracker Jack."

He also used to get really upset when others would add an 's' to words like forward (forwards), backward (backwards) and toward (towards). Admittedly, that still bothers me a little.

Posted by: Sean at April 23, 2008 4:16 PM

My sister as a kid would say all sorts of words wrong, and we made fun of her severely. Poor kid. Church was "certs" like the breath mints, shampoo was "pan chew", and after we laughed she would try to tell us to shut up by saying "shup".

Then there's my husband, a Penn state guy, he pronounces winter like "winner", Oregon like "organ", and orange like a pirate "Arhhhhnge".

Posted by: The Land Snark at April 23, 2008 4:16 PM

Couple of funny ones:

I always pronounced aclimatized as a-clit-a-mized. A very horrified mother had to correct me on that one.

My wife always pronounced pseudonym as poseidon. Wasn't until two years ago (when the remake of Posiedon's Adventure released) that I pointed out this gaffe to her.

Posted by: malikvlc at April 23, 2008 4:17 PM

sweetfeed you can pronounce hegemony two ways. Hi-jem-uh-nee or your old way hedge-eh-moany. So, you're right any way you slice it. Yay!

Posted by: coveredinbees at April 23, 2008 4:17 PM

PaddyDog--

I still call it "Worchestersheestershustershire..." sauce, (usually with random added syllables) because of Bugs Bunny. Yeah, I know how to say it, but Bugs' way is way more fun.

Same thing with "ignoranimus" for "ignoramus" and "ma-roon" for "moron."

Who says cartoons aren't a bad influence?

Posted by: frumpiefox at April 23, 2008 4:18 PM

Always thought the word 'draughts' was pronounced 'drots,' just found out the hard way that it's 'drafts.'

Always pronounced 'cacophony' with the emphasis on the first syllable, but according to the same person who caught me out on 'draughts,' the emphasis is on the second.

Took me until about the eighth grade before I figured out that the spoken word 'prejudiced' (which I knew), and the written word (which I pronounced in my head as 'preejoodiced') were the same word. Figured that one out on my own.

Posted by: raych at April 23, 2008 4:18 PM

I'm the same way. I enjoy pronouncing things in alternate or outright incorrect ways. "ARE'inge" instead of "OR'inge". Hard-G "gerrymander". "Re-NAY-sahns" rather than "REN-ih-sahns."

Someone once told me this, and my rudimentary understanding of latinate languages made me believe him: It is incorrect to ask for "a biscotti" because "biscotti" is plural.

I also read that there's a law on the books stating the correct pronunciation of Arkansas. My dad joked that it was a completely justifiable pronunciation, and that the true pronunciation of that other state was "Kan-zaw"

Et cetera. That is how it is pronounced. I can usually stop my fist right before it hits the face of a person who says "et cetra", but all bets are off if anyone says "ek cetra" or "ek cetera".

Websearch "Dialect Survey" for some interesting pronunciations and phrases around the United States. I'd never heard it before I read the survey, but now every time it rains when the sun is shining I pronounce that "The devil is beating his wife"

Posted by: Matches at April 23, 2008 4:20 PM

As a child I thought the can broth my mother fed me wanted to be eaten. That is why it was called consume-me.

Posted by: Jab at April 23, 2008 4:21 PM

People correct me all of the time for saying "Hand me the scissor" instead of "scissors." "Pair of scissors" is fine, but how can you use "a" with a plural object? I may be wrong, but it seems reasonable to me.

Posted by: frumpiefox at April 23, 2008 4:22 PM

oh, and I have been told I pronounce "quarter" very oddly


I maintain I prounounce it just fine, thank you very much

Posted by: Bethy at April 23, 2008 4:23 PM

"One of our major downtown streets is Carnegie Avenue. Now, I realize that dictionaries list two pronunciations as acceptable, but it drives me fucking nuts when people pronounce it "car-NAY-gee." Fucking NUTS!

Is there anywhere else in the country where this pronunciation is prevalent? Certainly not near Carnegie Hall or Carnegie Mellon."

All of my friends from Pittsburgh put the emphasis on the middle syllable. As that's essentially where Andy C. spent much of his time, I tend to think that was the intended pronunciation. I emphasize the first syllable when saying "Carnegie Hall" because I live in NYC, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

One thing in NYC that gets on my nerves: when people lose their damn minds if somebody mispronounces "How-ston Street" as "Hyoo-ston Street." Give me a break - it's spelled "Houston" and Houston the city is a hell of a lot bigger and well-known than Houston the street. It's just total snobbery.

Posted by: samantha t at April 23, 2008 4:23 PM

I have to confess to the seeg/segue confusion as well. Again with the hearing and reading separately!

Several years ago (maybe 6) I was in the laundromat, and some woman I'd never seen before was having a long and loud conversation with another patron about her financial problems and how she resolved them by being "digilent." It bugged the crap out of me then, but she said it so many times that it wormed its way into my head, and to this day I have to think about it before I say it out loud.

I fucking hate that woman.

Posted by: KateNonymous at April 23, 2008 4:25 PM

BWeaves - I have checked multiple dictionaries, and most offer both pronunciations as correct. I just wanted Pajiba opinion I suppose...

Posted by: Bistro at April 23, 2008 4:27 PM

I'll fight the next person who insults my Yinzer honor. White glove=poised.

I know it bugs the holy living hell out of my pitch-perfect wife, but I'll never stop dropping the infinitive "to be," saying "crick" and using phrases like "redd up." Sorry, honey.

See, regional things, no matter how retarded they may sound to outsiders, tend to mean something to people. That's why I still laugh when I think of a story told by Pittsburgh radio guy Scott Paulson about his trip to France: He and his wife are walking down the Champs-Élysées, they've done the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, etc., experiencing Western culture at its finest, when he hears, "Hey, Scott Paulsen! Wha're yinz doin' in Pairs?"

That said, there's a little road that runs through our township, Dutilh Road. There's churches named after it, for cripes sakes. So every time I hear some taint-sniffer say "Duluth Road," I die a little inside.

From my cadet days, "orientate" drives me absolutely fucking insane. That it passed the spell-check feature here just might cost this office its keyboard. Also, I hung around way too much with a guy who used "at this appointed time." FUCK. YOU.

But you know what? I hafta help my gramma worsh her babushka inna crick, den pick up some jumbo dahn Gine Iggle. Peace.

Posted by: Jon at April 23, 2008 4:29 PM

FrumpieFox:

That is brilliant. I would never question the wisdom of Bugs Bunny on these matters.

On a related note, does anyone know what the threshold is for a mis-pronunciation becoming acceptable because it has been become part of the common speech? Is it widespread use? Numbers of years in use? I'm thinking of the way Americans pronounce "baroque" or the way Irish or British people pronounce "filet". Anyone?

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 4:34 PM

Oh Pissboy, I hear you! I went to Edinboro and the way the people spoke there drove me crazy and has forever scarred me. "The car needs warshed". They also use the word "ignorant" for indignant. My roommated used to tell me how ignorant she was to her boyfriend (!).

Until a few years ago I thought wheelbarrow was wheelbarrel.
I also constantly interchange toothpick and Q-tip.
It's always fun asking a waiter for a Q-tip. Funny looks ensue.

Posted by: LZ at April 23, 2008 4:34 PM

I'm sure I have a ton of these considering I had to take speech therapy three times a week starting at the age of three because I had what the doctors called a "lazy tongue."

Posted by: Jax at April 23, 2008 4:34 PM

i thought of another one: rural

Posted by: kelley at April 23, 2008 4:35 PM

In Austin, there is a street called Manchaca. Pronounced:"Man-chack". Stupid Texans. Why the hell do you put an "A" at the end if it's not there to be pronounced?!

Also, the auto repair shop that says their name is Sa-LAY-zar.... dood, it's SAL-a-zar. Saying it different doesn't make you any less Mexican.

Posted by: Stella at April 23, 2008 4:35 PM

Also, I never do this in writing or when it matters, because I obviously know the correct way to say it, but when I'm speaking with people I'm comfortable with and being lazy, I always say "me and so and so" when it should be "so and so and I."

Actually 'me and so and so' is right.

If you haven't already read it I highly recommend Steven Pinker's 'The Language Instinct'. He discusses lots of grammar stuff, he points out the differences between the science of linguistics and the random prescriptive rules that were made up a century ago and that make people overcorrect perfectly good grammar, as above. Also he discusses 'could care less' (sarcasm, obvious from the tone) and points out that grammar mavens often have no idea what they are talking about (he reanalyses an an analysis of Barbra Streisand's speach).

Posted by: ChrisD at April 23, 2008 4:37 PM

When I was 7 my parents decided that perhaps we should celebrate the four Sundays of advent at home. The best part (for my 7-year-old self) was that I got to read aloud from the book of instructions. Until one night when I came across the words "Now, let us all sing a hymn" and read aloud "Now, let us all sing a hymen."

It was a few years before I found out what my parents found so damn funny.

Posted by: Rollerson at April 23, 2008 4:37 PM

I'm thinking of the way Americans pronounce "baroque"

As in "ba-roke" PaddyDog? How else does one pronounce it?

Posted by: coveredinbees at April 23, 2008 4:37 PM

"Actually 'me and so and so' is right."

Depends on wherre it is in the sentence:

"Me and so and so went to the park"--no!

"Harry met me and so and so at the park"--yes!

Posted by: frumpiefox at April 23, 2008 4:41 PM

I had a friend who up until we were seniors in college pronounced hors d'oevres as "ors de voors."

And she didn't believe me when I corrected her. And she worked as a waitress at a country club for many years before that.

Posted by: Shano at April 23, 2008 4:41 PM

hehehe kellee, the "rural juror"

that 30 Rock could carry an entire episode on two words was genius

Posted by: Bethy at April 23, 2008 4:41 PM

Oh man, I've got a million...I work in customer service and we ask callers to verify their mailing addresses. You'd be amazed how many people live on a "skreet."
I'm from MA, and growing up I thought Worcester and Wooster, Gloucester and Glosster, and Leicester and Lester were all separate towns. And here's a weird one I've never heard outside of my podunk hometown. Instead of "so DO I," they say "so DON'T I." It hurts my brain every time.

Posted by: stensten at April 23, 2008 4:43 PM

samantha t,

The Houston/Houston Street is actually interesting, and I don't think it's snobbery to call things by their proper name. They were named after 2 different people, both with a lot of history behind them, and while Houston Street is a corrupted spelling of the original name (Houstoun), it predates the naming of the city of Houston by more than 2 decades. Whatever, I think it's pretty cool...

I learned all this the other day. Some tourist asked for directions to HoUUUUUston Street so I had to kill him. I figured the next time someone asked directions to HoUUUUUston Street I could explain his or her error using some cold hard facts before assisting in his or her demise.

Posted by: David at April 23, 2008 4:44 PM

My hubby and his father pronounce padlock "pad-a-lock" Drives me insane.

I was guilty of the hyper-bowl for hyperbole too. I remember looking around wildly the first time I heard it said out loud at a book meeting.

I still say stat-cha-toots for statutes. I can't stop it.

Sayings I've gotten wrong...

"bleeding like a stuffed pig"
"I'm not your wet nurse" (I so meant nursemaid)

Posted by: christina at April 23, 2008 4:45 PM

David - I was merely pointing out that it's not some ridiculous error in pronunciation. It's perfectly reasonable to think "How-ston" is pronounced "Hyoo-ston." Mind you, I'm writing as somebody who absolutely refuses to pronounce "Budapest" as "Buda-pescht", so precision isn't really my thing.

Posted by: samantha t at April 23, 2008 4:51 PM

Re: aluminum -- my ex-girlfriend's father called it "aluminin," which I can't even say if I try.

There was also a colleague in my GRADUATE WRITING program who was so concerned about genre that he couldn't even say it right. Fuck's sake, man, it's not "Jon-Ra," although it did allow me to fantasize about being a Thundercats villain.

Posted by: Jon at April 23, 2008 4:55 PM

Luckily for me, most of my mispronounced words are in my head, because I read them over and over again and don't usually say them out loud. (My high school isn't exactly filled with the sharpest knives in the drawer, you know?)Case in point: Canapes.
Until last year I was convinced they were can-a-pees. Classy, huh?

I never had trouble with Hermione, but around the time I was reading the fourth book my sister laughed at me when I said Ginny like guinea.

Lastly, I once attempted to date a kid that lived in New Gloucester. Imagine my chagrin when my mother and friends laughed at me for asking how far New Gloo-kester was. It didn't work out.

Posted by: Erin at April 23, 2008 4:55 PM

Here's another one - conversate. Doesn't converse sound so much better? Am I wrong here?

Posted by: iheartlasagne at April 23, 2008 4:56 PM

When I was a kid, we had a babysitter who mangled the language all the time. My dad nearly choked to keep from laughing when she said her sister was in the hospital for testes (tests). And my brother and I walked in a walky-thorn(walkathon).

One thing that bothers me is when people use the ___ and I/me incorrectly. "Paul and I went to the store is correct," but "the package was delivered to Paul and me." Trying to explain that "me" is correct when it is the object of the preposition and "I" is correct when it is the subject in a sentence is just too much for some people to understand.

Posted by: rlr260 at April 23, 2008 4:57 PM

Mr. McGee has lots of stupid pronunciations. Breakfast is pronounced breaffest, spoken quickly and almost like one syllable. He also says supposably instead of supposedly.
I was an early reader like some of the other commenters and was devastated in first grade when I learned chameleon was not pronounced with a ch- sound at the beginning.

Posted by: Dangle McGee at April 23, 2008 4:57 PM

OMG how many people say be "Pacific" instead of SPECIFIC. My ex used to do that it drove me NUTS!

Posted by: Sammji at April 23, 2008 4:58 PM

Of course I mean I was devastated to learn it was pronounced like the ch in cheese and not the ch in chasm. Buh.

Posted by: Dangle McGee at April 23, 2008 5:00 PM

Erin--

"Can-a-pees" is acceptable! (Well, maybe not in France, but in the US, anyway.) :) I called them "ca-napes" (like "tapes") for years, figuring "can-a-pees" can't possibly be right....

Posted by: frumpiefox at April 23, 2008 5:05 PM

I said "taunt" in place of "taut" until I was about 13. Until recently, I thought assuage was pronounced "ah-saw-ged" (with a soft g sound). Luckily, I don't recall myself saying that one out loud too much.

Posted by: serena at April 23, 2008 5:05 PM

Although I get laughed at all the time, I insist on saying it is thundering and lightninging . I still think I am right and the rest of the world has no idea what they are talking about.

Posted by: Jab at April 23, 2008 5:06 PM

Hee. I have a funny one for this. I had a roommate who was very insecure about her intelligence around me, our other roommate and my boyfriend. She would get upset whenever we used words she didn't know. So one day she came out of her room when the rest of us were watching TV, looked at the screen and said, "Well, that is just the epitome of stupidity." Except that she pronounced epitome to rhyme with palindrome. We were looking at her, very confused, and she was soooo happy because she thought she finally had come up with a word to stump us. My other roommate finally figured out what she meant, and we couldn't help it, we laughed for about 10 minutes. The "of stupidity" part really got us. She didn't talk to us for about a week. Still funny though.

Posted by: Katers at April 23, 2008 5:06 PM

I had my share of 'never heard it said, only read it' mistakes as a kid ('ginger' with a hard middle g, 'mie-zeld' for 'misled'), but as an (ostensible) grownup, if I don't know a word, I'll look up the pronunciation before I try it. How smug am I? ;-)

I do get annoyed by the grammatical and spelling errors others make (& I hate when I mistype and make them myself - but that's my fingers, not my brain...) I'm a total bitch about misplaced apostrophes, and I think 'bored of' is an abomination. Don't even get me started on people who write 'phased' for 'fazed', and supermarkets with queues for 'five items or less' (it's 'fewer', you dimwitted arseholes!!)
Well hell, I'm getting old... I have to find my fun somewhere!

My favouritest ever grammar correction was the English professor who, correcting a line in a pupil's essay which read:
'she crashed down the stairs and lay prostitute at the bottom',
commented that the pupil needed to learn the difference between a fallen woman, and one who has merely tripped...

Posted by: Tarn at April 23, 2008 5:07 PM

The one that really gets to me is when people say "supposably" instead of "supposedly." A few more that are pretty common in NJ that make me want to rip the offender's teeth out are, "irregardless," "hisself," and "youse." Gaaahh!!

It got so bad where I worked before that my friends and I actually kept a Coworker Dictionary and wrote down all the mistakes that people made on a daily basis. Yeah...we had a little extra time on our hands.

Posted by: noodlestein at April 23, 2008 5:07 PM

*it's not PA JEE BA?

*I will still put a "g" in onion as in ung-yun

*I commented to my mom when I was in the fifth grade that the sky looked very "omni us" and then got pissed when she laughed at me.

Posted by: elspeth at April 23, 2008 5:08 PM

samantha t,

I just wanted to fight with you. I know exactly what you mean. I've been living here for a few years, and I still mispronounce it once in a while.

Anyway, I'm gay, but maybe we could go on a date? I think we can work through the obvious problems.

Love,

David

Posted by: David at April 23, 2008 5:13 PM

When I was a kid I repeatedly called people "Eye-dots" because some how the second "i" in "idiot" was invisible to me. No-one ever corrected me because they had no idea of what I was trying to say!

Posted by: gelis at April 23, 2008 5:14 PM

Coveredinbees:

Americans (at least those around me) say "baroke" (like "joke") while on my indigenous side of the pond we say "barock" (like "dock"). And that's how it was pronounced in France when I lived there so I assume it's correct. But I also assume that the American pronunciation is considered correct here since even the poshest music critics pronounce it that way on WFMT.

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 5:18 PM

Paddydog,
Another one is 'Cholmondeley' - pronounced 'Chumley'.
And my favourite 'upperclass name pronounced totally fucking different from the way it is spelled, dammit!' is: Featherstonehaugh.
That's 'Fanshaw', to his pals.

My theory is that the aristos were drunk so much of the time that the slurred pronunciations of their names became standard!

Posted by: Tarn at April 23, 2008 5:19 PM

Up until last week, when I heard her say it and corrected her, my girlfriend thought that "for all intents and purposes" was "for all intensive purposes."
And when I was little I loved to sing along to the famous Bob Marley song "I Shocked the Sheriff." My parents didn't have the heart to let me know that the sheriff was not taken aback by Bob's antics, but in fact, dead.

Posted by: Sasha at April 23, 2008 5:20 PM

I thought interpretate was a word FOREVER. it made total sense to me. Interpretation ----- Interpretate.

No. not a word.
Level of embarrassment when I was told the word is interpret? - high.

Posted by: perry at April 23, 2008 5:21 PM

BWeaves - I have checked multiple dictionaries, and most offer both pronunciations as correct. I just wanted Pajiba opinion I suppose...

Posted by: Bistro

Yes, but "off-en" seems to be the first pronunciation listed, so I'd say your fiance' wins. Strangely enough, I pronounce it both ways.

Posted by: BWeaves at April 23, 2008 5:21 PM

These are halarious.
Some of mine:
For the longest time I thought 'hello' was spelled 'hellow'. I argued rounds with my father about that in 8th grade. I also said 'pacific' instead of 'specific' and the first few times I read the word 'ocean' I had no idea what it was. "Ockeean? What the hell is an ockeean?"

Mr. Vivian is French and while he speaks English better then most people I've met he has a bad habbit of adding an 's' where it dosent belong.
Good examples?
"Lets make pastas tonight"
"I need to fill out the paperworks"
"We need to get some new frunitures for the house"

And since my grammer is horrible (as many word/grammer nazi's have already realized by reading this post) I cant even explain to him, logically, why he shouldnt add an 's'. I mean, it is plural, but it just isn't right!

Le Sigh.

Posted by: Vivian at April 23, 2008 5:22 PM

Diplodocous: Dip-lo-DOH-kis
Episcopal: Ep-i-SCOP-al
Debacle: DEB-uh-cull (and conversely thought "debacle" was spelled debauchal, but since I never used the word, spellcheck never had a chance to pick it up)
Rapport: RAP-ort

I also had a friend who once asked if the vet was going to seduce the dog before he neutered it, and I asked my dad once if southern Utah was where all the plagiarists lived. Not really mispronunciations, but certainly malapropisms.

And as a joke, my dad always calls the fighting Uruk-Hai from "Lord of the Rings" "my fighting Iroquois."

Posted by: Cady at April 23, 2008 5:23 PM

My personal best: saying Ah-RIS-toh-faynes instead of Air-is-toff-an-ees (Aristophanes), at the age of 25, to a group of high school honors students. genius!

My college roommate's best and brightest: saying "weary" when she meant either "wary" or "leary".

Posted by: TIL at April 23, 2008 5:23 PM

In my first debate round in high school I kept pronouncing regime as "reg-jime." And I would have won some spelling bees (I was a major nerd if you couldn't tell) if I had known the proper pronunciation of ennui and malady--I knew how to spell them, but didn't recognize what the announcer was saying until it was too late.

I had a boyfriend once that could not spell anything to save his life. When I was making fun of him for the millionth time, he defended himself by saying, "Well, maybe I can't spell, but I've got really good pronOUNCiation." I almost lost it.

And mispronunciation of Italian words also drives me crazy. If anyone ever tries to correct me and say "brushetta," I think I might punch them in the face. And on the issue of biscotti, it's the same way with panini--technically, if you just want one, it's a biscotto and a panino. Hearing someone ask for "a panini" just makes me shudder.

Posted by: Jenna at April 23, 2008 5:25 PM

Well if we're broadening the category into stupid things people say because they think they're being eloquent, can somebidy please stop the world from inserting "go ahead" into sentences where it's not needed? PLEASE?

All day long I hear people saying "I'm going to go ahead and give you a bag with that" or "After you caulk the bath tub, you can go ahead and seal it" or "when you've filled out that form, you can go ahead and line up for the test" or "now we've washed your hair, we can go ahead and cut it". Why people? Why?

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 5:28 PM

Paddydog,

I like your pronunciation of baroque very much, but if you say it that way these days, people will think you are referring to Senator Obama - hee!

Posted by: SCG at April 23, 2008 5:30 PM

Hey Thejodester -- how about "relator" for realtor?

Also, my ears bleed when I hear somebody say "where you at?".

Posted by: Bev M. at April 23, 2008 5:30 PM

Tarn:
Ten points for Fanshaw. I'd forgotten about that one. Thank God for P.G. Wodehouse or I'd never be able to keep up. Your theory on the blue bloods may be correct. I had always assumed they were so in-bred they just couldn't read properly.

Posted by: PaddyDog at April 23, 2008 5:31 PM

Sorry -- guess the "relator" one was taken earlier in the thread!! I'm reading too fast for my own good!

Posted by: Bev M. at April 23, 2008 5:32 PM

PaddyDog, "baroque" as a homophone for Obama's first name? Neat!

Posted by: coveredinbees at April 23, 2008 5:32 PM

Pissboy: My step-father (who is from Pennsylvania) does the "that car needs washed" thing. What's worse is that this usage has somehow transferred to my normally very-correct mother (who is from the Philippines). I used to correct them on it every time, but it never helped. Now I live away from home and try to forget.

And Julie: Where I'm studying now, in Lancaster, England, it is LAN-cas-ter.

I'm usually a stickler for accurate pronunciation, but the one I always get wrong is "subsequently". I stress the second syllable instead of the first. I can catch myself if I have a second to think about it, but have never corrected the problem completely.

Posted by: Sarah at April 23, 2008 5:33 PM

I'll never forget when I was in high school and one of my classmates asked me what "chalant" meant. Guess we were studying prefixes -- nonchalant/non-chalant -- guess you had to be there.

Posted by: Bev M. at April 23, 2008 5:35 PM

I used to pronounce 'chastised' as 'chatsized'. I read The Giver when I was eight or nine and I never heard it spoken, and it just kind of fermented in my head so that even later when I learned how to read good my brain just kind of skipped over it.

And currently, I have a professor who pronounces 'chasm' with the soft 'ch'. I cringe every, single, time.

Wow, something about writing a post about words made it incredibly hard to type.

Posted by: darwinfox at April 23, 2008 5:38 PM

How about asterisk? It drives me crazy when people say "asterix." Which someone does daily on ESPN talking about Barry Bonds.

Also, Mr. Sarah B (why does everyone on this site do that?) pronounces mail and male as "mal" and sale and sail as "sal." And so on. I have no idea where this comes from.

Posted by: sarah b at April 23, 2008 5:40 PM

Remembered a couple more:

In southern Idaho, probably 80 percent of people pronounce "Italian" as EYE-talian. I said it as a joke for awhile until one day I accidentally said it seriously, and then I had to stop.

My mom was a radio reporter, and for her very first broadcast, she reported from Tuck-son, Arizona.

One of my co-workers writes a blog, and one of our older co-workers asked if he was "still messin' around with that bloog."

Posted by: Cady at April 23, 2008 5:40 PM

my best friend and i have had a lot of discussions about mispronunciations, mostly because my parents are lexicographers (and i learned lots of big words very, very early), and she was a big reader growing up. basically, i learned words by hearing them, and she learned them as she read them. every now and then, she will say something like "epitome" or "banal" (epiTONE and bay-nal) and i laughingly correct her. i guess my point being: saying a word wrong doesn't mean you're less smart, it means you don't hang around enough people with large vocabularies. misUSE of a word, on the other hand, cracks everyone up.

ps: maybe i'm neurotic, but did anyone else have to go to dictionary.com and listen to the audio pronunciation thingamagig before they posted ever-so-knowingly about their word gaffes?

Posted by: girsch at April 23, 2008 5:42 PM

I once saw a poster that read "baroque is when you are out of Monet."

Posted by: rlr260 at April 23, 2008 5:42 PM

I recently found out that the word scenester is just the word scene with a ster added on... I thought it was something like "sen-esther", rhyming with banister if banister were more of a benister. yeah, rhyming with benister. I think it actually sounds really pretty pronounced my way

Posted by: Maxwell Jacobson at April 23, 2008 5:44 PM

I once saw a poster that read "baroque is when you are out of Monet."

Goddammit, that made me laugh out loud. I am way too easily amused.

Posted by: Julie at April 23, 2008 5:51 PM

I just remembered an awesome one. Reading aloud in class one day, a girl came upon 'mutinous' in her assigned paragraph and paused. Now, I know that pause very well, most people do I think, and I prepared myself for whatever was to come. But I couldn't quite stifle the snort when she said 'moo-TY-nus'.

Posted by: darwinfox at April 23, 2008 5:52 PM

agelbabe:
I'm geeking out here, but technically, aluminium is correct. Aluminium is an element, and an -ium ending is standard for many elements (e.g. Helium, Sodium, etc). I believe the confusion of the names goes back to the fact that one person identified existence of the base metal, and called it aluminum, while the scientist who first isolated the metal called it "aluminium".
I do believe the US is the only country to call it aluminum. I don't know why-probably for the same reason we use standard instead of metric units.

As for mispronounciations, I gre up on the west coast, and so in moving to New York, and living in a Jewish neighborhood, I saw something called gefilte fish in the store. I had no idea how to rponounce it and was too embarrassed to ask my roommate. I think I was inclined to think it was pronounced "gel fielt" with a soft g.

"gefelta"? with a hard g? who would have known that?

Posted by: frogirl1978 at April 23, 2008 6:05 PM

There's a very appropriate strip up at xkcd.com about grammar Nazis and the uses of "effect" and "affect."

For the longest time I thought the phrase "for all intents and purposes" was "for all INTENSIVE purposes." Still works, though, when you think about it.

Posted by: fringecamp at April 23, 2008 6:07 PM

I too am guilty of the Penelope/cantaloupe mix-up, which I've been teased for in the past. I also got laughed at for inexplicably pronouncing "triumph" as "tree-um-fah". It only happened once.

I'm surprised no one has ranted about people who mangle "schedule". My high school principal used to come on the PA and repeate "schhhhheshhhhule" until I was cringing in my seat.

I also knew a girl who said "cli-TOR-us", which, to me, makes it sound like a small pink dinosaur.

And incorrect pronounciation of French words gives me facial tics. "Niche" and "foyer" do not rhyme with "itch" and "lawyer". Don't even get me started on "clique".

Posted by: Lauren at April 23, 2008 6:08 PM

OK, this isn't really a mispronunciation, but it was unfortunate all the same. For a scholarship application, I had to write an essay about someone I "emulate." Unfortunately, I hadn't yet realized the falibility of SpellCheck and, with a single keystroke, changed all of my "emulate"s to "immolate"s.

Another time, in freshman high school english, I misread a word that was in our "literary terms" vocab list. I don't remember what it was, but it was something close to "debacle." So, when I got back my test, my teacher had the red-pen-squigglies equivalent to WTF next to whatever the word was that I had succintly described as "an orgy."

Posted by: LB at April 23, 2008 6:15 PM

My best friend from childhood has TONS of these:

Baffroom for bathroom

Breffist for breakfast

Tivvy for t.v.

Pannacake for pancake

Skeddle for schedule

Coucha for couch (or possibly sofa, or maybe the bastard love child of the two)

Reasy for receipt

Coopin for coupon

There are tons more, as she says weird stuff all the time, but those are the ones I can think of right now. She's honestly not retarded; she's very bright. There's just some crazy mysterious thing that happens between her brain and her mouth. Some of them come from her parents (they're from Nebraska; maybe it's regional?) but many are her own creations.

Posted by: Sarina at April 23, 2008 6:17 PM

My boss with a masters (or is it master's?) degree constantly says "irregardless". Makes me want to hurt him. It's "regardless". He's very edumacated.

And it's not jew-le-ry. It's jewel-ry. And you shouldn't be allowed to wear it until you can pronounce it.

Posted by: Lori at April 23, 2008 6:25 PM

I was originally saying Paheeba, when I first got here.
My mother in law says aDvocado instead of avocado, but maybe she's a heavy drinker. ;)
My family likes to say *casting nasturtiums* instead of aspersions, but that's totally a choice we made. :)

Posted by: Loob at April 23, 2008 6:29 PM

David - you are forgiven and terribly lucky that I get on very well with gay men (the fun ones, at least). I'm married, but I'm sure my husband wouldn't mind.

Posted by: samantha t at April 23, 2008 6:30 PM

I pronounced appellate as apple-et. In a law school class.

Posted by: cree83 at April 23, 2008 6:39 PM

My good friend says "it didn't fall through" when she actually means to say "it fell through"...gah, it drives me crazy. She also says "Expresso"!

I always read "menu" aloud as "men-oo", even though I am completely aware that that is incorrect. It just comes out! I can't control it! I also used to say "ar-chives" instead of "ar-kives"...

Posted by: lux at April 23, 2008 6:45 PM

I lost an 8th grade Scholars Bowl competition because I pronounced "Persephone" "Phosepherone" which is shameful for a nerd like me...

Posted by: Victoria at April 23, 2008 6:46 PM

I had a friend who swore that a chest of drawers was /were actually "Chester Drawers." Not sure how she never figured out the phrase wasn't plural.

Mine is more embarrassing. When I was about 10, my family lived next door to a Latvian family. I didn't really know where Latvia was.

My older sister and her friends struck up a conversation about Lesbians, and I got really confused, and asked, "Aren't (insert neighbors' family name) Lesbians?" which was made funnier by the fact that they had several blonde Amazon model-quality daughters.

Posted by: Jen at April 23, 2008 6:54 PM

I knew a thorough jackass who argued angrily that they are hard 'c's in scythe and sceptre. He got very annoyed when I had said they were silent 'c's.
I hope he says those words often.

Posted by: Loob at April 23, 2008 6:58 PM

I read very early, had a speech impediment, was an only child and lived in a foreign country. I used to mispronounce a lot of words. The ability to hear the word on m-w.com is a lifesaver. I still have trouble with the Rs if I have too much to drink. End up sounding like Elmer Fudd.

I read anything that came into the house - my dad's auto magazines, his science fiction novels, my mom's bodice rippers (I hid the fact that I read those). I knew the word lingerie meant frilly, sexy, tiny bedclothes that weren't intended to be worn for very long before being ripped off and thrown aside.

When I was in 3rd grade I received a bedroom suite of furniture: canopy bed, vanity table, desk and lingerie chest. Having never heard the word lingerie ("lon-jer-ay"), I asked what it meant. Sock and underwear and nightgowns, I was told. Obviously, not the same as sexy, frilly bits.

The conversation I had in high school with my girlfriends about garter belts, and how they could probably find some pretty ling-GER-ee at JCPenney was embarrassing.

Also, to this day I have to concentrate very hard when saying "absorbent" and "observant." I know what they both mean, I know how to spell them, but I will switch them when speaking if I'm not careful. Sponges are not observant, I know, but I sometimes say they are.

Posted by: lunabelle at April 23, 2008 7:18 PM

Best diversion ever! My pronunciation is always flawless, but most of what has already been mentioned drive me buggy. One of my tops is "it's deja vu all over again."

GRRR.

Posted by: MissNev at April 23, 2008 7:20 PM

I once saw a poster that read "baroque is when you are out of Monet."

HEE!

then there is of course the ever realiable
"If it's not Baroque, don't fix it!"

Posted by: Bethy at April 23, 2008 7:23 PM

I always thought unison was pronounced as if it rhymed with munition.

We did a unit on ancient greek myths at highschool, and I thought Persephone was Purse-a-phone, not Per-sef-a-nee, and was of course loudly corrected by my teacher in front of everyone.

Don't know why, but when I was a kid, I thought the word pervert was actually P-Bird. So when they boys would try to look up our dresses or whatever (what's wrong with little boys?!!) I would angrily tell them to stop being P-Birds.

My pet grammatical peeve is gratuitous use of quotation marks. Eg I walk past this restaurant everyday that has a blackboard out the front which reads: Come to ____'s, "Really Fresh Food"!. And I pass a hairdresser that invites one to go in: Come in for a "Haircut".

In trying to type those signs I've probably gotten my own grammar all wrong, but whatevs!!

Posted by: JJ McClay at April 23, 2008 7:26 PM

::sad, lonely voice:: Wait, how do you say "pajiba"?
:(

Posted by: serena at April 23, 2008 7:30 PM

1. I work in a bank. If I hear one more person ask for a withdrawal from thier checkINS account I will beat them into a vegetative state with my three hole punch!
2. My dad frequently tells me to "be quite" instead of "be quiet". Words cannot express. Physical violence, maybe.
3. I cannot say Worcestershire. In my head I know it's horrendously wrong, but it comes out as "wore-chester-shire" everytime. I sound like such an ass.

Posted by: starkravingsane at April 23, 2008 7:37 PM

Oh Good Gravy I almost forgot:

Buscemi!!!

Posted by: Jay at April 23, 2008 7:48 PM

A new one that I *hate* is appearing in the corporate world. I first heard it around 2000:

The plural of "process" as "processeez."

I see where it comes from: They're confusing the method for pluralizing "-sis" as "-ses," like "analysis/analyses," but the "-sis" ("-ses," actually) in "processes" is ALREADY the PLURAL, so it's redundant, stupid, wrong-headed pretentiousness on the part of undereducated MBAs. As I've come to expect from them.

Posted by: S at April 23, 2008 7:51 PM

Ooh, another one. My best friend's name is Craig. Whenever he meets Americans, they call him Creg. We are Australian and pronounce it the way it is spelled, to rhyme with plague. Why on earth do American's say Creg, when it's clearly got an 'ai' in the middle: you guys don't pronounce wait as wet or bail as bell - why Craig as creg?

Posted by: JJ McClay at April 23, 2008 7:54 PM

"If it's not Baroque, don't fix it!"

Embarrassing admission: I think it's because the veddy British Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast always pronounced it as ba-roke, I presumed the entire British population did as well. That's the last time I take elocution lessons from an animated clock voiced by an American actor. David Ogden Steirs, I'm coming for you for making me look dumb in front of PaddyDog.

Posted by: coveredinbees at April 23, 2008 7:54 PM

OOO, it burns when people use "itch" instead of "scratch" (ie, I'm itching my bug-bite).

Posted by: whatswrongwiththispicture at April 23, 2008 8:02 PM

La Jolla.

I knew there was a place in California called "La Hoya," but being an ignorant, caucasian east-coaster who learned French through college, I am ashamed to say that I made it into my mid-twenties thinking that La Hoya must be a nickname for some place (like SoHo) because it sure as hell wasn't on any map.

Posted by: take notice at April 23, 2008 8:02 PM

Frumplefox: I'm glad I'm not the only one influenced greatly by Bugs Bunny. I say ignoramus and maroon instead of moron often. Also, I snorted water out my nose at "Ass Cream."
My biggest pet peeve is my mother saying "Warshington DC." The fact that I always point out there is no r in the word doesn't do a damn bit of good!

Posted by: trixie at April 23, 2008 8:10 PM

One of my students wrote in a paper that George Bush was "incontinent" rather than "incompetent." Hee! I laughed for a good hour, and debated whether or not to correct him.

Posted by: Jessika at April 23, 2008 8:12 PM

Excellent question, JJ McClay!

It's the same with Carrie being pronounced as Kerry.
I had a traumatic argument in fifth grade over Little House On The Prairie, due to that very thing! I couldn't convince all my little Australian schoolmates that the American tv show was just pronouncing Carrie weeerdly. They all insisted the kid's name was actually Kerry.
Apparently I was the only one there who could also read. ;)

Posted by: Loob at April 23, 2008 8:14 PM

coveredinbees, I had forgotten that was in Beauty and the Beast!

I knew there was a reason I liked that movie. you know, besides the soothing voice of Angela Landsbury

Posted by: Bethy at April 23, 2008 8:16 PM

In Idaho and Washington, there are a lot of place names that are easy to mispronounce because they aren't pronounced like they're spelled:
Kooskia, Idaho, is pronounced Koo-ski (the a is silent)
Kamiah, Idaho, is pronounced Cam-ee-eye
Puyallup, Washington, is pronounced pew-wallop

Also, people in southern Idaho pronounce "sale" as "sell" and "feel" as "fill." Like "I fill really good about all the money I saved at that sell."

Posted by: Cady at April 23, 2008 8:18 PM

Heehee, Jenna, your biscotti/biscotto comment reminded me of a great Wayne & Shuster bit set in a bar in ancient Rome:

"Bartender, give me a martinus."

"Don't you mean martini?"

"Hey, if I wanted more than one, I would have said so!"

As for my contribution, I used to think debris was pronounced "DER-biss." Oh, and this is pretty embarassing--in grade five, the story we were reading described a character as an "invalid." Teacher asked if anyone knew what that meant. Well, I confidently raised my hand and stated that it meant he was "not a valid person."

Nice.

Posted by: MO at April 23, 2008 8:25 PM

I always thought biopic was pronounced BY-ah-pick not BIO-pick

..yeah.

Posted by: Carolina at April 23, 2008 8:29 PM

Word to the "my house needs painted" ire. I went to college in central PA and that always made my whole body hurt. After bringing this up a couple of times to friends who did it and were otherwise fairly intelligent, I would just mutter "to be" whenever they said "my clothes need washed." I am sure they thought I was unhinged, but really it was a way to stay sane.

We just had a Basil-herb vs. Basil-name argument at work yesterday which naturally led to an Herb-plant vs. Herb-name debate.

Finally, Two words I cannot say: "calculator." I don't know why. It always comes out "calkylator" and "circuitous," which I don't even try to say anymore.

Posted by: take notice at April 23, 2008 8:30 PM

Loob--wait, Carrie and Kerry are pronounced differently? Around these parts, they both sound like "carry." :)

There's a little town near where I grew up called Auburndale. The majority of people who live there call it Arbindale. Seriously.

Posted by: frumpiefox at April 23, 2008 8:31 PM

I just looked up the original meaning of moot and it rocked my world. I always thought it meant something was settled, or useless to discuss further. Its original meaning is open for debate. Grr

Posted by: eliza at April 23, 2008 8:32 PM

I had a professor in college who always pronounced sixth, SIXT. no h, just sixt.

As you can see the sixt line of the translation is where the modern version begins to deviate.

Your midterm will be december sixt.

why? whyyyyy?

Posted by: Elle at April 23, 2008 8:37 PM

Misuse of "myself" drives me batty! Only use the word to demonstrate action that the subject perfomed on the subject. Correct: "I hit myself." Incorrect: "John, Sally and myself went to the store." that shoudl be "John, Sally and I went to the store." Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.

Posted by: popsgyrl at April 23, 2008 8:50 PM

Other than the typical Pittsburgh slang that I grew up with...

I always called Ibuprofen I-DRO-profen...

I think my parents always pronounced it that way.

Posted by: Colin at April 23, 2008 8:54 PM

My sister started college the same day I started kindergarten, so for years, I thought "tuition" was actually two words: "To wishin'!" As in "I am wishin' for some money!"

Other good ones from my childhood: OR-i-GAN-al for original, and BAY-nal for banal.

Posted by: pseudoliterati at April 23, 2008 8:57 PM

Like the person who posted about "go ahead," I also hate when people insert "kind of" or "sort of" in a sentence where it adds no meaning and is totatlly unnecessary.
This is great therapy. . .

Posted by: popsgyrl at April 23, 2008 9:00 PM

Oh, and I had a friend when I was little who thought that cucumbers were called "cumbers," bananas were called "buddies," and potato chips and dip were "table chips and drip." But I think that's just cute little kid talk.

Posted by: pseudoliterati at April 23, 2008 9:02 PM

Several years ago, I was discussing the agility game of Snooker, which I pronounced like book-er, with some friends. Yes, it is based on the pool game. A very British lady took it upon herself to interrupt me for a brief, impassioned lecture me on how it is pronounced snew-ker.

Either way is correct, depending on your locale. But in the deep South, my way sounded less like an affectation. Still, she managed to convince most everyone to go around calling it snew-ker.

Posted by: Wednesday at April 23, 2008 9:07 PM

Rachel! You mean I'm not the only one that pronounced crayon as "crown"?! *tears up a little* I did it until the 4th grade when my best friend corrected me...I called her a liar and continued to pronounce it that way for another week. Then my teacher corrected me in class, nice!

My grandparents were from the GA and they moved to OR when my mom was a lot younger. I lived with them for the first 8 years of my life and I pronounce certain words the southern way even though I've never been there...Although I had it when people pronounce the wash "warsh". I freak out sometimes.

I'm also noticing a lot of people on Pajiba who had high reading levels as children and screwed up words because of that. Me too! I loved it, seriously.

I also just learned that wanton is not pronounced like the soup. Well...I'll be damned.

Posted by: Kay at April 23, 2008 9:07 PM

For some reason I'll never understand, when I was a child (and reading books that dealt with teenage issues, apparently) I thought the "c" in "acne" was silent. So acne rhymed with "bane."

Posted by: Angie at April 23, 2008 9:37 PM

Carolina! That's what sparked my idea for this diversion in the first place! For whatever reason, I have always read "BIO-pic" as "bi-AH-pic" to rhyme with "myopic." D'oh!

A huuuuuuge pet peeve of mine is the way my beastly roommate adds "n" to things that don't end in "n" or don't have one to begin with. For example, "leggings," as in "I bought some new leggins!" Also: HUMMUS. Fer Christ's sake.... "I can't talk right now, I'm eating my hummuns." Blergh.

Posted by: Geetch at April 23, 2008 9:48 PM

I had to come back and read the other entries! Meanwhile, I remember my best frind from college when very young though that varicose veins were "very close" to the skin. Clever girl, I think she got corrected nicely by her grandma because she didn't seem traumatized by this mistake.

Posted by: staramour at April 23, 2008 9:52 PM

Hey, you guys know that stuff you use in electronics? That soft, melty metal you can join components together with?

I'm a 30 year old Aussie and I only JUST realised that when Americans were saying "sodder" on TV, they actually meant "SOL-der" (which is exactly how we pronounce it).

Posted by: Ed at April 23, 2008 9:54 PM

I said "for all intensive purposes" until about 2 years ago. I now know it's "for all intents and purposes".

:-/

I'm 34 and generally fairly smart. There is no excuse.

To make sure that people know that I know how to say it, now I over-enunciate.

Posted by: slc at April 23, 2008 9:59 PM

I really hate it when people misuse "hardly" by saying "not hardly."

Example:
Person 1: Did Huckabee win the Republican nomination?
Person 2: Not hardly.

It should be "Hardly" or it's a double negative. Grrr. I especially hate reading this in a book said by a supposedly intelligent and educated character.

Posted by: Lainie at April 23, 2008 10:23 PM

He got his just deserts. I used to think it was desserts, but it really is deserts. It's not deserts as in sandy places, or deserts as in runs away from the army, but deserts as in a reward that is deserved. And all this time I had thought he was getting a nice pudding.

Posted by: BWeaves at April 23, 2008 10:29 PM

Things I still forget about:

Bass English Pale Ale. "Bass" as in the clef, or the fish?

Basil - pronounced "Bay-sil" or "Bass(the fish)-il"?

Goddamnit.

Posted by: Fernando at April 23, 2008 10:31 PM

Bought vs Brought - fucking unbelievable how many people get that wrong. Bought is to buy what brought is to bring.


Also down here in the antipodes (which yes some people still pronounce anti-podes) vast numbers of people are going about itching their itches - you scratch an itch people you don't itch a scratch - gaaah!


It's amazing how many educated people don't know when to use me/I in a sentence - the test if you're unsure is whether the statement would make sense if you removed the other person e.g. "Me and Captain Planet saved the world" get rid of Captain Planet and you've got "Me saved the world" so you now know the sentence should read "Captain Planet and I saved the world". Voy-la!


Don't even get me started on your/you're or their/there.....deep breaths


A personal favourite is "rachist" as used by my boyfriend's rather racist parents. Finally, my all time pet peeve is "I don't know nothing" - double negative retardation.

Posted by: LostMarbles at April 23, 2008 10:37 PM

OK, so I have to make fun of my Dad because he says Huge without pronouncing the "h". I can't figure that one out.

Also, anyone who has been in the military hears the word diligent more often than most. A group of us used to die laughing every time our platoon sergeant told us to make sure we were "digilent".

Posted by: Cindy at April 23, 2008 10:40 PM

I know I'm way late on this, but my mother the English Major has made a point in recent years of correcting anyone who says they are feeling "nauseous." Supposedly, the feeling is more properly termed "nauseated," and "nauseous" refers to anything that induces nausea. For what it's worth.

Posted by: Cat at April 23, 2008 10:56 PM

Oh, I have a list.

As a child playing Monopoly, I used to pronounce Virginia as Virgina - hard i sound. My dad would blush and my mother would laugh hysterically.

In my university English classes, I mispronounced "gaol" and "inevitable." Gaol with a hard G, and inevitable as ina-VIT-able. Hilarity ensued.

My mother insists on pronouncing vitamin as VIT-amin, and my father always pronounced film as fill-um.

Posted by: i8thesandbox at April 23, 2008 10:59 PM

To Stella wayyyy upthread, a fellow Austinite:
Manchaca is pronounced "man-chack" because it's not a Spanish word, but a Dutch one, and that's the Dutch pronunciation.

And the Salazar of auto repair place Ellis and Salazar is Italian, not Mexican, and that's a bastardization that I know is fairly common in New York, at least, and probably other places as well.

Posted by: Smithy at April 23, 2008 11:01 PM

I always end up saying "verocious" instead of "ferocious" because I think it has more of an onomatopoetic effect. "Ferocious" sounds too cute and cuddly, whereas something "vrrrrr-ing" is much more aggressive. Of course, this is less a mispronunciation than it is a decision to shun the English language.

Posted by: BeccaC at April 23, 2008 11:01 PM

Anytime I hear my mother refer to a blood clot as a "blood cloth", I die a little inside. I've corrected her countless times, but it just doesn't seem to stick. She also adds a "th" sound to the end of "height", but that's oddly common around these parts. Oh, and she says salmonella like it's the fish with "ella" at the end..."salmon-ella".
My father has a habit of calling carrots "carts", and pronouncing names like Harry and Barry to rhyme with the word "starry". In his defence he did spend a lot of his childhood around his grandmother who, I am told, had a thick Scottish accent, so that might explain some of his mispronounciations.
My uncle says words completely wrong...envelope becomes "enveloke", styrofoam becomes "stylofoam", and for some unknown reason he keeps referring to the trellis against our house as a "challis". My favourite though is when he calls romaine lettuce "Romanian lettuce". Yes, I'm sure those Romanians are known for their superior leafy produce.
My personal pet peeve though is when people say "conversate", as in "I like to conversate with different people". It's converse people, CONVERSE!!!!

Posted by: wordbird at April 23, 2008 11:09 PM

Wow I lurked in the shadows on this website for years, but in the last week I've posted twice- thanks to a Dresden Files thread conversation and now my embarrassing story about "facade". I spent all of middle school and half of high school saying the word "Fah-cade" (so that it sounded like the "-cade" in "arcade"....right up until my buddy Matt overheard me one day in front of about 80 other people (that's the sometimes-drawback to being in the band- too many witnesses) and goes "That's "Fah-sahd" you idiot. Ahh...the hell that was high school.

Posted by: Ryan at April 23, 2008 11:10 PM

This is hilarious!

Here's one of mine: When I was about 16, I needed to call information to get a phone number for someone in Terre Haute, IN. When the operator picked up, I realized I had no idea how to pronounce the city. Having had a few years of French, I asked for the listing in "High Ground, Indiana." Silence.

And now here's one that pisses me off to no end. There are a LOT of people at my office who say "the powers TO be" instead of "the powers THAT be." Makes me want to smash things, and I don't really know why...

Posted by: Sian at April 23, 2008 11:18 PM

Pronouncing "preventive" preventative bothers the poop right out of me.

Also, people who think "poignant" means "pointed" instead of "bittersweet" as in "Ricky made a poignant comment when he was jabbed in the anus after he dropped the soap in the prison shower." Well, I guess maybe both meanings make sense there.

Posted by: Siddhartha at April 23, 2008 11:21 PM

Also, when meeting my future wife's Texan parents for the first time, instead of saying "Pe-cahn Pie" (rhymes with James Caan Pie), I called it "Pee-can Pie" and was promptly told that in Texas, they don't make pies out of urinals.

Posted by: Siddhartha at April 23, 2008 11:23 PM

A common one I get from my friend is 'axe.' As in, 'I AXED her to come out and play, but she was unable to respond due to the fact that I'd just cut off her head." Asked, my dear. You asked.

The worst experience was in my first-year criminology class. A pink girl (pink laptop, pink hairtie, pink bag, cellphone, notebook, pen - pink everything) was doing a presentation on white-on-black hoaxes. Only she had somehow ended up at university without knowing how to pronounce hoax, so I had to endure fifteen minutes of 'white on black hoaxeses...hoaxeses...hoaxeses' without trying to laugh too hard. I wasn't alone in my efforts. She also said, 'perpentrator'. Classic.

Posted by: Lola at April 23, 2008 11:26 PM

Shit, forgot one. I don't know if it's an exclusively Canadian thing, so someone will have to enlighten me if it's not.
"I seen her walking."
"I seen the car hit her."
"I seen her get axed to go out."
God damn it.
How about, "I seen her get axed to be the perpentrator in a white on black hoaxeses."

Posted by: Lola at April 23, 2008 11:28 PM

Someone made this mistake above, and I will not have it: the word is rappel. With an A. An A!!!! I live near mountains, and climbing is a popular hobby, and pretty much every single person I've ever heard use the word says re-pel, which is a real word, but the wrong one. One re-pels undesirable things (such as sieges and assaults) but ra-ppels down cliffs.
the "needs cleaned" construction is used here; I'd never heard it before I moved here, and it baffled me the first few times I heard it; I thought the people using it were deliberately trying to sound stupid, and I couldn't figure out why.

Posted by: Pen Dragon at April 23, 2008 11:42 PM

I pronounced 'misled' as m-eye-zuld until my mother corrected me. But I still read it that way in my head. It just sounds like what it means -- a sneaky false move.

Posted by: cynara b at April 23, 2008 11:55 PM

Of course it's pronounced "ba-roke". If it was supposed to be "ba-rock", WFMT program hosts would say so.....

Having been raised listening to that national treasure, I pretty much missed out on the mispronunciation screw-ups.

But hey, Monet is what makes the Van Gogh.....

Posted by: bjs1109 at April 24, 2008 12:40 AM

Cran instead of Crayon.
Acrost instead of across.
Ory-Gone instead of Oregon (actually there are many teeth grinding variations on that one.)
And for those of us in aforementioned Oregon, the name of the Willamette River is pronounced Will-AM-et, not Will-um-ET-tee. I hear that one wrong on national TV.
And in writing, Reign and rein are NOT the same word. And so much for i before e. Dammit that irritates me.

Posted by: Lindsey at April 24, 2008 12:42 AM

Oh, and my lovely cat, currently sleeping on top of the monitor, is named Basil (Fawlty Towers anyone?), and it is pronounced Bass-il. Bay-sil is an herb. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Posted by: Lindsey at April 24, 2008 12:55 AM

I was quite far into my education before I realized that Don Kee Hotay and Don Kwix Oat were one and the same person. Hmmmmph.

When my first son was born two years ago, his first stuffed animal was a little donkey. We named it Hotay in honor of this story

Posted by: cewing at April 24, 2008 1:12 AM

The "knicker knocking" activity is known as "ding, dong, ditch" 'round these parts. Much harder to confuse with certain racial epithets, AND, it's triple alliterative!

My own personal mispronunciational best comes from sophomore english in high school. For some damned reason, I was giving a speech about the Book of Job. About seven words into this speech, I pronounce the name "Job" like the name "Bob" (church, what? Sunday school, whaaat?!?) and the teacher, a hyper-religious lunatic of the finest vintage (which probably explains how a public school english class ended up spending a month studying the saving graces of Jesus) damn near choked on her own disbelief. Seriously. There was this weird sputtering, coughing sound, and then her grating, I'm-half-a-breath-away-from-a-cackle voice piped up, "It's JOE-BUH!"

To which I responded: "Whatever. *dismissive hand flip*"

Oooh, to have the balls of a teenager!

.....I mean.........nevermind.

Posted by: OhRosieMyGirl at April 24, 2008 1:20 AM

I always thought that Ray-Ban was written Ray-BEAN. I might be a tiny bit dyslexic hahaha. So yeah, I called them Ray-Bean until two years ago when someone finally corrected me.

Posted by: Max at April 24, 2008 1:34 AM

How you pronounce "often", "almond" and so on depends if you are, or are not, a mumbler. A lot of the variations listed above obviously started when someone found the original slightly hard to pronounce, and decided to slurr it. Salmon with the "l" is the older form, so no need to be ashamed. (In Canada, we usually pronounce salmonella with all the "l"s.)

Speaking of mumbling, what about Feh-boo-ary (it's Feh-brew-ary) and sam-wich (sand-wich)?

Oh my God, that SAM-wich. When the local radio stations started advertising McDonald's SAM-wiches, I burned up my phone line complaining.

I thought it was some idiot ad imported from the States. But no, it was a Canadian broadcaster who is actually paid to pronounce words on our airwaves.

Posted by: Janis at April 24, 2008 1:53 AM

Very late to the game, but I must comment on the library vs liberry issue as I here it every day. Occasionally it is mispronounced by people who work at the library. But I digress.

"uhmm.... miss li-berry lady" from a 5 year old is adorable (and yes this child actually exists and comes in on a regular basis). This child gets good service and probably a sticker.

"hey, li-berrian, get over here" shouted at me from a computer 20 feet away by an idiot in a tank top gets a frosty stare, coolly professional service, and a scathing story in the staff room. Sadly many versions of this person exist.

Posted by: libraryliz at April 24, 2008 2:09 AM

i am the worst! i mix up and mispronounce words all the time so i can't get mad at other people when they do it. my receptionist had to learn my unique brand of sign language because when i say the wrong word and she asks me what i mean i have to act out whatever i'm really trying to say. i always add an extra ed on words that end in ed--so big boned becomes big bone-ded. i admit that i do get a kick out of annoying people.

i thought hors d'oeurvres was whooors de oorvez until i was in high school--i actually thought there were 2 different words that meant the same thing.

i'm totally confused when other people mispronounce words though. my former receptionist said that she wanted a "beggle for breffist" and i could not figure out what she was talking about. i also had an opposing party (pro se) who wrote that my client only "sodjested" things that would make her angry. i had to say it out loud several times to figure that one out.

Posted by: pq at April 24, 2008 2:31 AM

I've lost count of how many times I've started a comment with this, but in this case, it fits. Finally.

"As a foreigner..."

Ok, maybe some perspective? Yeah, perspective, let's go with that. Bear with me. (Imagine all this with an Indian accent. No, I'm not Indian, it's just funnier. Pakistani, if you're Indian and feel offended.)

I sure can't understand "libary" or "samwich". When you learn a different language for real, you have to read it a lot, so it would never make sense to me if I'm always aware of the spelling.

But some are impossible for me to crack. I mean, shouldn't "recipe" go like Michael Stipe? And why the hell people say "chambers" like "chain-bers", or "defense" as "DEE-fence", or "dilated" like "dyer-later" (I think this last one is just wrong, BTW)?

A hard one used to be "butcher": I used to go with "butt", not "boo". Something doesn't sound quite right in that... Twice...

I still can't seem to decide, when speaking, how to say "vase" (vayz or vahz?), "southern" (south-ern or suthern) and "salmon" (seh-mun or saul-mun). And please cross "chagrin" off your dictionaries!

Posted by: gargumma at April 24, 2008 2:33 AM

"off of", man. It's almost the same and it's weird, but it's off of...

Posted by: gargumma at April 24, 2008 2:41 AM

Facade

Posted by: kk at April 24, 2008 2:44 AM

"Shit, forgot one. I don't know if it's an exclusively Canadian thing, so someone will have to enlighten me if it's not.
"I seen her walking."
"I seen the car hit her."
"I seen her get axed to go out."
God damn it.
How about, "I seen her get axed to be the perpentrator in a white on black hoaxeses."
Posted by: Lola at April 23, 2008 11:28 PM"

Unfortunately that's common here in Australia too. It's like fingernails down a blackboard, to me.
Usually spoken by the same people that say 'haitch' instead of 'aitch' when pronouncing the letter 'H'.
Example: "My young'un joined the Four Haitch Club."
*shudder*

Posted by: Loob at April 24, 2008 2:53 AM

Long time reader, first time commenter. My dad when he was very young growing up in Malaysia and reading English books thought that mystery was pronounced "my-steree". Also, some of my own from years and years ago: recipes = receipts; finale = finally; whinge = whine with a silent g.

Posted by: adriangires at April 24, 2008 4:29 AM

In 9th grade English we read "A Tale of Two Cities", and my GENIUS teacher insisted on pronouncing Jacques as "Jakes" for the entire 9 weeks we studied it. I am still aggravated about that one!

Also, I am in my late twenties, and just found out a year ago that it is "Shoulder-width apart", not "Shoulder with the part". I have no idea what I though "the part" was for all of these years, and it's kind of depressing to just now find out I'm an idiot.

Posted by: Blakemas! at April 24, 2008 6:04 AM

There are several words that I'd read in books as a child many, many times before I figured out how they were pronounced: preface (which I thought was pre-face, I guess that which comes before a face) and epiphany are the two I remember most.

The one that embarrassed me the most when I figured it out was "c'mon." I had no idea what this word meant and thought it was pronounced "see mon." One day it just clicked in my mind and I realized it was supposed to be "come on."

Posted by: jeez louise at April 24, 2008 6:12 AM

When I was in high school and I worked at KFC we sold a Colonel's Chicken Sandwich. Most people who ordered it thought it was a Colonial Chicken Sandwich. Now I work in a pharmacy and it drives me crazy every time someone tells me they want to pick up their subscription instead of prescription.

Posted by: Kelly at April 24, 2008 6:19 AM

Oooh. Kelly just reminded me with her KFC story. When I moved to Maryland, it was the first time I'd encountered Chik-Fil-A (fast food joint). For at least a year (in my head, thank god), I was pronouncing it "Chick Filla." Never did it occur to me that they meant "Chick Filet" until I finally heard someone pronounce it.

Posted by: Sian at April 24, 2008 7:17 AM

The only one that is coming to me right now is the name Penelope. I had read it for years, but never heard anyone say it, so I thought it was pronounced to rhyme with antelope.

I can't remember when I finally heard someone say it and thought, "Oh wow. Pen-ell-oh-pee! Who knew?"

Another name. Sean. I thought that was pronounced "seen" for ages, and I never understood why someone would call their child that. Little did I know they actually meant something closer to "shawn."

Posted by: Ana at April 24, 2008 7:55 AM

Hey, Ana! Look at the comment above yours. My name is Sian, the feminine of Sean. I've been called "Seen" and "Sigh-Ann" my entire life. *shakes fist at my Welsh mother*

Posted by: Sian at April 24, 2008 8:24 AM

Oh, and:
Premier.
Premiere.

There's a distinct difference in spelling, pronunciation and meaning. Not that many people know that...

Posted by: Ed at April 24, 2008 8:41 AM

Around here there is a community called Titusville, but pronounced Tit'us ville. We also have Oneonta, pronounced by locals as Owny-onna. Oneonta was mentioned on the national news once, and it was funny to hear the newscaster enunciate every syllable.

Posted by: rlr260 at April 24, 2008 8:42 AM

rir260 - are you talking about Oneonta, NY? Is there a Titusville here, too? I immediately thought of Titusville, FL.

Posted by: Kolby at April 24, 2008 9:24 AM

I don't get the Brett Favre/Farve thing...

Posted by: CasKo at April 24, 2008 9:42 AM

As a kid I was really into reading, and sped through dozens of books each month. This absolutely increased my vocabulary at an early age, but did not by any means that I could pronounce things better than the average kid. Case in point - Grade 1. We were doing some asinine study unit on clowns. The teacher asked us to think of words that might describe different kinds of clowns. So kids were putting up their hands and saying things like "silly" and "ugly" and "funny" and "weird". I had just read the word "awkward" in a book, and thought it was cool, but was for some reason convinced that it was pronounced "a-wark-end". I have no idea why. So I put up my hand, said "a-wark-end" and confused the hell out of the teacher. She asked me to repeat it about five times before she finally asked, "Like, a workin' clown? Are you talking about a working clown?" I was sure by this point she was an idiot so I just agreed and went on with my day. I don't remember when I learned the correct pronunciation but I really hope it was shortly thereafter. :P

Posted by: b at April 24, 2008 9:47 AM

i8thesandbox,
are you parents of British or Irish descent? Because we Brits say VITamin not VITEamin, and 'fillum' is a very common Irish-ism. (It is with my southern Irish mother's clan, anyway. She's lived in London since the fifties, and she still says 'fillum', and 'oar' for the letter 'r').

Posted by: Tarn at April 24, 2008 10:23 AM

I live in Kentucky. Last week my husband received an e-mail from a co-worker that read:

"There is a wreck on I-64, so if you go home that way, you mise well wait a while before you leave."

Mise well?! I can't believe she TYPED mise well, instead of might as well!

Posted by: melissa at April 24, 2008 10:39 AM

Gargumma, please enjoy the following:

The V-A-S-E, by James Jeffrey Roche (1847-1908)

From the madding crowd they stand apart, The maidens four and the Work of Art;

And none might tell from sight alone, In which had Culture ripest grown,--

The Gotham Million fair to see, The Philadelphia Pedigree,

The Boston Mind of azure hue, Or the soulful Soul from Kalamazoo,--

For all loved Art in a seemly way, With an earnest soul and a capital A.

Long they worshipped; but no one broke, The sacred stillness, until up spoke

The Western one from the nameless place, Who blushing said: "What a lovely vace!"

Over three faces a sad smile flew, And they edged away from Kalamazoo.

But Gotham's haughty soul was stirred, To crush the stranger with one small word.

Deftly hiding reproof in praise, She cries: "Tis indeed, a lovely vaze!"

But brief her unworthy triumph when, The lofty one from the home of Penn,

With the consciousness of two grandpapas, Exclaims: "It is quite a lovely vahs!"

And glances round with an anxious thrill, Awaiting the word of Beacon Hill.

But the Boston maid smiles courteouslee, And gently murmurs: "Oh pardon me!

"I did not catch your remark, because, I was so entranced with that charming vaws!"

Dies eril praegelida
Sinistra quum Bostonia.

(I don't read Latin, sorry.)

Posted by: BWeaves at April 24, 2008 10:54 AM

Beckyloo: I have a similar embarrassing "I never knew" moment.

As a child, my family (and I mean EVERYONE in my family) would use the expression "coon's age". As a kid I automatically thought it had something to do with raccoons, perhaps they aged like dogs (seven years to every human's one) so it made sense. A "coon's age" would be MUCH longer than a "human age".

I should have realized that any expression uttered by my racist grandfather, purveyor of such expressions as "nigger rigged", would not be so sweet and light.

It wasn't until just recently (sadly, I'm a little slow on the uptake) that I used "coon's age" in front of my husband. He gave me a look of shock and revulsion and gasped, "What did you just say?" I thought I was just being funny, using an old hillbilly yokel expression for a laugh. Not so much.

Posted by: MadameUgly at April 24, 2008 11:12 AM

My French mother used to quiz me on spelling while shuttling me to various after school activities. She would get livid that I didn't know how to spell "Enter-ten-ment" or even know what it ment. Several years later we both realized that she was trying to quiz me on the word "entertainment".
Kooky foreign mothers are real character builders...I tell you whot.

Posted by: clairy at April 24, 2008 11:33 AM

I had a literature teacher who kept pronouncing it "litta-chure". It raised my hackles every time.

Posted by: Ali at April 24, 2008 11:36 AM

Just thought of another mispronunciation!
On the metro in D.C. the train conductors still announce the metro stops (I know - how quaint!) and it always brings a smile to my face when the train pulls into "Judi-shoe-ary Square" (which is District-speak for Judiciary Square).

Posted by: clairy at April 24, 2008 11:52 AM

My aunt used to say "see same" for sesame.

Posted by: LZ at April 24, 2008 12:09 PM

I thought I was just being funny, using an old hillbilly yokel expression for a laugh. Not so much.


Well, the reference sources seem to support you, saying that it does mean "raccoon". However, I guess "coon" is dicey anyway, look at the legislator who said "niggardly". It's not technically fair that he was called out on it, but it seemed a little daredevil too.

Posted by: Jay at April 24, 2008 12:12 PM

Until I got to high school, I read Albuquerque as al-buke-er-ick. Luckily I figured it out before ever saying it out loud to anyone.

Posted by: ewg at April 24, 2008 12:24 PM

I used to think "annihilate" was pronounced ann-HILL-iate. Funny thing was, my mother could hear me playing with my superhero toys as a child, saying that I was going to annHILLiate my Captain America figure with my Red Skull figure and she never corrected me. I think she wanted me to wait until my later years and say it in public where I would then be humiliated.

Not as good as when one of my friends thought were were going to see the new Ben Affleck/Bruce Willis movie Armeggadon (sounds kinda like a dinosaur)...instead of Armageddon. I can still get him to cry over that one.

Posted by: ASterisk at April 24, 2008 12:27 PM

OOOoooo just thought of another one. I used to work with this supremely obnoxious girl who thought she knew everything. When our boss told us in a meeting that the rate at which Marylanders buy cell phones is a microcosm of the entire country, little miss inbred-retard raises her hand as says, "Isn't it micro-chasm?"

And yes, Stella, she did pronounce it CH'asm.

Posted by: ASterisk at April 24, 2008 12:32 PM

Kolby,
Not New York, but Alabama. I guess mushing all the syllables together is due to the southern drawl.

Posted by: rlr260 at April 24, 2008 12:47 PM

At the age of 5, I was asked to read something off the board in class. The word was 'ewe'. I pronounced it, 'ewie'.

Also, I pronounce 'roof' as 'ruff', 'garage' as 'gah-ridge', and 'buried' as 'burr-eed', which according to people is weird.

Posted by: Cuno at April 24, 2008 12:59 PM

Pissboy, the reason that Western/Southwestern Pennsylvanians say that something "needs done" instead of "needs to be done" is because this region of PA has a lot of German influences, and "to be" is not utilized in German as it is in English (side note: it should be "Pennsylvania Deutsch", not "Pennsylvania Dutch"). I'm sorry that you didn't like Western PA - it is a fantastic place (I can attest - it is where I grew up), even if the regional dialect is not your cup of tea.

And if anyone wants to experience the dialect of a region that mispronounces a large subsection of the English language, search for "Pittsburghese".

Posted by: B.F.D. at April 24, 2008 1:01 PM

"realtor

it is real-tor (as in real estate)

not real-la-tor"

I second that, and add: it's jew-el-ry not jew-ler-y

I was embarassed when ordering catering for a work event and I said, "And for oars de overies..." Um, yeah. I knew how hors d'ouerves (sp?) were pronounced, but not the spelling.

Posted by: Olivia at April 24, 2008 1:07 PM

When I was a kid, if I came across a word I didn't know I would just make a guess at the pronunciation. Later, I would forget that I had never looked it up or heard it pronounced and while reading aloud from my textbook in class I would say something like "Demo-CRACEY." It was really embarrassing. Other mispronunciations include "caveat" which I pronounced "caw-VEAT," "corps" which I did not realize had silent letters. I said "PREE-face" for "preface," and did not realize that there were also silent letters in "Des Moines."

These ones have already been mentioned, but I also mispronounced 'hyperbole' and 'chasm'; and for I while I said 'Reuters' wrong.

I really have no right to complain about people mispronouncing words, but I really hate when people say "pitcher" when they mean to say "picture." And I loathe, absolutely loathe, "exspecially" for "especially." It's the most infuriating mispronunciation I've ever heard. At least the ones I'm guilty of are just confusion with how the letters work together. These people are willfully ignoring what letters are actually in the word.

Posted by: Monica at April 24, 2008 1:10 PM

Me: Pom-uh-gran-nit?
Fiance: Pom-ah-grahnt.
Me: What's that now?
Fiance: Just look pretty, you'll be fine.

Am I wrong?

/read the name "Hermione" long before I ever heard it. NO ONE I KNEW got it right. To "hear my own" pronunciation was embarrasing.

Posted by: thatbeeschick at April 24, 2008 1:17 PM

I didn't know that's what "coon's age" meant. Thanks for saving me on that one, MadameUgly.

Although, seriously how do you pronounce Pajiba if not Pu-jee-bah?

Posted by: holamiis at April 24, 2008 1:35 PM

I know I'm way late on this, but my mother the English Major has made a point in recent years of correcting anyone who says they are feeling "nauseous." Supposedly, the feeling is more properly termed "nauseated," and "nauseous" refers to anything that induces nausea. For what it's worth.

This is little-known, but it drives me nuts too. Whenever someone says, "I am feeling nauseous," I have to stifle the urge to say, "Well you don't look nauseous to me!" because I know that would be ornery, especially if someone is in fact feeling nauseated. But it irks me nonetheless.

Posted by: Catherine at April 24, 2008 1:43 PM

My brother and his wife just named their new baby Penelope. That poor kid. I assumed she was going to be taunted in school by being called Pee Pee (her initials P.P.) but Penny-lope is a variation that never dawned on me until today.
I guess it will build character or turn her into a sociopath.

Posted by: Lindsey at April 24, 2008 1:48 PM

Also, who invented the word "signage"? Because it's stupid. All you need to say is "signs."

That is all.

Posted by: Catherine at April 24, 2008 1:51 PM

When I was little I thought that world war one and two were War War I and War War II

Posted by: greengirl at April 24, 2008 2:30 PM

My dad still refers to "deaf" as "death." My ex husband is deaf, but I may have wished the other on him at times!

Posted by: MissNev at April 24, 2008 3:31 PM

Another embarassment of mine: when I was feeling sick I said that maybe I should take some eczema. Then my friend suggested that perhaps echinacea would work better.

As for mispronunciations of names, to everyone in the southeast, the "O" in Olivia is pronounced like the the "o" in over. It is not, pronounced "Uh-livia."

Posted by: Olivia at April 24, 2008 4:15 PM

"Usually spoken by the same people that say 'haitch' instead of 'aitch' when pronouncing the letter 'H'.
Example: "My young'un joined the Four Haitch Club."


Loob: My Nigerian husband and all Nigerian's I've met say "H" as "haitch". I thought it was something unique to their country.

Posted by: Olivia at April 24, 2008 4:27 PM

I'm late to this party, but wanted to share the mispronunciations of two very sweet people.

My former landlady:

hysterectory (hysterectomy)
sore to speak (so to speak)
roff iron (wrought iron)
threadmill (treadmill)

My father-in-law:

rotary cup (rotator cuff)
artheritis (arthritis)
parenteral (parental)
extry (extra)
beneficuaries (beneficiaries)

Posted by: VeryKerry at April 24, 2008 4:47 PM

I didn't know "for all intensive purposes" was incorrect until now -- ha! I learned that "nu-cu-ler" was incorrect when I was 25. At age 30, I learned that liquor Blue Curacao sounds like "cure a sow", not a rhyme with "Morocco".

My best pal says "real-a-tor" instead of realtor, "wisk" instead of wicks (as in "this fabric wicks away moisture"). She also uses "alls" and "anyways".

One former coworker said "supposably", and another coworker said "Pacific" instead of "specific", and yet another said "am-buh-lance" instead of "ambulance" and "for Pete Sakes" instead of "for Pete's sake".

Posted by: cinco de mango at April 24, 2008 4:55 PM

My dearly departed godmother, from West Virginia, used to pronounce Saturday "Saraday". For the longest time I thought there was an extra day of the week I was not privy to, until my mom broke down the thing about "regional accents".

As a kid in Hawaii I grew up speaking pigeon just like every other island kid. When I was in first grade our teacher was walking us through some math problems. She asked us what 2 + 1 was; we answered "Tree!", louldy and in unison, and she promptly drew one on the board for us.

Finally, I am sooo glad to know I am not the only person who mispronounced "awry" and "macabre". I personally feel that words should be spelt the way they are pronounced. Sure would make things a lot easier for us speaking-impaired...

Posted by: maylai at April 24, 2008 5:48 PM

I am very ashamed to admit this, but as a kid it took me a while to realize that 'fathead' in written form meant fat-head, and not fath-ead if you see what I mean.

Yes I'm pathetic.

Posted by: StephanieS at April 24, 2008 5:55 PM

For the love of god people, Breath is a noun, breathE is a verb. I know this is a written thing, but it drives me crazy.

Posted by: SavageCats at April 24, 2008 7:05 PM

"awry" was pronounced: a-rye. I'd always pronounced it to rhyme with "bawdry."

..... -_-

Posted by: Mick J at April 24, 2008 7:54 PM

BWeaves, thank you so much. That was just Mississipi-mud enlightening. I think I'll avoid the word from now on.

Catherine, not long ago, those two words raised some discussion here in Pa-hee-ba. I think I may have said exactly what you said, but applied to my own language.

Posted by: gargumma at April 24, 2008 8:24 PM

I had to come back to mention "canary", as in the bird. I cannot say that word correctly, it comes out as "cannery" every time. The whole "Cat that ate the canary" thing never made sense to me as a kid; I kept trying to imagine a cat eating an entire fish-packing plant.

Posted by: Lauren at April 24, 2008 9:05 PM

What's with all the extreme intolerance for linguistic variation? Anyone who knows anything about how linguistics knows that language didn't just get handed down to us by the 18th century prescriptive grammarians in a leather-bound volume. I thought Pajibans were smarter than that.

A lot of these examples are true to the purpose of this comment diversion, but some people here really ought to take into account the fact that pretty much no one actually speaks Standard English and linguistic variation is one of the things that makes language so damned interesting in the first place. Implying that someone who uses a particlar regional dialect form sounds stupid or uneducated just shows that you don't know as much about the language as you think you do.

Anyway, back to the topic . . . I think I used to say "drowned" even when I wasn't using it as the past participle. And I used to get frustrated with my little sister for saying "ornge" instead of "orange" and "Hawai" (two syllables" instead of "Hawaii."

Posted by: Elfrieda at April 24, 2008 11:05 PM

Just got a brand new one tonight, watching "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." A woman two rows in front of us was watching it with her husband, and at one point during an awkward moment with Sarah, Peter, and her new boyfriend this woman muttered, "How 'ca-loss!'" I believe she meant "callous," and I'm pretty sure her husband wasn't chuckling at the movie.

Posted by: Erin at April 25, 2008 12:17 AM

Sian, I glanced at your name as I was posting my comment and I definitely read it as "Sigh-Ann" in my head. Although actually, I think I kind of like that pronunciation too.

Growing up in a bilingual family, there are many very simple words that I have mispronounced in my later years due to the fact that I only ever heard the Macedonian terms around my family.

For example, stove. I can never remember quite how to pronounce it. I always want to say "stuhve," even though I'm pretty sure it's something more like "stohve." Another bad one is sew. Occasionally I will pronounce it as "soo" instead.

You can imagine the confused looks I've been given when I point to a stove and ask, "How exactly is the word for that thing right there pronounced again?"

The soo/sew mistake has also gotten quite a bit of laughter at my expense.

My spoken vocabulary is far smaller than my written vocabulary, and as many other people have already noted, this is what happens to those of us bookwormy children.

Posted by: Ana at April 25, 2008 3:10 AM

I'm Australian with a vaguely English accent thanks to some thoroughly well-spoken parents, so I've never been able to pronounce a word wrong without some kind of wrath ensuing. The thing that irritates me the most isn't even mispronunciation, it's that American accent where the sounds 'ah' (like 'star) 'aw' (like 'store') are pronounced exactly the same. They're two completely different sounds! I just about explode every time I see someone refer to the heroine in Tomb Raider as Laura Croft.



I think the syllable deficit in the word 'Aluminum' (we non-Yanks spell and pronounce it 'Aluminium') is made up for in the word 'Miniature' (which is 'Min-a-ture' to us).



And one more thing: there's never been any libary/library contention in Australia. We all pronounce it 'lye-bree'.



Oh, and I once heard somebody pronouncing the word Chameleon as "Chammalion".

Posted by: James at April 25, 2008 5:19 AM

I went to college in the States after graduating high school in Austria. Since it was a liberal arts college, people frequently inquired about my sign and I cheefully volunteered the information that I was a Virgin. (Hey, in German and French the word is the same for both meanings).
I was completely nonplussed how many strangers (mostly male) would accost me on the street, to the point where I would yell "Look, I was almost a Leo!". It took a semester to realize my mistake.
Yeah. College. Good times.

Posted by: cinekat at April 25, 2008 6:56 AM

Late in the game but I used to say "self depreciating" like I was some kind of fixed asset instead of "self deprecating"

Posted by: Colombo at April 25, 2008 7:08 AM

"whores dou-vrees"? Oh my god. ME too. i thought there were three words: appetizer, hors deurves, and whores devoors. Oh yes.
Also? I thought it was "bergosie," which was the same thing as this word I'd heard called "borgeouis." HA.
Oh yeah, I know my spelling sucks.

Posted by: sdsd at April 25, 2008 8:37 AM

Holamiis - I hope for your sake you were joking about that one. I believe there is an instructional section on the site telling you how to pronounce the blessed word. Just try to rhyme it with a very specific lady-part.

Posted by: b at April 25, 2008 10:28 AM

Most recent word I discovered I'd read (then pronounced) incorrectly for my 25 years: minutiae.

In my boss's office one day I went into a rant about hating all the "min-you-tay" involved with wedding planning.

I actually caught myself, when replaying the conversation a bit later, thinking "wait...that sounds stupid." Checked the dictionary and died inside. I was so. mortified. I'd heard "mi-noo-shuh" before but it just hadn't clicked until then.

I brought it up when I felt I could laugh about it (we discuss grammar and such fairly frequently as our two-person department is responsible for a lot of writing and editing support, ha) and he said he hadn't noticed, that he actually isn't great about the whole reading-to-pronouncing thing. Still, ugh. My cheeks burn just thinking about it!

And the fact that it isn't mentioned in a single comment above (I read them all) makes me feel worse - obviously everyone else on the planet, even the dumb hicks who say 'fustrated', pronounces minutiae correctly.

Posted by: raspberry beret at April 25, 2008 11:45 AM

here in texASS
nook U lur is quite common....

one of my kids' teachers, an english teacher btw...
pronounces

vehicle = VEE-HIK-ull

escape = IX-skape

police = PO-leece

minpronunciation, or misuse.. both make me want to pull my hair and eyes out....

the misuse of the words, bit & beat
'he got beat up.'
IT'S BEATEN.
he got bit by that rabid dawwwg.
IT'S BITTEN.

i once heard a MSM newshead in NC refer to debris de-bree) from a tornado.. as "strow'd" instead of strewn. eyeroll.

the the phrase "where's it AT?" makes me scream!

Posted by: kikz at April 25, 2008 12:19 PM

Late to the party here, but I have a couple:

Playing pictionary freshman year on college. One of the girls is reading her card and leans over to whisper something to someone, who then cracks up. She had whispered "can I say boloney is the word is bologna (bow-log-na)."

Playing another card game on family game night-- it required bullshitting the answer to a question if you didn't know, one person had a car that told them. My little sister pronounced weapons and WEE-pons. The age gap made family game night rough.

Last, the family was out to dinner at the Olive Garden. My sister opted for the fagiole soup. The waiter comes over and she blurts out "I'll have the fag-ee-oh-lee soup, please." The server could not keep composure and we all lost our shit. Now, with no provocation or related conversation, the little'uns in the family with just blurt out "fag-ee-oh-lee" to mortify/annoy my sister. Best dinner ever.

Also, working mostly in Massachusetts:

Leominster= lemon-stir
Worcester= woo-sta
Methuen= meth-OO-en
Peabody= pea-buddy

Yessum.

Posted by: artificialsweet at April 25, 2008 12:51 PM

Words:

dictionerr, instead of dictionary

Balmer, instead of Baltimore

zink, instead of sink

And when people say "are-ah" for the letter 'R' my ears bleed.

Phrases:

might could, instead of might be able to

up-air, instead of up there

Posted by: Angelina Francina at April 25, 2008 1:48 PM

"awry" was pronounced: a-rye. I'd always pronounced it to rhyme with "bawdry."

..... -_-


...I pronounced it to rhyme with bawdry until, like, last week. The prefix "a" + "wry" = a-rye. CLEARLY. If it is supposed to be pronounced "awree" they they should spell it "awree."

Posted by: Catherine at April 25, 2008 3:15 PM

I can't help it but I pronounce sandwich as "sangwich" unless I try really hard not to. Also brewery turns into "broo-ry" in my mouth.

And I work with lawyers and mispronounced "litigious" until I heard someone else say it.

Now wait, how do you pronounce banal if not "bay-nal" I'm confused...

Posted by: PepperPot at April 25, 2008 3:18 PM

I thought of another one - not my own, but just as annoying... I dated this guy for awhile who wanted to start some kind of zine, and he kept pronouncing it to rhyme with "wine". I honestly think he didn't realize that it was an abbreviated form of "magazine", and that it should therefore be pronounced as such. And I could never bring myself to correct him. I just felt like it would be so bitchy. So I just seethed under the surface (screaming, "ZEEN goddammit, ZEEEEEEEEEEN!!" in my head) until eventually I broke up with him.

Posted by: b at April 25, 2008 3:37 PM

I was really confused in early school years when we learned to count. For some reason, I wanted to fight people that told me there's no such number as eleventeen. It just sounds so right!! ...eight, nine, ten, eleventeen...
I just couldn't cut it off at eleven. Not even in the eleventeenth hour!!

Posted by: Helcat at April 25, 2008 4:04 PM

Ooh! Another one I always get confused with is deciding when you use "then" or "than." The hell? I can never keep this one straight!

Posted by: Helcat at April 25, 2008 4:08 PM

"Then" refers to time, "than" refers to a comparison.

Also, I thought "anxiety" was pronounced ANK-shitty. You know, like anxious.

Posted by: Treena at April 25, 2008 6:09 PM

Do you say clothes as kloz or klothz? They're both correct, but it's easier for my mouth to say kloz. Some say deep-seeded instead of deep-seated. The first time I saw deep-seeded in writing, I thought it was a fun mistake because it kind of made sense.
I dislike correcting teen writing papers and finding "should of, could of, would of" and I keep writing "HAVE"! It's hard to get them past that one. Oh, one more: do you say gross-ree or grosh-ree for grocery? I put the "sh" in.

Posted by: Jill at April 25, 2008 6:24 PM

I used to pronounce the name Marjorie as May-Jury until I had a class w/ a girl w/ that name.

It always bothers me when people mispronounce designer names. For instance, Givenchy is Ji-van-chi not Gah-ven-chi. Mui Mui is actually pronounced like moo moo and not moowee moowee.

Posted by: B at April 25, 2008 9:37 PM

raspberry beret, I want you to know that I had no idea how to correctly pronounce minutiae either, until reading your comment just a few seconds ago. I've never actually said it in person, but every time I've read it, it's been "min-yoo-tay" in my head. Now I will know for the future.

Posted by: Ana at April 26, 2008 1:09 AM

so I arrived way late to the party, but here goes:

For the longest time in high school I was on a kick of saying "vehemently." I thought this word was pronounced "vuh-HE-mently." I was corrected (vee-um-ently) by my friend's older, smarter, way-cooler sister. Whoops.

I also pronounced "biopic" to rhyme with "myopic."

I went to college just outside of Boston, and being from New Hampshire, had mostly no idea about all the names of cities that are not spelled the way they are pronounced. I remember my Mass-born roommate giving me a lesson on town names that I had butchered such as Quincy--(Kwinzy) and Billerica--(Bill'rica).

Lastly, my former boss, an Irishman, pronounced the letter "H" as "hayche." Not in words, but just as naming letters, ie: e, eff, gee, hayche, eye, etc. He also called khaki pants "fawn-colored trousers," and was an over-user of the word "irregardlessly." I hated him.

oh, and Fernando, Bass Ale is like the fish.

Posted by: beehive24 at April 26, 2008 9:14 AM

Ohioans are absolutely terrible at this sort of thing. I'm originally from Toledo, and now live in Cleveland, and I've come across mispronunciations that would absolutely make you cringe.

1. Bellefontaine = Bell Fountain.
2. Nevada (a street in East Toledo) = Nuh-VAY-Duh
3. Carnegie = car-NAY-gie

One up for debate: applicable.

APP-luh-cuh-ble
Uh-PLICK-uh-ble

Posted by: geekchicohio at April 27, 2008 1:20 AM

Late to the game, but I have to post these!

Imagine my extreme humilitation when as a senior English major, I was informed that during my department-wide thesis presentation, I had pronounced Mephistopheles as "Me-fist-o-phay-lees." My thesis advisor also informed me that Goethe is not pronounced like Go with a -th on the end. The good professor was not very kind about the errors I'd made, and did a bang-up job of making me feel scummy.

However much I hated how I felt after the experience, it taught me not to be pedantic and snobbish when others made pronunciation mistakes. That was a lesson I needed to take with me as I began a career in teaching!

Posted by: Meredith at April 28, 2008 12:08 AM

Meredith, so far as I know, you pronounced Mephistopheles correctly. Who was trying to boss you about that? A gang of mean Ancient Greek kids?

I spent a lot of yesterday in a restaurant, and while I was there, kept my ears open for my variations on my pet hate, SAM-wich.

I'm in a tourist area, and so got a decent selection: sang-wich (a la Popeye), sand-widge, sam-widge, sang-wick, sand-wig. Even sam-wig.

The two I hate the most are:

1. Sam-mich. For God's sake, a child of five knows not to say this. Are you an adult? Do you have your own teeth? Have you inserted you dentures? If so, what is wrong with you?

2. Sammie. Intentional stupidity is not cute. Why don't you take those people with you, who say "eppie" for episode, and "lippy" for lipstick, and fuck off and die already?

Posted by: Janis at April 29, 2008 5:41 AM

Impugn is pronounced "impyoon" in case anyone's still wondering. My peeves:

menstruation as "menstration"
foliage as "folage"
"one at the time" rather than "one at A time"

And I don't care WHAT dustin says, it's pajeeba.

Posted by: AM at April 29, 2008 3:29 PM

My sweet husband, who learned to read using the phonics system, looked at a box of tofu in the grocery store, and asked, "Too-foo?"

Posted by: Noelegy at April 29, 2008 3:58 PM

oh sweet jesus. there are so many, but i'll mostly make fun of my father because he has two ma's and a phd and doesn't think i know more than he does. he will forever and to this day until the end of time and throughout the anals of history and the future call the front hall of any house, ie the foyer, the 'foy-err'. i mean i know it's pretentious to even have a foyer, but when being pretentious, go all out and pronounce it 'foy-ay', the way it's *supposed* to be done. goddammit dad.

Posted by: betsy at April 29, 2008 4:15 PM

In HS I was friends with a boy who insisted that clit was pronounced like cleat. He wouldn't believe that it was pronounced any other way because all of his other friends thought that it was pronounced like cleat. So much for 6th grade sex ed.

Posted by: lauren at April 29, 2008 8:01 PM

No, it's "mentalstration". You know that.

But it's always gonna be "pa-HEE-ba" in my head. I mean, it's not crazy to see that, is it?

I don't like a lot of abbreviated words either, as Janis was discussing. It's not technically mispronouncing, but if one starts talking about espresso drinks with "skinny" (or "skeenny" for southern women) and "whip" it's all I can do to not have an epileptic fit. I don't get the "sangwich" thing, but I don't know anyone who says that either, so I'll have to take everyone's word on it.

Posted by: Jay at April 29, 2008 8:15 PM

I have so many of these... My mother-in-law says "I'm not fussy on that" when she means she doesn't like something... drives me up a wall... if you aren't fussy, that means you will take anything, not that you don't like it.

I have a friend who pronounces licquorice "Likowish" instead of "licorish".

My sister says bay-ding suit instead of bathing suit.

I once read conscience as con-science, and got corrected in front of a room full of people who I was reading aloud to... very embarrassing. Also called pronounced chipotle *chip-o-tal* instead of *chi-po-tly* until a waiter corrected me at a dinner for 10 people... ACK!!

The re-la-tor pronunciation brings out the grammar police in me everytime!! I even know real estate agents who say it that way. You would think "Real* Estate Agent would give people a clue that it is realtor, not relator.

Posted by: MeowKitty at April 29, 2008 9:27 PM

I have to physically pause and think very carefully for a moment before I say "orchid". If I don't pause(and even sometimes when I do), I say orchid with the "ch" sound instead of a hard "c" sound.

Posted by: Elizabeth at April 30, 2008 12:47 AM

Hi, I know this was last week's diversion but I only saw it yesterday. I need to confess something very shameful. My sophomore year in college I was giving a presentation. I was already terrified of public speaking. The title of the article or book or whatever I was presenting had the word "paradigm" in it and I spent the ENTIRE presentation saying it "para-digg-um" and only found out about my mistake when I got the student evaluations back and one of my classmates put a little note saying "its pronounced para-dime." OH THE HORROR.

Posted by: Rachel C at April 30, 2008 12:37 PM

When I was around eight, when I read something about Episcopalians in some sort of history book. I very seriously asked my mother what "Epic Cop Aliens" were.

Posted by: pianofilledwithflames at April 30, 2008 2:19 PM

Also, yarmulke...I have said it correctly my whole life but I guess never seen it written. I came across it in a wedding magazine and was confused about why the groom and groomsmen were wearing "brightly colored 'yarr-mulks'"

Posted by: Rachel C at April 30, 2008 5:41 PM

I had a friend in the office who would say, "cease and assist," instead of, "cease and desist." I guess she used it in the context of, "quit being counterproductive and help those who are doing it correctly."

Also, when people say, "suposubly" (suh-POZE-uh-blee) instead of "supposedly". That drives me nuts.

Posted by: Tony at May 1, 2008 10:40 PM

I had the same issue with "intents and purposes" being "intensive purposes."

One that I never understood was "I could care less." That makes no sense - what they mean is, "I couldn't care less."

Posted by: Hannah at May 2, 2008 1:43 PM

Oh, man.

In college, a partner in a group project wrote "the mink shall inherit the Earth" in our group paper, instead of the Biblical reference "the meek shall inherit the Earth."

Posted by: Hannah at May 2, 2008 1:53 PM

I'm always last to the party.

This is so so lit nerd of me, but I get upset when people mispronounce Nietzsche as "nitchey" or "neetshee." It's "NEET-shuh." Oh and if anyone cares, Max Weber is "VAY-ber." Also, Sartre is "sart." Those crazy philosophers with their difficult names.

Although I did say "Kwiksote" rather than "Kee-oh-tay" for a while, so I guess I can't be too picky.

I will admit that I didn't know until today that "all intensive purposes" is wrong. It's one of my favorite phrases. I will always say it correctly now.

I also know that even though the dictionary says pamphlet is "pam-flit" I still say "pam-plit." I can't help it.

And just a weird regional thing (my parents are from Upstate NY) I say "aygs" for eggs and "melk" for milk. Otherwise I have a flat accent. My best friend makes fun of me endlessly for it.

Posted by: Kristy at May 2, 2008 4:42 PM

A few more if anyone is still reading.

I had a boss you used to refer to the 'fiscal year' as the 'physical year'. I was never sure if she just had trouble pronouncing fiscal or if she truly believed the word was physical.

My mother says mustache as mushtache.

For years I mispronounced the word 'turquoise' as tur-quaze. In my defense, I'm in Canada, and I had learned the word from my crayons and must have been reading the French side or something.

I also refused to believe that Enid was a real name for the longest time.

Posted by: pthalio at May 5, 2008 10:54 AM

One of the great delights of my younger brother's life is that, I, at the age of 12, referred to sauerkraut as "Sour Trout" in a restaurant while wondering loudly why anyone on earth would create, let alone eat that.

He, however, believed Batman climbed walls with a "Graphing Hook". Just that and his protractor....

Posted by: allee at May 11, 2008 4:21 AM

I'm Nigerian by birth, though I've spent my entire life in England. I end every family holiday with shards of my own teeth in my mouth, and a mangled tongue as a result of the gems my older family members give me. Most of these are highly English pet peeves, so the Yanks may skip this post..:)

Here are a few-

'Lichester' for Leicester
War-wick for Warwick

Pronouncing any of the 'shires' as shy-er as opposed to 'sher' - as in Lestersher NOT Lichestershyer. [Count. To. Ten.]

Pronouncing the L in salmon and almond, or the T in often, castle and listen.

'Baff' for 'Bathe' as in, 'I'm off to have a baff' or 'Have you baffed yet?' That one causes real pain.
' Muhda and Fada' for Mother and Father
'Share' for Chair


And my personal favorites come from my 6 year old cousin-

When complaining about traveling for miles in a small car-
'I was in a squeezeness for the whole journey'
In response to a query as to the job title of Tony Blair
' He is the Prime President of the United Kingdom of America'.

Posted by: JayOsour at May 16, 2008 10:03 PM

My fave-egg set ra for etcetera

Posted by: lee at June 13, 2008 2:01 PM

Had a very good columnist at the newspaper I work for insist on writing "Make no doubt," merging "Make no mistake" and "No doubt." I harangued him time and again, changed it every time, but he never wrote it correctly. Drove me nuts.

And I'm with others on possessives and its vs. it's. Makes me want to pull off the road and take a big Sharpie to some signs.

Posted by: bucdaddy at July 4, 2008 10:54 PM

jogging: yogging, with a soft J

Posted by: will ferrell at August 23, 2008 11:58 AM

I overheard my cousin say, "survival of the fetus" and "skilleto" instead of stilleto.

Posted by: kyle at August 26, 2008 8:17 AM

when i was in high school, my sister heard me read: "going NOW-HERE"... she corrected me that day, and then i knew that it is nowhere... that was funny...

Posted by: aljelle soon, cebu city, philippines at August 26, 2008 7:33 PM

jamiepants: how do you pronounce PAJIBA, by the way? (LOL!!!) mind telling me? :)thanks!

Posted by: aljelle soon at August 27, 2008 1:19 PM

jamiepants: how do you pronounce PAJIBA, by the way? (LOL!!!) would you mind telling me? :)
thanks!

Posted by: aljelle soon at August 27, 2008 1:19 PM

its okay guys... in 5th grade I was reading "Where The Red Fern Grows" with the rest of my class as we all took turns reading a few sentences outloud. My turn came and I came across the word "tidy" which I read as "titty", much to the hilarity of my peers and the anger of my teacher who thought I did it on purpose. A call to my parents and disaster ensued.... lol

Posted by: jasjas at August 28, 2008 10:05 PM

It really annoys me when Americans mispronounce chimney. It's chim-ney NOT chim-in-ey! I've even heard news reporters say it like that.

Same thing with vehicle. It's veer-cul NOT vee-hee-cul. The h is silent (but it isn't silent in herb).

Nuclear - Nu-cle-ar NOT nu-cu-lar

Posted by: schlub at September 5, 2008 8:59 AM

I hate how Americans use "period" instead of "full-stop". A period is something a woman has each month. A full-stop goes at the end of a sentence.
i.e. "This conversation is over. Full-stop." Using "period" is just gross!

Posted by: schlub at September 5, 2008 9:12 AM

I was wondering about lightning. I was wrong in that I thought it was only a noun, but please clear up the "lightninged" and the fact that there is no "lightninging."

Posted by: Linda Briggs at September 8, 2008 10:23 PM

Culinary is "Cue-lih-nary", NOT "Cull-ih-nary"

Posted by: Elliott at September 10, 2008 9:59 PM