Viewing 40 posts - 201 through 240 (of 291 total)
  • Words you’ve always pronounced incorrectly
  • reeksy
    Full Member

    I remember the first time I saw the word paradigm.

    jambourgie
    Free Member

    Have we had ‘segue’ yet? I was amazed when a friend pointed out, just a few years ago that it is pronounced ‘segway’ not ‘seeg’.

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    But I get rolled eyes when I make it sound shoritho. And the tuts I get when I say paella.

    Don’t get a job as a cycling commentator. You’ll get no end of flack on Twitter for pronouncing foreign riders’ names correctly.

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    squirrelking
    Free Member

    In loosely related news, I read earlier today someone saying they had a “softs pot” for something.

    We had a guy at work with one of those, he had a tank fall on him when he was in the army (REME) and only had a one minute notice for bowel movements on a good day.

    nickjb
    Free Member

    I’m reminded of one of the guys at my college. He was German but an excellent English speaker. He did have one blind spot, though. He told me a story about when he first moved to England and lived in a shared house. He suggested they could to the local pub, The Plough, only he called it The Ploff. From that point on all the lads in the house called it The Ploff. The only trouble was he couldn’t actually recall what was the correct pronunciation so kept alternating the story between Plow and Ploff without quite knowing which was the right one and which was the joke one and correcting himself wrongly.

    alpin
    Free Member

    the other day my eldest asked which “rowt” (route) we were taking. 😖

    One assumes he got the hiding he deserved?

    kayak23
    Full Member

    Have we had ‘segue’ yet? I was amazed when a friend pointed out, just a few years ago that it is pronounced ‘segway’ not ‘seeg’.

    Sigway Sigway Sputnik pictured recently…

    Have we had ‘fine tooth comb’?

    nickc
    Full Member

    As we’re well into 6 pages. Have a go at this yiddish word;

    Tchotchke

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Tchotchke

    Gesundheit.

    BillMC
    Full Member

    I was always slightly disgusted by the phrase ‘falling between two stools.’ You have to be careful.

    chr15
    Free Member

    Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, “shassey”.

    It doesn’t bother me when folks mispronounce the words they know they want to use half as much as the previously alluded to folk who don’t know what the word they’re trying to use actually is: Upmost respect, tenderhooks, pacifically, “literally” etc etc!

    Cougar
    Full Member

    That’s a point actually. Names of foreign origin give us a quandary, do you pronounce them Anglicised or do you risk sounding like a pretentious arse?

    Take car marques. Skoda should be “schkoda” (sounds like you have a speech impediment) Porsche is “pour-shuh” (gaining wider acceptance), Dacia “datch-ia” (likewise because yay Advertising) and VW is “falks vahgen” (pretty much unheard of in the UK). Then we see fit to mock Americans for pronouncing Notre Dame as it’s spelt, at least they’re broadly consistent.

    Funny old thing, language.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, “shassey”.

    Uh, that’s correct… ?

    donald
    Free Member

    Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, “shassey”.

    So do I

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    Uh, that’s correct… ?

    I was going to say thank god someone else can speak properly but, you know 😉

    You also forgot Perjo

    As we’re well into 6 pages. Have a go at this yiddish word;

    Tchotchke

    Chotch-ki?

    Like auntie in Polish?

    nickc
    Full Member

    Sash-Say as opposed to Sash-cee is, i think what chr15 is suggesting his mate said.

    Tchotchke is pronounced Chat-ka (if you’re interested)

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    How about “Braun”?

    MoreCashThanDash
    Full Member

    “Subtle” always caught me out on those 1970s primary school word lists we used to have read at school. I seem to recall that teachers didn’t correct me for a couple of years.

    Apparently it isn’t “sub tilee”

    CountZero
    Full Member

    How would you pronounce “?

    I would call it a quotation mark, compared to a ‘, which is an inverted comma, or a speech mark, depending on whether it’s used in a word like ‘it’s’, or if emphasising something that isn’t a direct quote.

    After over thirty years in print and publishing, with many, many hours spent proof-reading lots of text, I tend to be pretty obsessive about correct spelling, pronunciation and usage, inverted commas should show as 6 9, and quotation marks as 66 99, which they actually do on my iPad keyboard – ‘’ and “”

    There is a book about correct usage that my studio director was always using for correct spelling and usage in print; he took great delight in correcting poor spelling, punctuation, and general type layout mistakes provided by agencies.

    Not that I always get it right, but most pronunciations I’ve learned to say correctly, despite being brought up in the West Country. 🤣

    Tchotchke is pronounced Chat-ka (if you’re interested)

    Now that’s interesting, I’ve seen the word used by William Gibson, and I know what it means, but I’ve never heard it spoken, so I didn’t know how it’s pronounced. Thanks for that, much appreciated.

    Have we had ‘segue’ yet?

    That one I learned the correct pronunciation years ago, from radio DJ’s.

    finbar
    Free Member

    Hyperbole (again) is the only word that I can remember really catching me out in an embarrassing way, when I was trying to sound smart about something at uni. Oh how my housemate laughed.

    On the reading side, for years – years – I misread ‘Rincewind’ in the Discworld books as ‘Rincewood’. I still prefer my version.

    alanw2007
    Full Member

    For several years, I pronounced exacerbated as excaberated having misread it at some point. Possibly reading too many Arthurian stories.

    stevedoc
    Free Member

    Ex girlfriend …….

    Cougar
    Full Member

    I was going to say thank god someone else can speak properly but, you know 😉

    🤣🤣 well played.

    You also forgot Perjo

    Oh, yeah. Correctly pronounced poo geeot, of course.

    Sash-Say as opposed to Sash-cee is, i think what chr15 is suggesting his mate said.

    I think at least one of those is some form of dance move.

    It’s still not right either way, anyway? It’s “shassie,” no?

    How about “Braun”?

    Lost me there. Oh, wait, is this another German one, so it’d be a homonym(*) with “Brown” I think?

    I would call it a quotation mark, compared to a ‘, which is an inverted comma,

    Aye. Today I’d likely refer to them as “double quotation marks” and ‘single quotation marks’ but it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Dictating computer game instructions, “type LOAD double quotation mark MANIC double quotation mark and press enter.”

    Inverted commas always sounded weird to me. The whole “66 and 99” thing from GCSE English – The opening 6 is an inverted comma symbol, but the closing 9 is the right way round just higher up.

    (* – shut it, Squirrelface)

    deadlydarcy
    Free Member

    Always pronounced awry correctly, if using, but I never really knew it was spelled that way, as whenever I read the word I pronounced it “aw-ree” in my head. Then one day, it clicked that they were one and the same word. 😂

    hot_fiat
    Full Member

    According to wifey, who ran their payroll, Braun is pronounced Brauwn. But then Kronberg is get posh like so who knows.

    thelawman
    Full Member

    Stoic…. and stoical, I suppose.
    stoike? Or stow-ick?
    I’ve always used the latter, but a vet pronounced our elderly dog as being quite stoike a few weeks ago (he has a touch of arfur-itis) and that just sounded bloody weird to me

    Cougar
    Full Member

    I believe you’re right, and your vet should stick to vetting.

    chr15
    Free Member

    Yeah, fair enough, my phonetic spelling was ambiguous. He said ‘Sh-say’, with a flourish. It’s shassee, like Massey (Ferguson).

    Oh, another was the pompous twazzock who asked me for ‘Cal-va-doth’ when wine waiting at some toy-sellers guild meal in Manchester back in the 90’s, explaining that it’s ‘Spanish apple brandy’ I suppose assuming I’d neither heard of it nor knew it’s in fact French.

    kayak23
    Full Member

    Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, “shassey”.

    I think there is either ‘Sch-assy’ or ‘Ch-assy’.

    Steve Jones off GMBN is always saying Ch-assy.
    Might be a Welsh lilt.
    I say Shassy me.

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    Tchotchke is pronounced Chat-ka (if you’re interested)

    I was. Huh, found this on a quick google just there:

    tchotchke comes from the Yiddish tshatshke of the same meaning, and ultimately from a now-obsolete Polish word, czaczko

    So it’s actually an American word which is derived from a Yiddish word which is derived from a Polish word. And amazingly still as unpronounceable (in English) as when it started!

    How about “Braun”?

    German innit? Brown. Not brawn.

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    (* – shut it, Squirrelface)

    🤣 🤐

    BillMC
    Full Member

    I once heard someone in a seminar pronounce French philosopher Saint-Simon as ‘Saint Simon’. I was discombobulated wondering whether Marx ever debated with zealots from the bible.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Similar to that,

    Stringfellow Hawk’s deceased brother in Airwolf, “Sinjin.” I read the book and spent half of it wondering who the hell this Saint John bloke was that they kept mentioning.

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    Have we had ‘segue’ yet?

    That one I learned the correct pronunciation years ago, from radio DJ’s.

    I learned that one from Frank Zappa who described a particular link between two tunes as “a rickety segue”.

    Oh and I’m delighted the STW massive know how to pronounce Braun. Shame the masses don’t seem to.

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    I remember the first time I saw the word paradigm.

    Never a word I use so I wouldn’t mispronounce but for a long time I never made a connection between the word as as heard and the word as read and must have imagined they were different words that meant the same thing.

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Dictating computer game instructions, “type LOAD double quotation mark MANIC double quotation mark and press enter.”

    I think young people would find it quaint that we used to use cassette players to load computer games  – but actually dictating them is properly oldschool

    MSP
    Full Member

    Not a mispronunciation, but I have mixed up etymology and entomology in conversation (and I just had to google now to confirm which meaning is correct for each word).

    codge
    Free Member

    Aitch or Haitch?

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Aitch or Haitch?

    ‘H’ spelled ‘Aitch’ but ‘Aitch’ is pronounced ‘Haitch’

    The pronunciation of ‘Aitch’ is an example of ‘H-adding’ – the opposite of dropping the H – verbally we add an H where there isn’t one.

    I’m not sure if H-Adding has fallen out of use – featured in things like My Fair Lady “‘Ampshire, ‘urricanes ‘ardly hever ‘appen” – makes me think of Drill Sargents – dropping Hs where they belong and adding them where they don’t

    ‘Marchin hup and down the square’

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    I have mixed up etymology and entomology in conversation

    People who can’t distinguish between etymology and entomology bug me in ways I cannot put into words.

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