What’s your pet mispronunciation?
I once had a school teacher who said hippo–crissy for hypocrisy, and polly-gammy for polygamy. I thought it was pretty funny.
While hippo-crissy and polly-gammy are fairly extreme examples, most of us are less-than-perfect when it comes to speech. We swap letters, we slur, we substitute.
I was recently looking through this post on The Most Often Mispronounced Words in English, and here are the ones I see frequently:
- supposably for supposedly
- sam-wich or sangwich for sandwich
- irregardless for regardless
- flustrated or fustrated for frustrated
- flounder for founder
- anyways/towards/forwards for anyway/toward/forward
- aksed for asked
- ex cetera for et cetera
- sherbert for sherbet
- ex-pecially for especially
- mis-chee-vious for mischievous
- ex-cape for escape
- ar-tic for arctic
- nu-cu-lar for nuclear
- obeast for obese.
Some of these examples are misuses of words, rather than mispronunciations, as in irregardless for regardless and flounder for founder.
Now, don’t go thinking I’m on my high horse. A degree in English is not a free ticket to perfect speech. There are plenty of words I misuse and mispronounce, and I’m ashamed to say my biggest offenders are:
- cloze for clothes
- Feb-u-ary for February
- min-a-ture for miniature
- san-wich for sandwich
- comf-ter-bul for comfortable
While I spell these words correctly and know how to pronounce them properly, my problem mostly stems from slurring words.
I’m generally told I speak very well, but I can’t help but be self-conscious about these peccadilloes.
For the most part, our pet mispronunciations have been perpetuated since childhood. Eventually, one of three things will happen:
(1) Someone will point out our mistakes and we’ll correct them, or (2) someone will point out our mistakes and we won’t bother to correct them, or (3) no one will point out our mistakes and we’ll continue to make them.
Which words do you misuse or mispronounce? Do they bother you, or are you able to shrug them off?
Are there words you once used incorrectly, but you’ve now reformed your ways?
Which mispronunciations are your biggest pet peeves?
ex-presso for espresso always makes me cringe, and also libary for library
Cate,
In Australia, they say ‘lie-bree,’ instead of ‘library,’ and ‘prop-lee’ for ‘properly.’ I’ve heard the ‘ex-presso’ one a lot, which I think comes more from mental misspelling.
Thanks:)
.-= Read suzannah´s last article ..Do You Mispronounce These Common Words? =-.
I work with a woman who calls herself the “Libarian”.. oh it does make me cringe! She also abhors spelling which is telling I feel…
I love this, Suzannah. I’m going to try to become more conscious of my pronounciation. The one word that drives me nuts is coupon. I say coo pon, but I’m hearing more and more people pronouncing it cue pon. Drives me nuts! Which one is correct?
In my experiences in North America, ‘coo-pon’ is the standard. However, in Australia, they tend to say the long ‘u’ sound in a lot of words, like ‘duel’ (dyoo-el). So, I think they’d say ‘cyoo-pon’ as well. Not sure which is correct, to be honest. I’d stick with ‘coo-pon,’ though.
.-= Read suzannah´s last article ..Do You Mispronounce These Common Words? =-.
@Ric – I believe coo-pon is the correct way to pronounce it.
I don’t have too many pet peeves when it comes to pronunciation, but I have noticed that I (and most of my friends) say “comf-ter-bul.” I also have a few friends who say “acrosst” instead of “across.”
Jeffrey,
I’ve actually never heard this one before, though I think it made the top 100 list.
I don’t even get how one gets the extra ‘t’ on across.
Glad I’m not the only one who says ‘comf-ter-bul.’
.-= Read suzannah´s last article ..Do You Mispronounce These Common Words? =-.
The t in across is from Old English and was used to mark prepositions. See also: betwixt, against (I know I am forgetting some others). Also, some of these other “mispronunciations”, like aks for ask, are also dialectal preservations of archaic English. Sangwich, samwich, and sanwich are classic cases of natural phonetic reduction (in other words, they’re easier to say). It has to do with what kind of sound follows. Sanwich breaks up three consonants in a row, which takes a lot of effort to pronounce. You get samwich and sangwich because /w/ is made with both the lips (like m) and the velum (or back of the throat, like the ng sound). The words come out that way because you’re already starting to say the w by the time the m/ng come around.
Interesting post. I would argue that while some are mispronunciations based on mental mispellings (sherbert instead of sherbet) some are merely due to different regional accents: cloze for clothes (common in the NE US).
The one my husband loves to tease me about is shreet instead street – I can’t help it, it’s a New York thing. I’ve exorcised (or never possessed/was possessed by?) caw-fee (coffee), tawk (talk), mirra (mirror) and draw (drawer) but shreet/street still haunts me.
Don’t get me started on irregardless…
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I agree, Danielle–some of these pronunciations are due to regional accents. But, that doesn’t make them necessarily correct. ‘Cloze,’ for example, is definitely a slurring of ‘thes,’ which may be more common in certain areas, but it’s still incorrect.
I think ‘cloze’ is pretty standard in many places, anyway. Most people probably don’t even notice.
Thanks for your list of New York-isms. Very interesting!
Of those on your list, I spell mischievous incorrectly. I do have a list a mile long of words I mispronounce. I learned of my certain challenge recently when going over my daughter’s spelling bee list.
.-= Read Tricia´s last article ..Suspicious writer seen leaving her house =-.
Tricia,
If I don’t know how to pronounce something properly, often I’ll look it up in the dictionary or online immediately. Same with word meaning. It doesn’t always stick the first time, but it sometimes it does.
a regular discussion i have with other writers is when and how to employ mispronunciations and misspellings in third-person narrative.
for instance, if a character believes can’t is spelled cant, in what context should the narrator represent the misspelling?
i’m not sure if that all makes sense. a good example is a book like “everything is illuminated.”
i’ve found this an interesting question to raise when it comes up during review sessions.
thanks for an interesting post!
.-= Read Paulo Campos´s last article ..Figure in Towel =-.
Paulo,
That’s interesting. Never really thought about it. I guess it really depends on your narrator and the story you’re telling. Hmmm.
Hi Suzannah and Paulo,
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kinsolver offers a great example of a character who constantly uses malapropisms – which is similar to mispronouncing words.
My dad is a Dutch Australian and has – and holds on to – some fantastic ways of pronouncing English words. The best ones are ‘magna-fish-ent’ for magnificent and ‘anti-bee-otics’ for antibiotics. I still remember him helping me with my reading after school, pointing to an ‘a’ and saying ‘eh’. (BTW, His brother (my uncle) speaks Dutch, English, French, Spanish and a bit of German, and he comes out with some ripper sayings, like ‘The flowers were blooming like… like idiots!” – but you can forgive him – and we have lots of laughs.)
But the ones that drive me nuts are ‘anythink’ and ‘everythink’, which are really common here in Australia. My husband and his mum are guilty.
I also had a boss who used to ‘pacifically’ tell me that she’d ‘pacifically’ told me to do ‘somethink’. (She was magna-fish-ent.)
cheers, Trisha
Many of those I had mispronounced as a child. Once I learned the correct way to say them, I retrained myself. It took a lot of conscious effort, but now they’re second nature.
However, I’m still guilty of a few you mentioned on the second, shorter list. And I’ll admit that I do say “sammich” just to be facetious. 🙂
.-= Read Lydia Sharp´s last article ..Book Review: Small Miracles by Edward M. Lerner =-.
Lydia,
I say ‘sammich’ to be facetious as well, but normally slur ‘sandwich’ into ‘sanwich.’ Is that mean to people who actually say ‘sammich?’ 🙂
It’s great to see an example of someone who has retrained themselves. Thanks!
Some of these made me go “Hm, really?” So many people pronounced them some other way that I thought those were standard. For me, I know that if there are two consonants in a row, my second consonant tend to be weak. For example, when I say a word like “slang”, you will hear more “s” and not enough “l” if I don’t consciously enunciate.
Also, I tend to say “ventriquolist” instead of “ventriloquist”, for some reason.
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Kelvin,
I think swapping parts of words is very common in childhood, which is probably why you have trouble with ‘ventriloquist.’
Those mispronunciations are VERY common in my part of the world. I use most of these on a daily basis and usually on purpose! I can’t tell you how many times I have had to correct “expecially” in a document. Thanks be for spellcheck!
Cunnit/wunnit/dinnit for couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t were my monsters to exorcise.
.-= Read Jonathan “Blade” Manning´s last article ..Creative Every Day Monday 25JAN2010 =-.
Jonathan,
As for your cunnit/wunnit/dinnit, I sometimes catch myself slurring ‘going to’ into ‘goon-ta.’ I find this embarrassing.
Some of them are definitely regional. For instance, in Australian and British English forwards and towards are more widely used than forward and toward and aren’t considered incorrect (well not according to Pam Peter’s Cambridge Guide to English Usage). You’re right about the long “u” sound. We definitely say “cyoupon” here in Oz rather than coo-pon.
Echo,
I agree some of these are regional. I didn’t know the ‘s’ on towards and forwards is considered acceptable some places. Is it the same for ‘anyways?’ To me, that one really shouldn’t have an ‘s.’
liberry or library
.-= Read Southpaw´s last article ..Spelunking Splendors =-.
Even when I was a kid this one made me cringe. Ugh.
.-= Read Lydia Sharp´s last article ..Why "Free" Sells =-.
Hi Suzannah – My most pet peeve upon hearing it is people saying Re-La-Tor instead of Realtor. Or the use of “these ones” or “those ones” – I did a blog about this last year so no, I don’t think you are on your high horse at all! It’s a pity so many people blow it when they open their mouths!
@Suzen: ‘Re-la-tor” is kind of annoying, yes.
@Southpaw: Here in Australia, I hear people saying “lie-bree.”
I think we just learn to say things the wrong way and sometimes go through life without even knowing it.
How about sher rather than sure? Or “are” rather than our.
Ooh, “are” for “our” is one I’m guilty of, but mostly when I use it in a sentence. If were to say it on it’s own, I’d say it correctly.
Spot on! “Anyway” should never have an ‘s’ – unless you’re using colloquial US slang in dialogue. There is an exception to just about every rule of usage! 🙂
I always get told off for saying ‘bold’ instead of ‘bald’, I just can’t say ‘bald’!! It’s not in my lexicon at all! I also say yoghurt differently, is yog-ert or yo-gert? Other things I say that differ from other people I put down to my accent.
Natalie,
My husband is Australian, so I tease him quite frequently about the way he says things, too. I think it’s ‘yo-gert,’ but that might be ethnocentric of me. My husband says ‘to-MAH-toe” instead of ‘to-MAY-toe” and it drives me nuts!
Mom always used to say heart “attackt”. I confess to deliberately injecting mispronunciations as a means of endearing myself to folks. I am kinda partial to “sammich” though.
I had a boss who said “pix-ture” instead of “picture”. It was like nails on a chalk board.
.-= Read kathy t´s last article ..What are your snow day essentials? =-.
In-trest-ing instead of interesting. Although I confess to leaving of the ‘g’ and making it interestin’ but it’s closer. 🙂
Leave it to my immigrant mother to mispronounce words:
Pistachio = PEE-stah-choo
Anatomy = ah-nah-TOE-me
Film = pil-im
Gotta love it.
Here in South Africa with its eleven official languages nobody would dare call anyone on English pronunciation. Still, my favourite is a joke that did the rounds a few years back:
What’s the definition of a creche?
A motor accident in Bellville.
I know it’s a an accent thing but I can’t stand U-stray’yuh and especially when said by TV announcers!
Linda
EXpresso instead of ESpresso. it drives me insane! (I work at a coffee shop, so I hear this mistake hundreds of times a day)
Well, since Feb-you-ary is the standard pronunciation, and flounder is a legitimate word and is not in fact a mispronunciation of founder, I declare this list to be useless.
I also think that this argument, taken to its logical extreme, means we should pronounce all words as close as possible to Old English, which is preposterous.
And furthermore, in Italian it is “peccadillos” and in Spanish “pecadillos,” so if we’re going to be spelling and grammar Nazis, we should do it without being picky of the language.
And I declare you’re certainly entitled to your opinion 🙂
.-= Read suzannah´s last article ..How to Flip Your Self-Doubts as a Writer =-.
Several of these pronnciations are actually correct even if not pronounced how they’re spelled, for example, the r in February and the c in arctic are silent.
So mischievous is pronounced mis-chiv-us? I’ve been accenting the EE all this time, and now I am horrified!
Someone in my family (I won’t out her) pronounces Ibuprofen I.B. Profen. It makes me crazy, and I think that’s why she does it.
Hello Suzannah! Hello to everyone. I notice i’m mispronouncing words as I get older which is funny since I’m 27! I wanted to see if there was any articles or forums on the WWW that would give me some clue why I keep doing it and I’m glad I came across your website because honestly in the back of mind I thought it may be some kind of speech impediment. I mean I’m inteligent and also speak well but it puzzled me to know I have this pronounciation problem. Like i would say ‘an-al-a-sis’ instead of ‘uh – nal – uh -sis’ or ‘ call-dir’ instead of ‘cal-der’. Other common words I have said through out my life I can’t seem to say them the correct way anymore, but I do come close. 😉
wanna / gonna / shoulda / coulda / woulda … you can figure out the equivalents.
“I could care less” when it’s obvious that if the speaker really could care less, they would already be doing it.
I’m trying to learn a new language, so I have a lot of empathy for non-native speakers of a language … the worlds best word-list is useless in mid-conversation.
OTOH, I have little compassion for those who persistently remain illiterate in their native tongue.
I’m a terror for saying prehaps instead of perhaps and consequently misspell it all the time, no one has ever picked up on the mistake in my speech because it’s such a slight change – but it really bugs me lol.
I hear heighth a lot instead of height. It’s usually said in conjunction with width. “What width and heighth should this be?”