Do you ever mispronounce words as they are spelled?

Ha ha ha! I just had this conversation with another Jelly a few days ago…you’re psychic! When I was younger I used to pronounce the name of the Anglican church with the accents on the wrong syllables..EH-pi-SCOP-al. My sisters used to make fun of me. I also used to pronounce epitome wrong, with only 3 syllables: Eh-pit-ohm. Silly me.

Yes, I was an avid reader as a child, too, so I knew more words than I have ever heard pronounced. My family also made fun of me, to a point where I pushed the memory right out of my head and can’t even remember what those words were now.

I still know many words from reading that I have never heard pronounced. Every so often I will hear one of them for the first time and be shocked that that’s the way you’re supposed to say it. It’s especially bad when it’s a word that I know I’ve spoken incorrectly multiple times. I wish I could think of some examples, but I always forget about them once I learn the right pronunciation.

This was how I learned how merciless my family can be about pronunciation. Instead of being proud that a sixth grader knew the word “antithesis,” they made fun of me for pronouncing it “an-tie-thee-sis” instead of “an-tih-thuh-sis.”

@JilltheTooth Um… you mean I’ve been pronouncing those words wrong? Even if I’m from the south?

Haha. It’s especially irritating when you’re in an intense, educated conversation. Then you blurt out “That wasn’t court-ee-yous of him!” and you look like a total idiot…the person you’re talking to says, “Wait, what?!” And then she laughs hysterically and you don’t understand what’s wrong…..that happened to me, anyway :)

I worked in the book trade for a while, and I definitely have that problem with authors’ names. I’m the sort of person who needs a “mental pronunciation” when I’m reading, so I made up my own if I didn’t know – then sometimes found myself corrected later.

Seems perfectly understandable to me. I have done it when a word is Americanized in its pronounciation. I know Spanish pretty well, so if a city or name is in Spanish, I might pronounce it the “right” way rather than the American way. You bring up you are from NY so I am sure you realize words are pronounced differently in different places. Pretty much on NYers know Houston street is pronounced how-stin, not hue-ston like the city in TX. I think people in MI (not all, but many) mispronounce creek (crik) roof (ruff) all sorts of words. NYers tend to add er to the end of a word when it doesn’t exist. My mom would say I am laying down on the so-fer right now. LOL.

@JLeslie I grew up in MI and only heard crik and ruff a couple times (from my Grandma that was raised in Oklahoma and moved to MI in her 70’s). I wonder if it depends on the part of MI? Where I was from, people consistently dropped the “ly” at the end of many adverbs, and they didn’t pronounce d’s or t’s at the end of words. A classic MI example of pronouncing something the way it is spelled is Mackinac Island. You always know when someone isn’t from MI because they say “mack – in – ack” instead of “mack – in – aw.”

I do it as a joke with some of the words I originally learned to spell by thinking them out phoenetically.
Schedule is one word I sometime say ski-do-le

@bobbinhood Definitely depends on which part of MI. So many said eye-talian, but no one I knew who grew up in the more expensive suburbs of Detroit said it. Dropping the ly drives me crazy, I have said multiple times on fluther it is a pet peeve of mine, where the hell did the adverbs go? That is not just MI, I hear it all over, but less often in the northeastern US. MI also did not put “en” on the ends of words. They practically all say they were bit by a mosquito, rather than bitten. I have to think about the d’s and t’s. Can you give me an example?

Oh, and all Michiganders think Pepperoni pizza is standard. All is ridiculous to say of course, but it really is almost all I think. Unless they are a vegetarian.

@JLeslie I hadn’t noticed using “bit” instead of “bitten,” but you’re right. I think I might even do that sometimes, and I’m a little bit of a grammar snob. One example of dropping a t would be “I want it.” We would say “won” instead of “want.” However, the inflection is vaguely different, so people from MI would know whether we meant “won” or “want” even without context to the sentence. Another would be “I found the car.” We would say “foun,” not “found.” It happens with almost everything, but it does depend a little bit on what words follow. Even when we do pronounce the t’s and d’s at the end of a word, they are generally softer than they should be.

I learned how a word was pronounced just today. I have always pronounced “prescient” as “PRESS- ee- unt”. Today I found its “PRESH- unt.”

@zenvelo For real? Crap. :/

@bobbinhood I don’t think of the t being dropped competely actually, but less emphasis I guess. Or, more emphasis on the vowels in the word. “ou” especially. Out and about in MI, and most parts of the midwest, is very different than the rest of the country. While NY exaggerates their a’s in the middle of words.

@JLeslie I’ll respond to you in PM so we don’t get this thread any farther off track. But I’m headed to bed now, so don’t expect a message before tomorrow.

Rendezvous was a tough one for me when I first read it in a story in high school.
Years later my mother and I pulled up to a roadside eatery with the name Rendezvous and we both looked at the sign and slowly said REN-DEZ-VOUS? My gf said, RON-DE-VOU with a laugh.

In second grade, I was practicing reading with my assigned tutor when I pronounced “island” as “is-land”. I was profoundly embarrassed when she corrected me. I also mispronounced “corps”. Those French words are always tricky.

It’s so delicious to see people who can hear discussing pronunciation errors!!!

I lost my hearing when I was almost 3 so my speech is very different. I’m sure I still say a lot of words wrong but wouldn’t know it was wrong until I saw it pronounced differently. I understand sound, accents and all that—just can’t hear myself to apply it to my own speech. 14 years of speech therapy can only go so far TYVM.

Since my dad’s a doctor and I used to go to the hospital with him on his rounds, I can say many medical terms like diverticulitis perfectly. LOL!

Learning My Father’s Language

The accent is always on the first syllable:
in the word of more than three syllables,
there is a secondary accent on the third syllable.
—Instructional Manual in Czech

He tells me about the time
his schoolmates laugh so hard,
laugh him under the desk, red-faced,
out of the room, embarrassed, down
the halls, humiliated,
of Jungmann School.

First generation American son
of Bohemian immigrants,
how was he to know

this language of different rules,
this country which found
humor in foreignness,
this vocabulary ludicrous

when accent falls upon
em, as in “emigré,” which
his parents are, or “eminent,”
which they aren’t,

accent falling again on gen
as in “gentle” or “gentlemen,”
neither of which howling
classmates pretend to be

when the boy who becomes my father
sounds out, broken, aloud,
pronouncing from his first year
reader a word he sees on the page:

eḿ – er – geń – cy.

—Lorraine Duggin

Sometimes I do it on purpose because some words are funny to pronounce as they are spelt, sometimes I do to irritate my kids but most times I don’t know the proper pronunciation ; )
I also like to alter words and have always called Neapolitan ice cream Napoleon ice cream.

I wondered only non-English did the mispronunciation. Glad to know English users also face this (though few times).
There are many words that I may not pronounce correctly. I will share few.
1) bury : Almost all of my friends used to say “boory”, then we were told to say it “beh-ry”
2) of : Still many Indians say it “off” and not “ov”
3) Many US states are tricky to say out : Ohio : “oh-hee-oh” when it is “oh-h-eye-oh”
Idaho : “ee-dah-h-oh” instead of “eye-de-h-oh”
Utah : “ooh-tah” in place of “yoo-tah”
Carolina : “kar-oh-lee-na” when it is “ker-oh-l-eye-na”
4) Thomas : “Thaw-mous” and not “Taw-mous”
Thames : “Thay-mes” and not “Tay-mes”
Thompson : “Thomp-son” and not “Tom-son”
You will probably say my name wrong way. You can try!

@prasad English is a messy language. Other languages the pronounciation is more set in stone, the rules apply almost without fail. English has a lot of exceptions because we adopt words from so many languages, and usually honor the mother tongue by keeping that pronounciation, but not always. Messy.

I would say prah-sahd.

One of the words I got wrong as a child was “macabre.” I pronounced it “ma-kaa’-ber.” Well, I had never heard it pronounced, so took my best stab at it.

What, me? No never… :P

When I was little, I pronounced gazebo as “gaze-bow” as in you’re gazing at a hair bow.

In English words I have one that I can recall, because that word I mispronounced a long time ago, when I was a young boy; it was the word executive (producer), read in the end titles of movies.
I read it, and pronounced it, as exe-CU-tive.
I think that because of the fact that I was young when I learned that word (wrong) I still, untill today, mispronounce it in the first instance.

@Skaggfacemutt I pronounced that “mack-er-bee” as a kid. I think my older brother finally corrected me.

@muppetish I would have thought you were saying maccabee. LOL.

@muppetish The first time I heard the correct pronounciation, I was shocked. So much for phonetics.