What words do you hear mispronounced the most?
What English words do you hear most commonly mispronounced? I’ll start – “masonry” I hear this on a daily basis pronounced “mason-airy-ee”
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nucular (for nuclear)
ax (for ask)
realty it’s not real-ih-ty
Guilty of pronouncing:
Absurd as “abzurd”
Thanks as “the-anks”
And have heard:
banal as “bay-nal”
mischievous as “mischeevious”
Seamas as “See-mas” (it’s Shaymus, people!) but that’s a name so I’m not sure if it really counts.
invalid (when refering to someone who is infirm) as “in-valid” (as in unqualified).
February as “Febuary” but I do that too
many more. Can’t think of them all now.
I don’t know about the ones mispronounced the most, but recently I heard khaki pronounced cocky, which grated like fingernails on a blackboard.
My current pet pronunciation peeve is the way the voice on the weather channel’s locals on the 8s says the word warm.
Finally, this is not pronunciation, but was so awful I had to mention that this morning I heard an anchor on HNN say that they were “efforting to speak with a member of the Dallas poice department.” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
@perplexed82 Ack, I have never heard that, but would hate it.
Have to agree with “February” as well. When I was younger, I said “Febuary”, but once I realized how it was spelled, I’ve gotten into the habit of saying it correctly.
I also hear “poinsettia” pronounced “poinsetta” or “pointsetta”. There’s an “i” in there, people; it’s not silent and there’s no freakin’ “t” after the “n”. :)
I always pispronounce my worms.
@Marina I’m efforting right now not to bang my head against the wall in agony for my beloved English language.
aluminium as “aluminum”
pyjamas as “pajamas”
Especially as “eck-specially”
@ragingloli
Those are different spellings altogether, though.
Also: I hate “expecially”, “expresso”, “excetera”, “EXPN”. God…how hard is it to say it the right way?
@DominicX Thank you! That drives me nuts too.
I also can’t stand it when people say “worsh” instead of wash and “Worshington” instead of Washington.
@DominicX is not exceptional pronounced “eckseptional?”
@lbinva78
That seems more like an ugly sounding accent than a true mispronunciation to me.
@holden
Yes, my brain’s in a fog today.
@ragingloli They are PAJAMAS here over the pond, not pyjamas
Apparently I cannot pronounce the word “Orange” correctly. I’ve been told this since high school but can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. I’m a Native English speaker and everyone else in my family says it correctly.
How about a cute one to answer the question:
It’s not a chickmunk :)
I live in Orygun, not Ore-ee-gone
@MagsRags Me too!
@Marina Can you spell it phonetically how it is supposed to be said and then I’ll correct that to what I say? I can’t figure out how to spell what I say right now, perhaps that’s half my problem.
@RedPowerLady do you pronounce it something like “arnj”? I’ve known people who do that.
A lot of these words have two accepted pronunciations:
Masonry, poinsietta, aluminum, etc*.
Oh, that’s mine. I hear people say, “Eck cetra” all the time.
Also “Asterick”. No wait, that’s how I say it.
Porsche. It’s pronounced por-shuh, not porshh. Extra irritation points if the person actually owns one.
@lbinva78 Something close to that. Maybe more like ornj.
@daloon Ax? Are they immigrants or Americans?
@oratio When I hear it (which is a lot) it’s always been Americans
@everyone My husband wants to know what’s up with the influx of people using “sch” in place of “s” lately. As in the word “Schtronga” in stead of “strong” ?!
i demand that they make it their first language :D
@ragingloli what is the symbol after ‘r’, and how did you turn your ‘e’ upside down?
@oratio Ax for ask is a common thing to hear in Philadelphia.
@ragingloli
Yeah, I’m not a big fan of “Porshuh”. If you’re going to attempt the German pronunciation, pronounce it right.
My stepdad pronounces “styrofoam” steer-uh-foam. (This could be a regional thing, as he’s from Chicago.)
Although I’ve never heard someone mispronounce “etc”, it bother me when they write ect. (My response is usually, “WTF?!”)
I have to wonder, too, if some of these “mispronunciations” are regional, because some of these that others have labeled as “wrong” are as common as cacti here.
(Oh, and, in spanish, it’s pee-yah-mahz (pijamas), which could be where part of the weird pronunciation comes from.)
the same with the english pronouncing Volkswagen as (ipa) vɒlkswægən, it’s fɒlksvɑ:gen
What about Cuh-RIB-eeyan vs care-uh-BEE-uhn? I think both are “acceptable” but the latter sounds funny to me sometimes (or the way Billy Ocean sings it :P )
@oratio In Wisconsin they say it the same…I think it’s more like lack of education/poor phonics
Just like the “sch” in place of “s”——The “x’ is in place of “sk” or in many cases “s”
Strength and Length are two words I hear that are constantly being mispronounced. The trend seems to be to drop the “g” sound so that Strength becomes Strenth. This is a real pet peeve of mine.
Is anyone else pronouncing the mispronounced words to make sure they say them correctly? lol
What I’d really like to know is how did “car” become “kah”, and “saw” became “sar”? I sar a deer while driving my kah??
I took a college linguistics class and it was very interesting. A lot of this mispronunciations have to do simply with our culture of speaking. English speakers are notoriously lazy speakers. And as such we tend to say words in their simplest forms. In the instance of kah instead of car it may simply be that the “r” takes more time to pronounce and in fact if you say both it is much easier to say kah. Well that is a simplified version but I think the point is still clear.
Another one: height as “height-th”
Also, people, it’s very low brow to pronounce the “t” in often. Up until a few decades ago it was considered down right wrong to pronounce it that way. It should sound like offen.
@RedPowerLady The phonetic spelling is “awr-inj”. Now that you mention how you say it, I have heard that before.
I have a professor for Human Development who pronounces Piaget as pagent. And whenever she is talking about the organismic theory she says orgasmic instead and it’s definitley not just to be funny. Drives me nuts!
I also hear sandwich pronounced samwich alot.
@Marina I have to lol because as I read the phonetics I can’t seem to say it. Ugh!!!
This is like the most common thing in the world, but I hate hearing people pronounce “because” as “be cuz” it’s be cause. Cause does not sound like “cuz”.
And I hate when people but an “s” on anyway.
My mother’s friend has ‘radio’ tires. She’s very musical when she drives, I guess!
Nukular for nuclear is my biggest pet peeve, followed closely by jewlery for jewelry. I have even heard jewelry mispronounced on a radio ad for a diamond retailer.
Another common one, although not so much a mispronunciation as a misuse of the word, is “ideal” for “idea”, as in “That’s a great ideal.”
And then there’s the supposably/supposedly routine from Friends…
A lot of people pronounce “lackadaisical” as “laxadaisical.”
Mischevous pronounced “miss-chee-vee-ous”
i have heard older people pronounce “metal” as “meh-ul”
@AstroChuck
In the case of “often”, it’s completely optional how you pronounce it. I look at this one differently because it comes from Germanic and in Germanic languages the “t” would be pronounced. It’s also related to “oft”, which has a pronounced “t”.
Pronunciation -> /prə‘naunsieiʃən/
I’m an English Language teacher, and it droves me mad when I hear this from other teachers.
My ex once pernounced “annuals,” as “anals.”....
@the100thmonkey Hey….have you tested the kids to see how many will actually write “could of” instead of “could’ve”? I was a sub for several years, and when I realized that some people actually did that, I’d test every class I went in. Well over half wrote “could of.” THAT drives me nuts!
Well, my mom is from The Bronx, so she says idea and sofa wrong. They come out to be idear and sofer.
Napkin, roof, creek, wash. Na-kin is simply not pronouncing well I think and the others are more regional, ruff, crick, and warsh.
I noticed some one else already wrote ask and pumpkin those occured to me too.
I know too many people who say “supposably” instead of “supposedly”! Argh!
@RedPowerLady and @MagsRags Do you guys actually say “gun” when you’re saying Oregon? I don’t really know anyone that says it that way. What I’m familiar with and how everyone else I know pronounces it says “gin” – not like the drink – but rhymes with “tin”.
@Val123 I teach ESL adults exclusively, so I’ve been quite fortunate in that I haven’t had to deal with that little gem.
Understanding why it happens doesn’t mean it annoys me any the less when NSs of English write “could/should/would of” though…
@DrasticDreamer I pronounce it both ways to tell the truth. Or – i – gun or Or – i – gin (gin like you said not like the alcohol). What drives me bonkers is when people pronounce it Or – ee- gone . UCK!
@the100thmonkey My husband’s daughter was taking some college courses. She’s a tad LD, so I was helping her quite a bit. She brought a paper that had been gone over by, I think, one of the aids. I HOPE it was an aid, because Gena had written “could’ve” and the person, whoever it was, crossed out “could’ve” and “corrected” it to “could of.” This is at the college level! I about went through the roof…..
@the100thmonkey OMG!!! How in the world can kids go through 12 years of school and not be corrected? It only takes a minute! LD—Learning Disabled, but only slightly. She’s dyslexic, low reading skills. Not fun when you’re trying to read a college text book! But she’s great with numbers,hence she was working toward a CPA degree.
I find a new mispronounced word ever time I try to speak in Chinese. At least, that is what my chinese friends tell me. I can’t tell the difference.
Realtor is not “real-a-tor”
The letter R is not “are-uh” (not a word, but still annoying)
Pronunciation is not “pro noun ciation”
Rigamarole is not “Rig-err-muh-roar”
@DominicX- I never said it was incorrect. I simply said it is considered low brow with English linguists. Originally the “t” was pronounced but became silent later and remained that way for centuries. It’s only been about 80 or so years since the “t” started to be pronounced by some people and just a few decades since it’s been accepted as an alternate pronunciation of the word.
@daloon In Billy Joel’s song “Don’t Ask Me Why” it always bothered me that a few times when he said that, he pronounced ask “ax”. I have notice that’s common in rap as well.
These aren’t mispronunciations, I don’t think, but it annoys me when people say syrup “seer up” even though a ton of people do. and i also dislike coupon as “koo pon”. and “care a mell”.
My friend is always talking about his cooking class and he is always mispronouncing “habanero” as hanaberbo or habanora or something completely wrong. just a side note.
@deni
Coupon is “koo-pahn” and it’s the original and first listed pronunciation. It’s French. Same with “caramel”. There’s two “a”‘s in there, it’s not spelled “carmel” for a reason. Seems to be more regional maybe. I say “seerup”, “coopon”, and “care-a-mell”. “Surrup”, “kyoopon”, and “carmel” sound like hick pronunciations. :P “I got my carmel surrup kyoopon at the liberry in Worshington”.
Here’s another I just thought of: Saying “boh-kay” instead of “boo-kay” for “bouquet”. French, people!
@DominicX Ha, they do sound hick. There are plenty of hicks in this area though…we can’t all be blessed with residing in the hella cool Bay area…:)
ps – i say boh-kay too, lol.
Has someone said realtor yet? Many people say real-it-or or real-a-tor. The correct is real-tor, like it is spelled.
@deni
You would say “boh-kay”! lol…and yeah, the Bay Area is hella sick.
@JLeslie
Yeah, someone mentioned that.
@jfos
My calc teacher last year said “heighth”. He was a great teacher, though. Called on me more than any other person in the class.
How about route pronounced “root” and “rawt”... i say both, i can never choose which sounds better.
@DominicX i always feel corny if i say bouquet correctly…i feel like i’m tryin to be all high class and speak french but i fail at it. but then really in the end i just pronounce it wrong anyhow hahah
How about Wolf as Woof. :)
My husband says ‘neopreem’ instead of neoprene… my daughter says ‘of-ten’ instead of ‘offen’...‘nucular’ & ‘joolery’ aggravate me, also ‘real-i-tor’.
Whoever was talking about the word ‘banal”, ‘bay-nal’ is an accepted pronunciation, but not the first one given.
I think the habit of putting ‘R’s on the ends of words might be a regional thing. How about people who say things as though they’re asking a question? As in, “Hi, my name is Brender?” lol
@ccrow i’ve noticed a lot of people lately making sentences into questions.
“i was thinking of wearing a scarf today?”
“we’re planning on going to that show later?”
“we thought we’d take a trip to the redwood forest today?”
i detest it when people say “pacifically” instead of “specifically”!
eg: “I pacifically wanted the other one.”
When I was planning my wedding and talking with a girl at work who was planning hers at the same time, she asked me if I was going to have ‘baby’s breasts’ in my bouquets. Um, no. I was going to have the baby’s breath. Can’t even imagine what her bouquets looked like! :0)
Hm, I must be a hick.
Caramel is “kar-muhl” (unless I’m reading it, then it’s care-uh-mell), coupon is “kyou-pon” or “koo-pon”, and syrup is surr-up. (Real-live people actually say “seer-up”??) Strangely enough, the dictionary says both the more “high-brow” way of pronouncing and my way of pronouncing it are correct.
It could be because my entire family is from Ohio/New Jersey/Pennsylvania, though. (Regional thing, perhaps?)
We don’t sound like hicks, though. (Okay, some of them do when they say “We was” instead of “We were”, but generally speaking, we don’t sound like hicks. In fact, most of us don’t have any accent whatsoever.)
Wow. I admire the number of responses this question produced!!! Awesome
Oh! I have one that drives me crazy and tickles me at the same time: “Chester drawers” instead of “chest of drawers.”
Another one that bugs me is when people (specifically my dad) pronounce the “L” in “salmon.”
I usually don’t care how people pronounce words, since it doesn’t affect my life. But I heard a new one which technically is a new word, not a misprounced one. It’s “likeded”, as in “I likeded the phone”. I saw this on YouTube, from a Judge Judy episode a few weeks ago. I gotta figure out a way to fit that into my daily conversation.
12th : twelft for twelfth?
aah, I mistook. twelveth or twelfth?
@Supacase HAHAHAH just the other day my friend mentioned “saL mon”...i said…what?! you mean SALMON?!”
The irony runs so deep when I hear people pronouncing “proNUNciation” as “proNOUNciation”.
The word selfish always got me confused! It was soo crazy!
@autumn43 I COULD HAVE DROWNDED!!!!!!!!!!! – says leo dicaprio as “ernie” in whats eating gilbert grape? anyone else love that movie? mhm mm
I know a lot of people who think they’re eating sherbert instead of sherbet.
@deni – that was a grape mov, er, great movie! I didn’t think I would like it but ended up loving it!
@autumn43 Same here! i thought it would just make me sad, but it’s ohh soooo good!
Another mispronunciation I hear is crayon pronounced as crown. This is something I hear when I visit my daughter in Maryland. Her inlaws all say it as well as my grandkids. It drives my daughter crazy. I tell her perhaps she needs to get everyone to move back here to California.
downtown = dantan crayon = crane i hear both of those a lot around here but i don’t say either.
@MagsRags That’s what I eat. Are you really supposed to say sher-bet?
@RedPowerLady
The Merriam Webster online dictionary gives sherbet the main listing, and sherbert as a variation. Also found this quote from a blog put out by an icecream company
Though it can be spelled as “sherbet” or “sherbert,” most experts agree that the correct pronunciation is “sher-bit” (sounds like “hermit”), not “sher-bert.”
@AstroChuck When I was in High school, my environmental science class had a debate for literally half an hour on the true pronunciation of the word crayon. Ah the glory of public high school education.
@MagsRags Well that is an education for me. I’ve never heard it said that way, I’m going to start paying attention now. I just love sherbet/sherbert ice cream.
I live in a small southern town so about half of the words I hear are mispronounced. Here is a few, finger is fanger, wash as in wash a car is warsh a car, the word there is promounced thar, tires are tars, windows are winders, horses is hosses, I’ll get you back is I’ll getchie back, watermelon is woddermelon, chewing tobacco, is chawin bakker. I could go on and on.
Well, this isn’t a mispronunciation – it was just what the person called it and said that they all do where he lives in Chicago….
The ATM a ‘time machine’....
i also hate when people call a sandwich a “sammich.” or another one is “sangwich.”
This isn’t a pronunciation thing, but I think it’s odd when people say “PIN number” or “8 AM in the morning.” Ah, redundancy :)
I heartily agree with so much of the words listed above. The ones I would add (that annoy me no end) is licorice pronounced licorish and sherbert for sherbet.
@kayak8 – ever have licorish sherbert? JK!
I was starting to feel smug until…Realtor and sherbet! (Actually, I learned about sherbet a few years ago. I actually, really looked at the word once and said, “hmmmmm”!)
@Val123 I was doing great too until sherbet. Eek!
No, no, no… it’s not ‘licorish’, it’s ‘lickrish!!!! Only two syllables! FWIW, I actually pronounce it ‘licorice’... I’m just saying.
Licorice has three syllables.
LICK-oh-rish.
@Kayak8—so how do you pronounce licorice?
@casheroo and all for licorice I just say NO! Nasty stuff!
What about where every “th” is substituted with “f.”
I hear that often.
@inkvisitor
What, you mean like “yo, yo, yo, it my birfday, rogue”? That’s more an ebonics thing.
Hey! “Licorice…” the last four letters spell “Rice…” So is it “Lick o rice”?
@DominicX Yeah, I guess that’s one version.
I just saw a video of someone talking about “afletics” and “stremf.”
Re: licorice. What about liçorice? :)
Why isn’t it pronounced “Lick o rice”? Why is the “rice” pronounced “ish”?
@DominicX To some non-native speakers, the “f” and “th” sounds are rather hard to tell apart. To us, they seem really different, but I know that, at least for many native Chinese speakers learning English as a second language, the two seem almost exactly the same.
Gestalt, Angst, Zeitgeist, Wunderkind, Gödel, Schrödinger, Rotschild, Adidas, Porsche
@mattbrowne I couldn’t pronounce a single word except for last two. Thanks anyway.
Edit: I think those are German words, guessing. Getting it now a little.
@prasad That’s because @mattbrowne is an Angst Wunderkind. And who are you talking to, anyways, Matt????
I have to admit that my last 5 examples are not really English words. They are proper names. One was actually misspelled. It should be Rothschild, but it’s a funny example because normally syllable division is applied at the proper boundaries. Now Rothschild is a last name of German Jewish origin. There are two components ‘Roth’ and ‘Schild’. The first is the color red and the second means shield. Because of spelling reforms the color red eventually became ‘rot’ because the h is redundant. Spelling reforms were not applied to proper names. For whatever reasons in English-speaking countries the name ‘Rothschild’ was divided into ‘Roths’ and ‘child’, probably because ‘child’ looks like an English word. So to me it’s okay to mispronounce Gödel, because the ö sound doesn’t exist in English. However, Rothschild in English could be pronounced “Rowt” “shield”.
Gestalt the way is pronounced ‘geh’ – ‘shtaalt’ (a like in large).
Is there an English sound for “mattbrowne”??
@Val123 – Actually, I’ve heard two versions for the Browne part. Some folks seem unsure about the e at the end. Is it pronounced or not they ask themselves? I chose a somewhat unusual pen name, otherwise there’s too much competition on Google, but it also shouldn’t be too difficult to remember. And for an Amazon search my pseudonym remains unique. There are plenty of people named Matt Brown though, like Matt Brown the professional mixed martial arts fighter or the Australian minister of tourism ;-)
In my head I hear it “Brown-ie” which I’m sure isn’t right, but I can’t control my head. See. And I didn’t even bother asking it.
Library and Supposedly are my two hot-buttons, but I am terrible about pronouncing Hyperbole. (Out of ignorant habit, I often say “Hy-per-bowl”)
Angst, Rothschild, and Porsche are used in America enough that they should be pronounced correctly. Wunderkind and Gestalt are common to me also, but that might be because I’m Jewish.
I never realized I say Sherbet wrong. Glad that one was brought up.
@filmfann I’ll bite…then how do you say Hyperbole??? The rules of English would suggest that is IS pronounced “Hy per bowl”...
@Val123
High-purr-bowl-ee
It’s based on Greek where it would (in old Greek) be pronounced “hoo-pehr-boh-leh”. There are very few rules in English that always work for everything.
@DominicX That’s messed up, DK!! I’m glad I don’t have any reason to use that word verbally (That would be “ver ball y”)
to be exact: hy-PERR-buh-lee
@filmfann
OK, you lost me on supposedly.
I thought the hyperbole was a collegiate end of season football match up . . . hmmmm
in Ireland they pronounce film “fill-im.”
@Kayak8 As @renee pointed out, it is often mispronounced supposably.
hey, excuse me. Ix-cuse me or e(h)-cuse me, which is right? I say, ix-cuse me.
well excuuuuuuuuuuuse me.
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