What pronunciation errors do people often make that you find annoying?

Expresso… and I don’t even drink coffee.

Forte, when it’s pronounced as “for TAY”. No, it’s just “forte”.

Often, frequently pronounced as “OFF ten”.

People pronouncing “Porsche” as ‘porsch’.
The ‘e’ is not silent, morons.

“It comes acrossed a little crass.”
At least three (American) Youtubers that I follow say it when they mean across.

Liberry
It’s not a fruit people!!

Axe you a question
No need to use a weapon.

Prolly
You probably mean “probably”.

Who the hell uses “lackadaisical” in every day conversations?

Around here, @Berserker.

Oh gosh, I’d have to think about this for a bit but..two humorous moments come to mind right off the bat. An old friend once told me they had bought a self compelling lawnmower and a ditzy friend of my daughter once said she needed to go to the store and get some Albuquerque tuna. LOL Pronunciation errors are fodder for some of the best observational humor you can get.

I don’t think other people pronouncing something differently than me as wrong or annoying. I think it’s great that we have variation to pronounce words.

When I go to Italian restaurant I can still hear guests and waiters pronounce Lasagna as La-sag-na, not “La-sa-nya”. Interestingly, the locals here pronounce steak as “stik”, not “steak”. There’s no such things as deliberate pronounciation error, different people may use different accent to pronounce something. British people tend to pronounce water as “wo-a-ta” while American people pronounce it as “wa-der”.

@Unofficial_Member maybe not deliberate but there’s a difference in regional dialect vs. totally oblivious and not very bright. LOL

Dialect is not the same as putting the wrong letters into the pronunciation, or in the wrong order, such as “chipole-tay” or “lax-adaisical,” @Unofficial_Member.

Right….you say Towmayto I say Towmaato. Actually I say Towmayto. LOl

Right, @Coloma. There’s a difference between “aluminium” and “aluminum”, for example, because they are different words for the same elemental metal. And anyone can make allowance for other regionalisms, dialects and other aspects of pronunciation.

But I still laugh when I go to Michigan and hear people talk of “EYE talian” salad dressing, for example, or movie “thee AY ters”.

@CWOTUS

Forte, ‘one’s strong point’,is correctly pronounced ˈfȯr-ˌtā or fȯr-ˈtā or ˈfȯr-tē

From your own link, @Call_Me_Jay:

noun \ˈfȯrt; sense 2 is often ˈfȯr-ˌtā or fȯr-ˈtā or ˈfȯr-tē\

That doesn’t mean that it’s correct; it means that that is how many people say it. From freedictionary.com comes an explanation that I like:

Usage Note: Forte, meaning “something in which a person excels” can be pronounced with one syllable, like the French word from which it is derived. It can also be pronounced with two syllables (fôr′tā′), which is probably the most common pronunciation in American English and was the choice of 74 percent of the Usage Panel in our 1996 survey. Some people dislike this two-syllable pronunciation, arguing that it properly belongs to the music term forte, which is derived from Italian.

As an often-with-a-T pronouncer, I’d just like to say that well-regarded dictionaries on either side of the “pond” recognize either pronunciation as being in use.

My best friend in elementary school used to correct me on that word all the time. I’d just say “but it has a T!” ... of course, I’m not the best authority, since I went through a phase of pronouncing “salmon” as “sall-mun” just for kicks (but that’s why I linked to the big guns!)

Here’s an interesting one, at least to me:

The book Persepolis. I was first introduced to it in a college course. I read it like any Greek word in English, so I said “Per-SEP-oh-lihs,” as did the rest of the class. The professor kept saying “parse-police,” which was driving all of us crazy enough that someone finally asked her why. She explained that she had had two Iranian students in her class one semester, and they had pronounced it that way—when they were asked why, they explained that that’s how it was pronounced in Iran. When I combined that fact with what I knew about French phonetics (which isn’t much, but I have taken some beginning French), it made more sense. (Persepolis was originally written in French.) And then for the rest of the class we all said “parse-police.”

And then I encountered the book again in a setting where I wasn’t in a position to correct anyone’s pronunciation [well, edit: I also didn’t think it mattered enough to bring it up], and so I just wanted to match their pronunciation. I had the hardest time remembering to say “per-SEP-oh-lihs.”

I know someone who adds an “L” to many words. Bra = Brawl.
Also, she consistently transposes “cell” and “sill.” “Windowcell.” “Jail sill.”
I don’t know why.
Some thing I found interesting is that I had a handful of customers at the mower shop, unrelated people, who pronounced “Cub Cadet” (a mower brand) as “Club Cadet.”
My boss used to say “Antilog” instead of “Analogue.”

I find it puzzling. Is it a hearing issue? A processing issue?

Glad I never had to say “Persepolis” in school!

“Sweet” for a suite of furniture for you living room or bedroom.

@Tropical_Willie do you mean people usually say “suit” when they should say “sweet”? Or vice versa?

@CWOTUS Dictionaries don’t command you how to use the language, they describe the way people use language. If 74 percent of the people say it that way, it is correct. That’s how language works.

The first person I referred to above was actually here yesterday with her two kids, along with my son and his family, for the barbecue. We were on the deck and she asked about my wrist brace. I told her it the same thing I’ve been dealing with for 4 years, an entrapped ulnar nerve.
She said she thought I’d gone to the doctors for it. I said I had been to multiple doctors. The last one just said to do the exercises for it that I found online, but I don’t know if I’m doing it right.
She proceeded to look it up using Google voice. She had a very hard time with “entrapped” and “ulnar.” I pronounced it several times, and even spelled it for her.
So she’s talking to Google and said, “Exercises for trapped all your nerves.”
I shouldn’t have laughed but I couldn’t help it.

@Soubresaut In the South even on radio and TV channels the sell a “SUIT” of bedroom furniture.

My other post wasn’t that good.

Calling A-10 Thunderbolt II’s “Warthogs.”
Saying “Me and Bob” or “Me and Jane” instead of “Bob and I” or “Jane and I.”
“Sigh-reens’” instead of “sigh’-rehns.”
Cringe!

Po-leece.

Liberrry drives me bonkers. It came up in conversation today. My eye is still twitching.

I don’t hear this much anymore but there is still a group of people in my home area that pronounces Quebec “Kewbeck”. Gak.

While learning long division and how to tie our shoes, most of us were (supposedly) taught that the ‘t’ in ‘often’ is silent (maybe 40 million people were absent, but I’m sure they covered this on more than one day).

Do these ‘ofTen’ people also use water sofTener ??

Do they lisTen to other people ???

Same thing…..

I say the T on often.

So do I.

I’ve been thinking about it tho. If I say “It often happens” I use the T. But if I say “It happens often enough!” I don’t say the T. Interesting.

@Dutchess_III We speak the same language!

10–4 Good buddy!

Hm. I think it’s because when I finish with “Often” the T finalizes it. But in the middle of the sentence I’m slurring the words together. “Ithappensoffenenough!” Like its all one word that flows together.

What pronunciation errors do people often make that you find annoying?

I quite like it when Americans say, “I’m a merkin”, and can’t help but agree.

Sin-ince instead of sentence.

Feb-you-ary instead February.

Im-pord-ant instead of important.

Min-stration instead of menstruation.

Prostrate instead of prostate.

Prostate instead of prostrate.

Melk instead of milk

Pellows instead of pillows

Alls I know instead of all I know

Am-buh-lance instead of ambulance

Nu-cu-ler instead of nuclear

Im-pord-ant instead of important.

I don’t remember noticing that until a few years ago, and now it’s common.

@Kardamom My brother-in-law is a nuclear engineer, and even HE pronounces it “nucular” (as I remember it, Jimmy Carter while in the navy had the same specialty, and he mispronounced it the same way)

Irony, I think they call it…..

Dia-bee-tiss instead of dia-bee-dees (diabetes)

I’ve said this many times before: “poinsettia” (look at how it’s spelled and say it slowly) as “pointsetta”.

I had a lady friend several years ago who spoke English as her first language, but coming from a different part of the world and a different culture, she spoke it with a very different accent. And because of this she had a sort of Creole manner (to put it into terms that many Americans might recognize) of saying “dis” and “dat” and “dere” in the way many people clip the “th” sound from “this, that and there” into a “d” sound instead. Coming from her, it was quite charming, because she was well educated and cultured, so it was sometimes jarring to hear her speak of “dese”, “dose”, “dem” and various “odder tings”.

But what charmed me the most was her unusual – and very correct, actually – way of saying the word “uncomfortable”. Whereas most English speakers I know speak it as (barely) four syllables, as “un-comf-ta-ble”, she spoke all five syllables clearly and distinctly: “un-come-for-ta-ble”.

Hydrabad instead of Hyderabad

A guy wrote-in to Reader’s Digest about how his immigrant mother once gently knocked his high school principal down a few pegs during a parent-teacher conference.

The principal had jokingly ridiculed they way the woman pronounced a few words.

“Oh, excuse me”, she sweetly said. “English is not my first language, and I sometimes get it a little confused with the other five languages that I speak….”

One of the most distressing memories I have is walking into an elementary school classroom to sub for a teacher. I was just horrified at all the instructions he had posted throughout the room that contained a jumble of misspellings and grammatical errors. How the hell did he ever get a job teaching?

I was thinking more about this question, and I realized: There might be an argument to be had that virtually all English speakers say “Wenzday” wrong!

@Tropical_Willie not at all, your other post was fine! That’s what I assumed you meant, I was just being overly literal about it… I’m not sure a suit of bedroom furniture would be very flattering! I’d be worried it’d make me look too bulky ;P

Does this bedroom suit make my butt look big?

The living room suit has a 54 inch flat screen, that will make anything look BIG.