I’m starting out this new year with a series of confessions. It’s very freeing and takes much less energy than making New Year’s resolutions I will spectacularly fail at achieving. I highly recommend it. Let’s start:
1. I’ve been spelling “trifling” wrong for my whole life. I spell it “trifiling”.
2. I pronounce “antenna” as “antanna”. I think I’m saying it properly but everyone assures me I’m not.
3. I don’t pronounce the “h” in “Huge”. People point it out. Lots of people.
4. There are a number of words which I use a lot, but have only ever read in books so when I say them out loud I just cross my fingers and pray that I’m pronouncing them correctly.
5. The last person who corrected my pronunciation is buried under the crawlspace.
One of these confessions is not true. Good luck guessing which one.
I don’t know how long this post has been up, but it’s hilarious to me that no one has commented on it yet. Just leads me to believe that no one’s buying your story about that H in huge! 🙂
I’m glad your triskaidekaphobia will get a bit of a rest this year!
Best regards,
Nancy
PS My husband pronounces the word “video,” as “veedeeo.” No one knows why. No one else in his family does it. I pronounce everything correctly. With a Texas accent. As it should be.
(Ha! I forgotten that I’d scheduled it this early in the morning. I didn’t even know it was up until now. ~ Jenny)
I say antanna. I’m from Kentucky, so c’mon.
I love # 4. I cross my fingers often.
-Angie
I say wind meal instead of wind mill. I can’t help it.
Number 4 is me. I read. I read allll the time. And I don’t talk to people nearly as frequently, I have a lovely vocabulary – if only I knew I was pronouncing things correctly!!
Also I say Politics like “po’-lit-ticks” what makes it worse is I majored in Political Science lol!
haha…#4
In my head, for many years, the word clandestine was pronounced candlesteen.
#4 – that EXACTLY what I do!
I’m with you on number 4. I can spell all of those words perfectly, just don’t ask me to say them.
Earl. TV earl or motor earl.
um yeah, i could leave a laundry list of these confessions. for now just one. i was just corrected in the last 6 months that i misspell (sp? ugh!) tomorrow. i always want to write tomarrow. i know to correct myself now, but am just waiting to be corrected again. but you know, i learned from you (in a prior post) that i am a badass motherfucker… i was given a reward!! and you know what? i really don’t give a fuck!
#1 Ummm I thought it was spelled trifiling… hahaha that’s how it sounds anyway. I never tried to write it though.
#4 is a source of constant amusement for my boyfriend – I’m sure many antisocial bookworms like myself are suffering the same ailment =)
Your postings always amuse me, thanks for sharing!
Clearly your false confession must be #3. Uge?
I have to think before I use the word prostrate as I have a tendency to say prostate – awkward….
Apparently I put the apostrophe in the wrong spot when I write “ya’ll.” It sounds the same when you say it, but I spell it differently. Even my iphone tries to correct that one. 🙂
I’m totally with you on #4. You know, it’s even to the point that if I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing it right, I just don’t say it. I end up sounding like an idiot, a lot.
…It could be that I say antinna.
Now that I’ve said it so many times I don’t even know how I say it.
It’s not even a word anymore.
-Angie… again.
Are you from the Houston area originally? I’ve noticed that Houston-ites pronounce their city You-stun, whereas most others say Hue-stun, and the rule proves true for other words that start with the hu sound, as well. Huge, yoooge.
I’ve been trying to figure out the y’all/ya’ll thing for years. Gave myself a treat for Christmas — reading To Kill A Mockingbird again and Miss Harper spells it yawl.
I have been saying “across” as “acrosst” forever- I think it’s an Ohio thing but it feels wrong without the t. I have learned to endure the abuse..I especially like it when they look amused and you can see how proud they are of themselves for not correcting me. such good manners but hum.. a crawlspace..
I used to pronounce Colonel just like it sounds. Co-lone-ul. Mispronunciation is the burden of the early reader. That’s my excuse.
Moustache. I like to pronounce it MOO-stash, instead of Mus-tash. Makes me feel foreign and superior. As if I know better than the average person, how it SHOULD be pronounced. HA.
I pronounce “eligible” and “illegible” the same way. Which the husband says is totally wrong and then he says the words at me and THEY SOUND THE FUCKING SAME and then he looks at me like “see it’s easy” and then I look at him like “they sound the same” and then he is like THEY DO NOT SOUND THE SAME and then one of us ends up feeling like they are going crazy.
I think it’s him though.
#3, of course. You’re obviously not Cockney.
I mispronounce words all the time, and when people point them out I just shout “I regret nothing” and walk away. Because fuck it.
Huge=”Uje” to me. If someone says “HUje” it sounds either British or pretentious. “Antanna” just sounds southern. #4 has always been my bane. I especially have had problems putting the accent on the from syllable. Don’t get me started on archipelago. I read the Earthsea trilogy as a tween and had the mispronunciation firmly established in my brain by the time I was done. Took my over a decade to sort that one out, lol.
I’ve lost track of the numbers of times crossing my fingers did not work for #4. (Is there room in your crawlspace?) That’s what happens when you’re well-read.
I’m going with #2 not being true.
I remember hearing someone finally read aloud the word I had been pronouncing in my head…cupboard. I thought it was cup-board and never understood really what a cup-board was or what you do with a cup-board. When I heard it “cubbard” I finally understood. It was like the sky opened up and the heavens sang. Cupboard = cubbard! All things in the universe magically lined up for me that day. Ok, maybe not but, I was just thankful I never had to read that word aloud in class because I’m certain I would’ve been mocked for years.
Ha! It’s number 5, because the person is just the most recent, and not the last.
What gets me is cooking shows from America – some of the presenters say ‘erbs’ and some say ‘herbs’. I guess it’s regional, but I’m not sure which is which. Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa) is one of the ‘erb’ people but I don’t know whether that’s from where she was born or lives now, or something in between.
My what a ‘uge antanna you have grandma…
When I was very little,4 or so, I had a Bert & Ernie book called “Penelope”. I read on my own by that time and could not figure out why any parent would be so cruel as to name their daughter “Penny-lope”.
I’m guessing it’s number 4, cause I do that, too.
For the first several years after the first Harry Potter book came out, I could have sworn Hermione’s name was pronounced “Hermy-own.” It wasn’t until the fourth book when she’s teaching someone else how to pronounce it that I realized I was wrong.
I’ll ad one: when people started making fun of Bush for saying “nucular” instead of “nuclear” I was like “what, is that wrong?” If I don’t catch myself, I will say “nucular”.
I have to think that many of these confessions are related to speaking Texan?
Great advice, Dawnie. Will try this at home… I have a friend who pronounces birthday “berf-day.” But then she also spells work, werk.
The letter “h” is overrated anyway. We French-speaking folks prefer to randomly insert it in certain words and not others, just for fun. It’s become a bit of a ‘abit which is why my hears don’t ‘ear the difference.
#4 should be a sign of pride–it implies that one is enlarging one’s vocabulary by reading written work of the “improving” variety. After all, it improved or enlarged one’s vocabulary, what?
My husband (commonlaw) asked me to marry him last night…he had a scavenger hunt that ended with a ‘play’ written out with moments from our relationship (ala How I Met Your Mother), tht told me to go to te bedroom. I was oblivious and stopped to correct his grammar (your to you’re) in red pen before going to the bedroom were he was waiting with an engagement ring 🙂
I leave the h off of huge and Houston. People just look at me funny.
As Suzanne says…..french people don’t pronounce the H in most words……I used to love chatting with a co-worker and spotting how many times he didn’t use it. 🙂
Re #4: It was many years before I learned “hors d’vours” and “oar-derves” were the same thing.
You and my oldest child have a lot in common. Except he hasn’t buried anyone anywhere yet.
My husband also says “antanna” and I want to tear my ears off every time he does, but I love him so I just die a little on the inside and keep quiet.
I have that same problem! Much of my vocabulary came from reading, so I’d never know how to pronounce the words. To this day, I have a hard time with the fact that “debris” is pronounced “de-BREE”. I’d read one and heard the other and never knew they were the same word until I was about 14 and said “de-bris”… Oh, the humiliation.
Salmon = two pronunciations.
1. The color “salmon” is pronounced phonetically – “L” and all. (My Crayola box did not include a pronunciation guide. I no longer even pretend that I am trying to break this habit.)
2. The fish “salmon” is pronounced the way that just about everyone else pronounces it, but with a suppressed giggle because I WANT to pronounce the “L.”
I have a friend who says antenna that way too. We always heckle her a little about it, but she doesn’t budge and keeps saying it that way.
My husband once asked me if I wanted to go to Can-O-co – I thought he was going to whisk me off to a beach in Mexico. He meant Conoco. The gas station. Now we all say it that way…sounds more exotic.
These comments are great. Seeing the one about Penny-lope reminded me that I call antelopes, annie-lopes. That’s right, right?
One of my primary uses of the dictionary is for the pronunciations, because I’ve read so many words that no one seems to say aloud.
I was born and raised in Texas then moved to California after college. Teasing about my pronunciations was rampant everywhere I worked, even though I tried to modify my speech to blend in. Now I purposely emphasize my Texan ways just to rile up people. My favorite is the response I get when I say “striped” with 2 syllables. BTW, the dictionary assures me my version is acceptable.
Egregious: eee•gregy•us
Also, pronouncing leading “H” is ALWAYS optional: human, humor, humour, herb, hetcetera
I do the thing with book words too. My reading vocabulary is much much larger then the spoken vocabulary in my home so there was a HUGE selection of words I never heard spoken outloud until college and many I have still never heard.
I was scarred for life when I used the word perverse (appropriately and pronounced correctly) as a middle schooler. One of smart and popular kids laughed at me and told me the word was perverted. I tried to tell him no I meant perverse but he was so sure of himself and so mocking I let it go. I’ve been hesitant ever since to try out new words for fear I mispronounce them.
My wife and I make a game of purposely mispronouncing things (mostly just privately at home, though it has been known to sneak out into public areas from time to time).
I also get peeved when people mispronounce things or try to pronounce in a more pretentious way (usually bogans (white trash to you), or people trying to appear more classy or intelligent than they really are; things like cicadas (SHOULD be pronounced sick ah dahs – not sick ay dahs), secateurs (seck a tears, not seck a terrs), and stuff like that.
What my wife and I do is we put the emphasis (emPHASIS) in the wrong part of the word, or extend the intonation of the word; some people do this by accident and it can be funny, but we’re really just playing stupid word games when we do it. We may even pronounce the first letter of a word, then say the rest of the word without the letter that has already been pronounced, like B log, rather than blog, or extend a word for the hell of it, so email become Emaleh, or Emaliao.
I have lots of other things I do wrong, but I feel that my humourous mispronunciation and other quirks make me interesting. I know I’ll never be as clever or successful as I’d like, but I’d rather be quirky and interesting, than bland, boring and “normal”.
Oh and I struggle with spelling, if it wasn’t for spell check set on auto I’d never spell things right, or learn the correct spelling of words, which is weird because I’m a voracious reader, and have a better vocab than most people I know.
I pronounce “navigator” as “nagivator” which, according to my husband should be my superhero name. Save me a spot under that crawl space, would ya?
I think The Flight of the Conchords pronounce antenna the same way in their song “Bowie In Space.” So you are doing it right if you are a band member of that group. People who correct people on pronunciation or grammar are dicks. Although grammar bugs me, I keep it in my head.
Happy New Year!!
When I was 12 I read a lot of books like the Last of the Mohicans, in fact many whole sets by authors such as this one–the Leatherstocking series–read ALL the time, so one of the books used “sonofabitch” all one word. I kept pronouncing it as “sunOFFabitch” and never understanding what was meant until I read the whole book. On a similar note, it never dawned on me what “Licorice Pizza” meant as a store for a record chain (back when there were records).
For some reason it took me years to stop pronouncing hover as “hoover”. Pretty much I just avoid the word.
I’m so glad to see I’m not alone on #4.
I do #4, too. And I’ve been corrected, but I refuse to state where the bodies are.
HAHAHA!! Chihuahua. that is how you remember how to spell it. Chee who a who a. Not Chee wow wow. !
I think you are trying to trick me Jenny. I do not think only one of these is a lie.
Oh, and I had a boss who always wanted to know about our availiability, and a friend who listened to alblums.
http://iwastesomuchtime.com/on/?i=85441
You get a pass for knowing how to spell “pronunciation”.
I keep getting in trouble at my volunteer textbook-recording gig for pronouncing “leaped” as “leapt”. OTOH, about half the time the people “correcting” my pronunciation are wrong (“hearth” doesn’t rhyme with “earth”, y’all. Look it up.)
I’ve always pronounced it antanna. I don’t care what others say.
I’m gonna guess #5, but with your last sentence I’m thinking I’m wrong? I guess only hoping I’m right? either way, if I ever have another chance to meet you I will be very careful about anything I correct should you speak anything wrong (to my limited knowledge). happy new year? (this post has made me question a lot. probably more than it should have?) (and that is not meant to question you in anyway, shape, or form)
They all look pretty true to me…
#4 is so cromulent.
> I pronounce “antenna” as “antanna”. I think I’m saying it properly but everyone assures me I’m not.
Sure. Rhymes with “Montana”. Seems legit…
But you DON’T say “Nuke-uler” when pronouncing “nuclear,” so everything is forgiven.
#4 is true. It’s true for me, it must be true for you 😀
In my family we have a few special pronunciation issues. For one, we say PELLO when we are talking about pillows, ie. that thing you lay your head on when you sleep. Whenever I hear people say it the supposed correct way I think they are snobs.
Also my sister cannot say BOWL. She pronounces it like BULL.
Number 4 is the bane of my existence.
I know people who say huge without the ‘h’. They’re all from Philadelphia. What’s up with that, Jenny? Do you have Philadelphian ancestors whose recessive pronunciation gene finally expressed itself? ooh, too much coffee.
p.s. http://www.buydehydratedwater.com is not MY website. However, it is so fricking brilliant, I have claimed it as my own.
My husband pronounces the R in FebRuary. I haven’t picked that up, but he has convinced me that The person you have buried (brrrr-ied) in your crawl space wasn’t berried- unless you tossed raspberries, strawberries and blueberries at thiazides person.
Husband is currently on a crusade to reignite the usage of two archaic words: overmorrow (the day after tomorrow) and ereyesterday (the day before yesterday). The kids have picked them up already. It’s sick and wrong to hear “can we have pizza for dinner overmorrow?” From a four year old. (Yeah, he’ll get beat up someday…)
I do #4 ALL THE TIME. My Dad says “worshcloth” instead of “washcloth”. Which annoys me. There is some guy who does political commentary on NPR who pronounces “measure” like “MAYsure” which makes me homicidal.
#4. Totally.
I’m pretty sure you’re smart enough not to tell where the bodies are buried so I’m guessing the crawlspace thing is a misdirection.
When I was in fifth grade, they had us read aloud in science class. I read an entire section aloud pronouncing organism as orgasm. The teacher kept correcting me, I kept misstating it. A lot of the kids laughed, I had no idea why. Now the word organism always makes me laugh.
I’ll go with #2; I’m epic at guessing pronunciations (#4), which always precedes #5 as I’m not a fan of being corrected. Just roll with it folks. Happy 2014 Jenny! -Iva
My mom doesn’t pronounce the h in huge either! Or Houston!
My boyfriend doesn’t pronounce the H in “huge” (or “human”) either! Never met anyone else who pronounces those words the way he does.
And a Miley Cyrus proximity detection mechanism (so you can keep far, far away) must be a Hannah Montana antanna.
I don’t think #5 is true, because when the zombie apocolypse comes, the zombies would be in your house.
If #5 is true, you might want to think about moving that body.
Funny. I thought it was spelled “Triflin.” So that means I’m also mispronouncing it too huh?
@Nicki, my dad used to say worshcloth too.
Confession: I am a Grammar Nazi.
Confession: I is a Grammar Nazi.
I’m right with you on #4 – and #3 seems the least in-character for you. I’m with you on #5, too, or would be if I had a crawlspace. Instead, I have a gully off the back of the property….
#4 is me – all the time!
I pronounce all sorts of words terribly wrong. My spelling is systematically atrocious.
But then again, I am British. 😉
There are also plenty of words that I use without knowing their exact meaning. I’ve read them in books, so can contextualise them and usually apply them correctly…but I’ve never gone to a dictionary and looked up their precise definition.
obviously it’s the h in huge? What kind of person doesn’t pronounce the h? weird!
#4 is sooo me. Too many mispronunciations to count. Can I just say all of them?
I cannot, for the life of me, pronounce ravioli. I say “rah-va-lo-lee”. Really?
I’m incapable of saying “sure” without sounding like I’m a cast member of Jersey Shore. And I’m Canadian. It’s the one word where the vowels get weird (and kind of slutty) on me. It’s like “shoe-ah.” I have no idea how it happened or how to fix it without slowing down the word so much it begins to sound like I’m having a stroke.
I’m not sure that confession made me feel better – but whatever. Bring it on, 2014!
I think I’ve read through all the comments and can’t believe no one from parts of NY or FL has mentioned the imfamous car salesman, Billy Fuccillo! “it’s HUGGGGGEEEEE!” You can listen to him here: http://youtu.be/DXRaboSo70A
Just the other day I said fa-cade and a friend laughed & corrected me that it was fa-sade. I know the word fa-sade I just thought they were two different words. She didn’t have to laugh though.
And what’s up with Oregon??? My whole life I’ve known it as or-eh-gone. But then my so-called sister cracked up at me, then pointed it out to her husband and they both laughed. They say or-eh-gine
I grew up on Long Island but haven’t lived there in many years. I lost most of my accent but evidently not all of it. I cannot say drawer. It’s draw. It just is. And there is no “r” in the number four. And I shop at the mawl.
I think a silent h in huge is perfectly acceptable in some parts of the English-speaking world.
Clearly, you need to move there.
HNY2U!
I’m an English teacher, so I try to be a good example…but the farm girl in me can’t seem to get past saying “fer” instead of “for”…
What’d you roll your eyes fer?
Years and years of pronouncing “chasm” in my mind, incorrectly apparently.
The first time my niece told me she had a new friend who went to the E-pis-COP-al church I almost swallowed my tongue. But I don’t mock people who use alternative pronunciations. I’m from the Pacific Northwest and have no accent, or colloquialisms, I don’t care what people from accent-laden parts of the U.S. say. Shoo.
I just saw you on Upworthy – on a video by Kim Hohman – pictures of Gorgeous Women that make you feel better about yourself (or something) and there you were in your gorgeous red dress being all gorgeous. I’m sharing the video with my wimmin friends because they are all gorgeous too! Happy New Year!
I’m guilty of 2 and 4 as well. How freeing.
I do the mispronouncing of words I’ve only read ALL THE TIME.
My husband doesn’t pronounce the “h” in words like huge or human. He’s from New Jersey, so I’ve assumed it might be a regional thing. We laugh at him for it. 🙂 He also pronounces “donkey” wrong, like it rhymes with “monkey”. He’s gotten used to the mocking by now, I think.
Number 4 for me as well!
Recently gave someone directions to the Kway (Quay) by mistake; they corrected me very politely.
Also found Colonel Sanders very confusing; who on earth decided that that spelling went with that pronunciation?
I don’t call this a confession, more like a cause worth crusading for: I always spell the word “restaurant” as “restaraunt.” It makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE. Though my iPhone likes to autocorrect it to restraint. Which gets awkward. “Want to try a new restraint?” and all of that.
I always thought Yosemite was pronounced “yo-sy-might”. For years. My husband pointed it out. Pretty much makes me feel like a Fuck nut. Good times.
I pronounce crayon like ‘cran’. It drives my husband insane who actually whispers it to me correctly in my sleep to try and correct it. It’s funny to me now.
but how do you pronounce trifling?
I cannot say “water bottle.” It comes out “rotter botter” and other horrible combinations. If I ask you to say David Sedaris can I live in your crawlspace?
Why do I hear the song “One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong” in my head? Happy New Year Jenny!
Back in the day, teachers insisted that to not pronounce the first R in February was as big a sin as calling the state “Ill-i-noise.” Now I notice that even news anchors say “Feb-u-ary” so I looked it up. It seems that the word was so widely mispronounced that somebody decided that’s okay, kiddies, and Feb-u-ary” is now common usage. What th…?
Love this! Do you also pronounce crayon like “crown”? Our babysitter from Texas does that. Also my mother once confessed to me that for the longest time she had only ever read the name Penelope and thus pronounced it as if it rhymed with cantaloupe. And I promise to never correct your pronunciation (I don’t like crawl spaces much). Also, HAPPY NEW YEAR, my friend!
I have a particularly embarrassing affliction…when I’m talking to someone with an accent (any accent…English, Chinese, Scottish, Yankee) I start talking with that accent. I cannot help myself.
My husband does the “huge” thing and I ALWAYS correct him! Maybe I shoudl stop before I end up under the crawl space…thank God we don’t HAVE a crawl space…
People who pronounce it Penny-lope or Pen-Uh-Lope get serious side eye from me. Serious.
#4 is mine.. all day, and its weird. Luckily I have some dumb people around me so they dont know better either.
1. I went to grade school with a kid who dropped the h from huge and human. It’s a thing.
2. My significant other (I hate the word boyfriend) says ‘fustrated’ for frustrated. Makes my ears bleed but I love him so I keep my pronunciation guide to myself.
3. Until I was 7 I thought I’d invented the word unique. I’d given it the correct definition and everything. One of the earliest in a long line of small disappointments with life.
This one is SO me! “4. There are a number of words which I use a lot, but have only ever read in books so when I say them out loud I just cross my fingers and pray that I’m pronouncing them correctly.”
My Current Legal Spouse says the word “mail” like “MEL” and I tease him mercilessly. I don’t have any faults so it’s fun to point out the dumb things he does…
I also say antana and my husband teases me mercilessly about it. He thinks it’s because I lived in Texas when I was little. I’m not so sure now.
My husband is French.
He pronounces ‘develop’ as ‘dev-lup’.
This is why you never see an evil French criminal mastermind in the movies.
‘I have ‘dev-lupped’ an evil plan’…no, just no.
I have used the audio pronunciation thing on dictionary websites to help me pronounce words from books. I think I’ve looked alacrity like 10 times but I’m still scared to use it.
My confession is that I am 35 and have quite a bit of gray hair. People keep asking me when I’m going to color my hair but I actually like the grays. Apparently that’s weird.
Happy New Year!
(also, the browser auto filled my info and I just realized I haven’t blogged in like 6 months. I suck at blogging)
Epitome and paradigm were my bane. Now I pronounce them wrong on purpose. 😀
My wife had to look it up the first time I told her she was the Epi-tome of womanhood for me.
I don’t know if it started when my kids were little, but I call sandwiches samwijes.
#4 , I sound out phonetically if I don’t know the word, have come up with some strange words!
I say stir and steer in different contexts. I am going to steer the soup and stir the car. My husband laughs every freakin time.
How the hell did a dead guy in the crawlspace correct your pronunciation? You speaking to the ghosts now? With your antenna?
My brother told me he didn’t understand why anybody wasn’t calling him for 2nd interviews, he’d sent his resume (pronounced rezoom) to hundreds of companies. After I stopped laughing, I told him it was rez-oo-may and he got a job the next week. Coincidence? I think not =D
I think anyone who reads a lot can relate to number 4!
I, like you, and so many others, cross my fingers a lot. 🙂
I remember the first time I had to say “aria” out loud. Apparently it’s not pronounced like “area”. 🙂
Being from New Hampshire, I used to pronounce room like rum. Then I went to summer art school and everyone found it amusing and thought I was making a joke,” I’m going to head back to my rum”. Now I pronounce it meticulously as room but kind of miss being inadvertently amusing. At least in that regard. I’m certain there’s plenty else to laugh about me.
I have 2 pronounciations of the word “deal.” If it refers to a bargain, it is “dee-uhl.” If it is referring to a widget or random thing (“Hand me one of those little round deals”) or as in “What’s the deal?” it is pronounced “dill.” Dunno why.
Also, I say “yolks” with the L left in. Because it is there, that’s why.
Here in Australia we think you yanky tanks pronounce everything wrong. Mind you we all sound like we have septum problems in our noses and we’re all high on eucalyptus like the koalas. But hey…. G’day moit and geez ya blogs kewl.
My husband pronounces pillow “pellow” and milk “melk.” When I point it out to him he changes it to peelow and meelk. He thinks he’s so funny. He’s wrong.
I actually have to think to not pronounce Aluminum – Aloominabum.
For many, MANY years, I said “for all intensive purposes” until one day I heard the phrase clearly and realized it was supposed to be “for all intents and purposes”. Ugh…
I have six brothers and sisters, but out of all seven of us only one sister pronounces the word “wash” like wush. We tease her about it as often as possible.
Also my husband mispronounces words all the time (like voluMptuous or edeName), but he hates to be corrected so I have to just pretend like it doesn’t drive me absolutely crazy. That works about half the time.
I’m definitely with you on #4. I practiced “ambulance” for years, to avoid people laughing in times of crisis. I’m still working on “student” – always comes out as one syllable, lacking the D.
In Canada we pronounce the H in huge, but not in herbs. We’re quirky like that.
RE: #4 – I stopped crossing my fingers when I realized other people didn’t know whether I was using the word correctly, either.
I pronounce “wash” with an R in it?!? WARSH – my mom does too – heard it is a Milwaukee thing LOL – took me a long time to pronounce it without the r and if I am rushing or not thinking about it the “r” slips back in (Warshing too LOL) I think it makes me unique 😉
Yes, definitely number 4….but i also have trouble with words I KNOW how to pronounce but, when reading them aloud I stumble. Like “photography”….i pronounce FOTOGRAFFY……I don’t know why…or Wednesday. …i have to remind myself NOT to say WED-NESS-day…….i swear I’m edumacated! !!!!!
Does burying under the crawlspace qualify as “ethically taxidermied”?
I was an English major in college. I STILL say “Liberry” instead of “Library” because 1) it bugs the shit out of people and 2) that’s fun.
I drink too much cawfee, when I should drink more wahdah. 🙂
When I read, the word “gauge” sounds like gaaahge in my head and I have to be careful not to say it out loud like that. Also whenever I see “shiitake mushrooms” my eyes read SHITcake mushrooms. So if I invite you for dinner and mushrooms are on the menu, perhaps you should rain check.
Until a few years ago I pronounced “both” with an L in it. Bolth. Apparently that’s a northwestern thing? I don’t know. But I didn’t even notice until a colleague from Virginia pointed it out to me, and now I can’t NOT notice….
Yes to #4! Ha!!
I still want to pronounce hors d’oeuvres “whores duh-vers” because I read it in a book when I was 8 and that’s how I sounded it out.
I also have to very consciously work to pronounce Yosemite correctly. I want to say “yose-might”. Which sucks because Yosemite is a major street in my neighborhood. I know that one of these days I’m going to slip up and people are going to think I’m a moron…
#5 is the one. My confession is hill. That is the one word my southern accent kicks in and hill comes out heel. I laugh every time I say it.
#4 for me, too. Came across this recently, very interesting and it pegged me correctly on being from near Rockford, IL but also said I had dialectic influences from Rochester and Buffalo, NY. I have never been near either of those cities. And I have lived in Florida for over 30 years, but granted it’s not the “real South” but a part of the state with a lot of transplants from – you guessed it: New York state.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html
My ex pronounced Toyota as Teeota. Hes under a crawl space too.
Ang: People from the Northwest will tell you it’s ory-gun. Had a boss once who was conducting a workshop about workplace safety. She kept saying “pathen-o-gens” instead of “pathogens”. The health workers there were squirming from not correcting her.
So easy Jen! #3 is the obvious false!
I’m so with you on #4. I cannot say abominable snowman – always comes out abdominable snowman (and thanks to spell check I just found out I can’t spell abominable either!). I pronounce the “k” in knife and that’s just how it is. Lastly (that I’m confessing at the moment), our family has adopted the word “beesgusiting” in addition to disguisting. One of my twins couldn’t say disgusting to save his life and we agreed that beesguisting should be a word (when something is kinda icky but not really gross – that’s our definition).
My best friend’s husband is Puerto Rican, my favorite is when we were having sandwiches and he kept asking where the ‘meat juice’ was. Come to find out he was wanting to know where the midget pickles were. My other favorite was when working for a major department store, people would come in asking where the mecalo was. They were asking where the men’s cologne was.
Assuming number 4 is real, I can relate. There are a number of words that I both read and heard, but never together. Example: I thought that La Hoya and La Jolla were two completely separate cities in California. (I know better now!).
Oh the tragedy of it all. My daughters are forever correcting my enunciation of words and I just really don’t care as long as you get what I’m saying. As for reading forget it if I can’t pronounce the word in my head I replace it with something else and then of course they use it a bazillion times so I have to keep remembering what I’m calling it instead. Its really horrible when its a persons name. If I am using a spell check I just keep changing letters until the program gives up or lets it go how I spelt it. I remember having to read allowed in school and if you said a word wrong your turn was over. I blame that for why my lips move now when I’m reading. Oh and my brother use to enjoy pointing that out to me when we were growing up.
#4 — EVERY day of my life.
My daddy pronounces crayon as CROWN. Drives me utterly insane. But I do pronounce the H’s in things, including “humble” (whereas my mother leaves off the H in that word but includes it in all the others).
But nothing will beat the time in junior high Life Sciences class, when I had to read a paragraph aloud about the cardiovascular system and pronounced the word BLOOD as “blue-d” …… WHAT was I thinking? I knew the word! I knew the correct pronunciation! #StupidHumanTricks
I think with the right amount of Febreeze, the crawlspace will smell nice and fresh again.
I am guilty of #4 and wish I had the chutzpah to carry out #5.
I bet you totally pronounce the “h” in huge. Too bad about that person under the crawlspace.
I hate saying words that I totally know, but have only read in books, out loud. I nearly always pronounce them incorrectly. Sigh. For my confession I will say that I sometimes say “warsh” instead of wash because my grandma was from the south and I just picked up on it. Also, when I first heard someone say “whatevs” in place of whatever, I vowed never to use it. Now I’ve heard it enough that it has crept into my vocabulary.
Mini confession: I just used “creeped” instead of “crept” in that sentence and spellcheck yelled at me. Meh. Whatevs.
I’m originally from Houston (live in KY now) and I say “bob-wire” instead of “barbed-wire”. I relatively little accent, unless I’m tired. But you should hear me try to say “iron”. It’s the one word that I just can’t wrap my tongue around. Sends my Boston Yankee husband into hysterics. But he’s a Yankee.
Oh, yeah, definitely #4. 😉 I also apparently pronounce the word “bagel” wrong, according to my best friend. Except every time she points it out, I promptly forget how I just pronounced it. So I don’t actually know if I pronounce it “bag-el”, or “bay-gel”, or something else entirely. 😉 –m
I never know whether to use “gray” or “grey”. What’s the difference?
Also, I can’t seem to spell marshmallow correctly. Sometimes I goof and spell it “marshmellow”, which is how I pronounce it (with my thick ass Southern accent developed from years of living in various southern states).
I don’t think I have ever spoken or written the word “trifling” in my life.
My new year’s resolution is to now use it at least once before 2015.
My father in law is a “worsh” person. Here is where it gets awkward: I am FROM Washington. State. He is from Pittsburgh. An introduction goes something like this:
This is my daughter in law, from worshington. You know, Seattle, Worshington, not the real Worshington.
Me: trying not to severe my tongue as I try not to bit it off or kill him….
And, someone mention Oregon. Here is how it is said: Ore-gan. (Yep, lot like an organ in your body… but not QUITE the same.) Please refrain from saying or- A- gone unless you want to be unrelentingly teased (as my husband was when he did it).
I throw r in wash….. washing machine…warsh my hands etc
I say everything correctly. With a Southern accent, which some might say is incorrect before I even open my mouth. I also correct the grammar of people in my workout video tapes. They can’t hear me, but it makes me feel better and since they are making me do squats, they totally deserve it.
#4 – After reading all of the Little House on the Prairie books as a kid I went around pronouncing pint (as in half-pint) like it rhymed with hint. How can they be spelled alike but sound so different?!?! To this day, I still have to think about the word pint before I say it or I will pronounce it wrong.
Unfortunately, I have been burdened with an incredible ability to spell and pronounce “thousand dollar words” as my father referred to them. I know medical terms, foreign words, pretty much anything that is written out with our ABC-type alphabet. Can’t do it with Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, or Islamic alphabets, but I can pronounce words that use the English alphabet. It drives people around me crazy.
I can’t help it.
Don’t judge me.
I didn’t know that color and collar were pronounced differently until I was almost 20. Even now I will slip and tell people I like that green collar. 😛
I suspect that #4 is true for a lot of people who read a lot. It’s true for me.
I had a friend in HS who worked in the box office at the local movie theater who pronounced “horror” as “hor.” Or, you know. “Whore.” Caused no small amount of confusion when people asked her what kind of a movie [insert horror movie title here] was.
Being stuck with a father who had a PhD in Languages, I grew up saying things like “Shed-you-wall” (British pronunciation) as opposed to “sked-ju-all” for schedule. As for the other words, well…
I’m guessing #4 is the one that isn’t real. Because seriously, you’re the Bloggess, you’re nearly perfect. Of course you can say most words correctly.
My mom always says ung-yun instead of onion, guacamORlay instead of guacamole, and for years I said roin (like in groin) instead of ruin – because that’s how she said it.
For #4, I’ve been known to google words to find their pronunciation. There are websites with speaking dictionaries– love them! If someone mispronounces a word because they’ve only ever read it, I don’t think that counts.
I intentionally mispronounce some words for fun, especially Spanish loan-words, like “ja-LAP-en-o” or “FREE-joles”. My kids picked up the predilection, of course. Now one of my sons is dating a latina, and she gives him the quizzical eye whenever he uses one of those words.
I also “translate” some Spanish names, and say things like “the Holy Andy fault” (i.e. “the San Andreas fault”).
It’s not limited to Spanish — I do it to English, too; for example “vegetables” becomes “vej-edibles”.
I always read “Penelope” like it rhymes with “envelope”. Can’t stop it!
I say “salt” when I should say “salty.” So, in my world, “It’s too salty” becomes “It’s too salt.” I have absolutely no idea why. I don’t know anyone else who does this. And I know it’s totally wrong, even as I am saying it, but I feel compelled to say it that way. Disturbing, really.
I had the opposite problem from #4. The first time I saw “façade” in print, I was like “what the hell is a fay-caid?” Luckily, I could figure out from the context that it was façade!
When someone is being patronizing I say pay-tronizing – as though you’re visiting a restaurant. Know it’s wrong. Can’t help myself.
I recently recently discovered that I have pronounced Valdosta incorrectly. Apparently it is properly pronounced as “Valdaahsta”. I was driving through the area and heard them pronounce it that way on the radio and I chuckled to myself. “ha, they pronounced their own town’s name improperly… How funny.” I’m pretty sure was the one who was wrong… But I can’t be sure.
My father was a building contractor, and one of his supervisors was VERY Quebecois. In our small Western Canadian city, his accent was very noticeable. Our favourite “Claude-ism” (as our family referred to these instances) was his pronunciation of the word “difficulty” which ALWAYS came out as “I am ‘aving great ‘di-FUCK-all-ty’ wi’ dese (what-ever-it-was)!” at a loud volume. As teens, this was FABULOUS! We could use the F-word around our parents because we were just emulating Claude!
Problem is that decades later, when I am frustrated, I want to pronounce it this way. But I teach middle school and have my own child now. Don’t want THAT to bite me in the ass any time soon!
I also carry around a skeleton key with my school keys and when a curious child – always the disruptive one! – asks what it is, I tell him/her ever so sweetly that it is my dungeon key. Then I walk away.
Happy New Year!
My husband is from Massachusetts and he leaves the h off huge, so I tease him by leaving it off of words like house….”are you leaving the ‘ouse dear?”. He also says “hoss” for horse, “draw” for drawer and “patton” for pattern. My Mom’s from Montana and she also says “warsh” for wash, and also “tall” for towel. I find it amazing that I’m still sane.
I bet you DO pronounce the H in huge. I say kebob instead of kebab. I just think it sounds better.
My kid says “MISPRONOUNCIATE” instead of “mispronounce”. That one is gonna get her disowned.
To Ang: I used to date someone from Oregon, and he insisted it was pronounced “ORE-uh-gun,” with the “gun” part being almost more like a “gn.” Not sure where your peeps are getting “gine” from!
I can pronounce broil. I can pronounce Croyden. I can pronounce royal, and I can even pronounce Troy, but I cannot to save my LIFE pronounce Roy. Can’t do it. And I have like three cousins named Roy. So that sucks.
Because I spend my life with my nose buried in one book or another and because when I’m not reading I’m working at a job which requires perfect spelling, there are very few words I routinely misspell. However, about three months ago, I learned that a person with an excess hair problem is hirsute, not hirstute. Oh, the shame.
And ever since I was tiny (I was reading at two, writing my own little stories – mostly about kittens named Puss who had gotten lost and had adventures – at three), I used British spellings for things. My mother has no explanation for this – all my children’s books and everything that she read to me from all used American English; she herself would correct all the c-for-s or s-for-z or add-a-u changes I’d make to words; it wasn’t until I was about 7 and started reading a wider variety of books that I realized I was spelling things correctly, just correctly for British English, not American English.
Almost makes me believe in reincarnation… but not quite.
I love the idea of confessions rather than resolutions for New Years. It’s uge (no “h”). And I say that because I don’t want to end up under a crawlspace.
I had a friend who used to correct the way everyone pronounced, well, everything. It didn’t matter about regional differences or accents – her way to pronounce things was it. I came to realize that if someone cares that much about how other people talk, and how they text, and how they type, and takes pleasure in correcting other people no matter how inappropriate the setting (at a funeral, at a wedding, in the office, on the phone, in a text message at one in the morning, etc), she probably doesn’t have room to care about much else. And, she is missing knowing the things that make us unique and special. So, keep your unique and special ways of describing the world – it’s why so many people enjoy reading this blog!
Jenny,
I was expecting something more X-rated from a post titled “Confessions”. I could use a little spice in my life today, babe. I’ve been working all day.
Thanks for nothing.
Your pal. The Hook.
RE: “4. There are a number of words which I use a lot, but have only ever read in books so when I say them out loud I just cross my fingers and pray that I’m pronouncing them correctly.”
This is me. I’ve done this ever since I was a young bookworm. I still do it but less people around to correct me.
My mouth can never say the right words I’m thinking, anyway, so I don’t care how I pronounce them (inevitably wrong).
If you’re a voracious reader from a young age it should be a given that you’re going to pronounce some words incorrectly. We should get props instead of being corrected after being heckled. Sorry we are precocious bibliophiles who are less erudite then we should be. Nanner banner in your face.
I pronounced Adirondack (chairs, mountains, etc) for most of my life as Adrian-dak. And no one ever corrected my erroneous Native Californian ass until I crossed paths with a real bitch from Maine. We nearly got into a slappy girl fight over it. Imagine my surprise (which I often misspell as sup-rise) when she turned out to be right.
I pronounce Tuesday “Chooseday” It drives my daughter absolutely bananas. She tells me I am wrong every time and I tell her it is Chooseday and so I am going to choose to say it the way I always have!! Now I do it just to piss her off sometimes..lol
I work for a health dept. Public health often ends up written as Pubic health! Spell check does not help 😉
I’m going to guess that #3 us untrue – unless you’re secretly British and just haven’t told us. 😉
I’m with you on #1 & #4. I have a word or two I consistently misspell, and there are loads of words I’ve read, but have never heard pronounced.
My Wasband (bless his heart) pronounced the word “Domino” as “Donnamoe”. It’s likely a good thing for him that we never lived anywhere with a crawlspace but it also means I will go through life without fulfilling my dream of being a widow. Instead, I get to be a divorcee… which no one is ever sympathetic about (well, unless they know/knew the Wasband, then they tend to ask me why on Earth I got/stayed married).
And as long as we’re confessing…. I’ve had more than one houseguest who was going to stay for “maybe a week” and ended up staying lot longer. In one case, from 1996-2004. Oh, he’d wander off from time to time but then I’d come home from work one night and he and the Wasband would be sitting on the couch playing video games. The most recent is, well, still here and shows no signs of leaving…
You’re right… I feel much better. And I am pretty sure that #1 must be the lie. But it’s a triflin’ thing to get one’s knickers in a twist about.
My mom says warsh for wash. And someone laughed at me for saying ruf for roof.
#4!!!! My notoriously embarrassing words (as a kid) were cacophony (KAK-o-phony was my guess) and reverberate (which I don’t even want to admit to my horrible mispronunciation). Recently having had a kid I completely misread “Boudreaux’s” Butt Paste and was pronouncing it “Bordueax’s”…silly French.
I lived in Buffalo for not even two whole years,almost a decade ago, and the Fucillo Auto dealership commercial’s “Huuuuuuge” is still burned into my brain. No “h” for that guy either! Here’s a montage, to cure you of your h-lessness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXRaboSo70A
All Australians say antanna, so just move over here.
When I was in hospital after having my son, I was waiting to be released. We had to see the paediatrician before we were allowed home, and I told one of the other mothers I was waiting for the paedophile.
For years I said Per-see-fone instead of Persephone (Per-se-fo-nee). My (then) 6 year old told me the right way. Oh, the shame!
I’m with you on the crossing your fingers and hoping the pronunciation of words you read in a book are correct. Can anyone help me out with”quixotic”?? How can all these words be in books yet NOBODY ever says them in real life?
I make fun of my husband for saying “oitmeal” (with an oi’) instead of “oatmeal”.
I’m also guilty of number 4. I guess it helps that I’m an introvert surrounded by friends and family who are extroverts. I usually can’t get a word in edgewise, saving me the embarrassment.
Up until my teens, I used to spell “a lot” as one word. This fact was hammered home to me by my high school boyfriend, who took the opportunity to point this fact out to me IN A FRIGGIN LOVE LETTER (unfortunately, I was so insecure took me another two years to show him the door). I’ve actually been tempted to start spelling it as one word again as an act of defiance…
P.S. He recently found me after 20 years on Twitter (yippee…) and I noticed he STILL takes the time to point out everybody’s grammar mistakes. He still does this… “alot”…
P.P.S. I just had a massive fight with my iPhone spellcheck to allow me to spell it as one word…
I always try to blend in as a local when I visit New York City.. On a recent trip we got into a taxi and my hubby says we’re going down to Varrick and Houston ( like Houston, Texas).. I tried to hide under the seat.
#4 is huge with me, except I say the word and then ask if I pronounced it right cos I never figured out those pronunciation squiggles….I used to say adolescent like so; a doll scent, sigh….
I just discovered a month ago that I’d been spelling toilet wrong my entire life. I’ve always spelled it with the “i” after the l instead of before it.
I also suffer from a bad case of #4. My husband thinks it’s hysterical and, in fact, instead of correcting me, he just laughs his ass off at my ignorance.
I get caught up in “biopic” (bi-ah-pic) and “infrared” (infrayered). I also cannot say rural (bad thing when you work in the boonies of Kansas!
Number 3 is obviously the lie. You made it too easy, my friend. I just tried to say huge without the H and it just doesn’t work.
I say “mirror” as either “meer” or “meerer.”
On a grammar note, I come from an area where the helping verb “to be” gets dropped now and then. I had no idea it was an issue until I moved out of state and people started pointing it out. I mostly catch it now, but not all the time.
Example: “The dishes need washed.” Perfectly fine in my world. Makes other people want to kill me.
I’m also one of the people who not only worries about mispronouncing things I only know in written form, but who also doesn’t always know what words I’ve only come across in books mean. Sometimes I create my own meaning for them based on the context. Most of the time that meaning is very wrong.
Confession: I have aphasia and I teach. My lectures tend to involve a lot of not quite right words.
And for comment #162, Pittsburghese is a dialect unto itself
wash=warsh
radiator= rad-e-ah-ter
lawyer=lyer
ambulance=ambliance
downtown=dahntahn
Pittsburgh=Pixburgh
and that= n’at
y’all=yinz
Folks (pronounced ‘fokes’) in my area call our local lake ‘Bull Shoals’. We locals, however, pronounce it ‘Bole Shoals’. Some other locals call it ‘BowShows’.
My cousin pronounces ‘color’ as ‘collar’. Cicadas are not ‘sick-ah-duhs’, they are either ‘seh-Kay-duhs’ or ‘sigh-cod-ahs’.some of us have warshers, not washers. Personally, I have a washer.
A point of contention between my hubbot and I: is it holler or hollow. As in the area – Tucker Hollow. Locals say Tucker Holler. Out-of-area-ers say Tucker Hollow. A log is hollow. A landmark (the area between two hills) is a holler.
I used to call a yard light a lard light. Of course, I also called an elephant a hammer .
Oh god, #4. ALL THE TIME. Bromeliad. No idea. But I have one of the damn things (dropped its pot on my head once and gave myself a nasty concussion, but that’s another story), but I have no idea how to pronounce it.
to Marianne January 1, 2014 at 3:33 pm
I have a particularly embarrassing affliction…when I’m talking to someone with an accent (any accent…English, Chinese, Scottish, Yankee) I start talking with that accent. I cannot help myself.
You are not alone!!!! I once visited Jamaica and the hotel was full of Canadians (I’m from the US). The last night a nice Canadian talked to me for quite a while and then he asked me what part of Canada I was from – when I said Virginia, we both cracked up, hey/
From the time I could talk; 55 plus years, I had always thought that a barbed wire fence was, a bob wire fence. My whole town in eastern Canada, apparently does also. Well except the salesperson at our feed store. I never saw anyone laugh that hard in a long time. Really, seriously……..he can bite me.
English is not for the feint(faint?) of heart. See what I mean?! Your You’re. There They’re Their. Read/read, mine/mine. Which meaning do you use. Vain vain vane. Rain rein. Madness!!! Why are please and tease pronounced the same but not lease or cease? Why? Oh, and why isn’t sapphire not pronounced sap-fire? Why!!! Why isn’t “of” written “ov”? I spend a lot of time in my head asking these questions. One more before they come for me – how do you pronounce pecan? pEcan or pecAHn? gottagobye
No one ever corrects how I say things because I have a bigger vocabulary than most everyone else around me and they just assume I’m right, even when I’m wrong. And spell check is my friend. (That and Google. “Did you mean individuality? Why yes, yes I did.”) I believe there are more important things to worry about than if you pronounce words right or wrong.
When I lived in Kansas, my biggest pet peeve was listening to people say the word “crayon”. As in the colored sticks of wax used mainly by children to color with. To me, it’s 2 syllables, cray-on. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out why my neighbor and her co-workers wanted to dress up as a box of crowns for Halloween.
I was mostly raised by my grandmother who had a pretty heavy Maine accent. I mispronounced so much that I ended up in speech therapy until middle school. It didn’t help that she made up a lot of words tthat I still use today. The word i mispronounce the most is pitcher like a water pitcher. I say it the same as a picture you hang on the wall.
#4 for sure!! If I don’t know how to pronounce it, I won’t say it. One of the genius (truly) lawyers in our office used a word once that I’d seen written but never heard. I just stared at her for what seemed like HOURS until I realized what she’d said. Now I’m 100% certain she thinks I’m an imbecile. (Which I also have trouble pronouncing…)
Oh, and the word “saw?” Growing up in Kansas, everyone pronounced it “sawl.” It wasn’t until I moved out of the state that I understood.
My darling husband insists that McDonalds is pronounced “MacDonalds”. He is wrong. We also have a street in our city called Towson and he insists it’s “Townson”. Makes me insane.
I’m a terrible speller, even with spell checker. Also many a grammar mistake due to dyslexia/dystecnics. I don’t see my errors because I read what I thought I said, not what I wrote. Takes me two days later to be able to proof read properly.
Where did you really bury the body? Yes, I know that was the false one.
Margaret, you forgot vein, as in arteries and veins.
Re. #4: bourgeois = boo jess
So glad to know I’m not the only one! All these years I thought I was.
My dad is french my mom is english (common here in Canada), so I speak with a french accent without actually speaking french! All this being said, I almost never say the “h” in my h-tastic words…
A long time ago I said maniac-ul instead of maniacal. It’s now in our lexicon.
I forgot about the Gap Cha-sum of Piers Anthony books until I read the chasm comment above.
I went and listened to alacrity – yeah, nope. My eyes like to transpose the c and r to a-lar-city.
It would be nice if well read = well pronounced.
I recently referred to Hungary as Hungaria.
I have been corrected in my pronunciation of chanteuse, tryst and confit.
I am reading a book in my writer’s group which contains the line,
“I like it when people mispronounce words, it means they read widely.”
However, huge? There’s no excuse for that.
A professor in college always pronounced “relevant” as “revalent”. It took me three years of constant vigilance to say it the right way. There is a street here in San Anotnio named Binz-Engleman. My hubby becomes almost totally homicidal at the newscasters who pronounce Benz-Ingleman. He has gone so far as to call the station and scream Binz-Engleman, Binz-Engleman, Binz-Engleman.
Totally understand #4. But anytime you start to feel inferior for mispronouncing things, just go listen to your GPS unit and feel all superior again. Was just using mine the other day and it told me Calliope St was “call EE ope.” You don’t even want to know what it said when we got to the turn at Tchopitoulas St, but we almost drove off the bridge, we were laughing so hard.
I still don’t know how to pronounce dour and boor.
Right there with you on #4!
My daughter pronounces “treadmill” as “tread-meal” === and “minivan” as “mivivan!”
#4 is a problem of mine too!
As a matter of fact, the first time I heard them say “ACK-IO” in the Harry Potter movie, I actually spoke out loud “No, it’s AX-CIO!!!” so embarrassing. (ACCIO is the spelling)
🙂
Oh, kzspot #202, ME TOO. WIN for us, I think.. But I’m pretentious (that was confession #1.)
And since these are mostly pronunciation confessions, #2 is that I speak with a fake Pittsburghese accent. My mum is from there, but I am not. Worse, she never spoke Pittsburghese at home. I adopted it just because I like it. (Dahn instead of down, aht instead of out.) I’m so fake, but I love it so I can’t stop! (Unless I’m actually in Pittsburgh, visiting my family, because I know they’d call me out on it.)
I say, did you warsh your clothes? Wars her and dryer.
You haven’t steered us wrong yet:
1) I think I have been in love twice. But I’ll never know because I was too afraid to say anything. I don’t even know if I regret it.
2) I hate when people spell my shortened name wrong: It is Mall, not Mal. I never correct anyone, though.
3) I may own more books that I haven’t read than have due to the fact that I keep purchasing bundles of books before I finish what I already have. To those of you who don’t think this is a problem, it is for when people look over my collection and ask me my opinion on it.
4) I have only used Siri twice since getting my iPhone 4 over a year ago.
The whole cupboard/cubbard thing has always made my teeth hurt. I have cabinets in my Texas kitchen. I prefer the look of grey over gray, but refer to my hair color sexy silver, as I will never feel old enough to be grey. When cell phones came out, my uncle told my cousin “I don’t know why you think you need one of them damn secular phones”. Needless to say, my family refers to them as secular phones for fun.
Can someone please explain pocketbook to me? It’s not a book, and it doesn’t fit in my pocket. That’s the one word that almost causes me to make a scene in public.
I’m stealing my daughters resolution.
“My new years resolution is to feel happy in my own skin and not to lose one single goddamn pound.”
Necklace, which phonetically is neck-lass
I say neck-LACE. Because I can, and I like the way it sounds.
It really started when my daughter was about 2 years old and there was a book that she loved to read with the word necklace in it. We would read it over and over again, and every time my husband would read it she would stop and correct him. Haha. He refused to adopt my enunciation, and she refused to stop correcting him. Lol. She’s almost seven now. She says neck-LACE. HA!
Also… my husband says our dogs Nala like pal-uh. We say Naw-la. We’re both sure we are right.
Rae, I am familiar with Tucker Holler. And Bull Shoals. I remember reading the road sign Taneycomo and not realizing it was named for Taney Co, Mo until I went to College of the Ozarks. How unoriginal, my pretentious self thought.
In Beeville, TX, there’s a restaurant called K-Bob’s. Kebabs are on the menu. However, no one pronounces the eh. It’s Kay Bob.
I confess that I am a corrector of pronunciation. I would want to be (and have been) corrected if I pronounce something incorrectly. I correct my sister to keep her from embarrassing herself. She spends more time with kids than adults. I wouldn’t laugh at anyone though. I was also that kid who read more than I spoke. My seminal moment occurred when I used DEE ter mined in a sentence. I remember when I first read it, it was hyphenated because of how the sentence was printed. After that, I looked up every word in the dictionary.
However, I also enjoy purposefully mispronouncing some words just to be funny. I say lol, not Ell Oh Ell. I also insert the word pug everywhere I can. Pugmas, Pugsgiving, pugalicious. It’s highly annoying to non-pug people.
Joke’s on you – I willingly tunneled under the crawlspace and I’m never coming out either. (I pronounced that last word EYE-ther.)
I am British so nothing any of you say makes sense – which is why it is funny!!
I was in college before I realized that lapel was luh-pel not lay-pel. 🙂
Vivvy: Etymology is one of my Things. So, re pocketbook, here you go: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=pocketbook&searchmode=none (A cabinet is technically a different article of furniture, though the terms in the US are now used interchangeably. A cupboard was named for what it started out as: simply a board on which to cleanly and safely store cups – perhaps even the same “board” as in “room and board,” i.e. the table. In a time when eating utensils were fingers and plates and bowls were usually crusts of stale bread or the pot in which the food had been cooked, elaborate shelving wasn’t in high demand. As storage demands changed, the word itself… didn’t. Similar to pocketbook, when our world evolves and changes, sometimes our language stays the same. So don’t make a scene – just think how frustrating it’ll be for people 500 years from now, going, “What’s a ‘book’? And what on earth is a ‘pocket’??” and giggle.)
Oh, and for whoever upthread who asked about gray vs. grey, the general rule is if you’re American it’s grAy and if you’re English it’s grEy. A for A and E for E. I like grey, though, and only use gray when I have to.
Aaaaaand I rearranged my parenthetical in that first paragraph so many times that now it’s all kind of non-sequitur-ish. Sorry! Just pretend you’re inside my brain and it’ll all snap into place. *blush*
Oh yes the reader mispronunciation debacle, I know it and the pronunciation police well.
However, my mom says (she went for a) MOMMAgram and I can’t correct her because it’s too adorable, plus she’s in her 90’s so gets a pass.
#3. I’m sure #3 is the fake. The only Texans who don’t pronounce the “h” at the front of words are from Yooston and you are a West Texas girl, not a bayou brat. And every Texan has at least a couple of bodies buried in the crawl space, so why shouldn’t yours be there because they laughed? Also, I had a boss who used to talk about “longetivity pay”. We worked for the Legislature and the state paid “longevity pay” to people who’d been with the state for more than a certain number of years. I laughed the firs time she said it. I really wish I hadn’t. Not just because she hated me after that, but mostly because “longetivity” is a much more interesting word and I really like it better.
I already commented but now I’m tipsy so here’s my true, anonymous internet confession: I require more than one garbage bag to clean my bedroom. Not the whole apartment, just the bedroom. I used to blame my laziness on my mental illness, but now that I’m healing I’m afraid there is just something inherently wrong with me.
However, proof that I am healing: I’m cleaning out my bedroom.
Life is a circle.
I amused some people greatly by pronouncing pronouncing wrong. … Apparently not so much a ‘noun’ in the middle.
I take number four to the extreme – because I learned so much of my language by reading (agoraphobic hermit even as a kid) the majority of people can’t pick my accent – even people from the same small town in Northern Ireland where I was born and raised! So at this point whenever I pronounce something phonetically that I shouldn’t, I totally just lie and blame it on my accent. And no one will ever know.
Except, you know. Anyone who reads this…
I also had a partner who was determined that the phrase was ‘blood-shocked eyes’ as opposed to ‘blood shot’. He claims his way makes more sense in his head.
I’ve gone my whole life pronouncing it sherBERT. Turns out it’s sherBET. Seriously. I’ve checked every container in the frozen food aisle.
#4 for me too. I still occasionally forget that bureau is not pronounced “bur-YOU.” And I was a Linguistics major for a time….
I say antanna, too, and my husband mocks me mercilessly. But he thinks it’s totally acceptable that he says “warsh” instead of “wash.”
I am a huge reader and always pronounced omnipotent wrong until I heard someone say it on the television. Also people have told me that I pronounce nekid wrong and drower. (Naked, drawer).
Ha! i used to say Yoo-stun instead of Houston and thought it was just something wrong with me!
My mother has always driven me INSANE with saying “thee-ATE-er” instead of “thee-uh-ter”.
Here’s mine: Until i heard it said out loud at some point in my youth, in my mind it was pronounced VA-gin-nuh not vag-EYE-nuh.
Happy New Year to all!!
I’m so glad to see that I’m not the only one on #4. I usually change a whole sentence or don’t say anything at all.
I’m following your suggestion here by starting out this new year with a series of confessions. Thinking about commenting here is very freeing and feels much easier than making New Year’s resolutions I will attempt but spectacularly fail at achieving. Okies here goes it….
1. I have been told I pronounce breakfast as “Brick Fist”
2. I have so many passwords that I have to change about 10 usernames and passwords per month.
3. So many people hit me up for network marketing type businesses like Nerium, Shaklee, Advocare, affiliate marketing things https://5minutemogul.com/cprzybyl and so much more (I think it has to do with the fact that I’m a mom now and expected to be around all these other moms, church groups, play date, etc but I am not) My husband and I run our own business and I work full time.
4. I started working at a large tech company in 2013 and everyday feel more geeky, nerdy, and tech smart. I also love the knowledge gain.
5. I live with my in-laws.
Ah yes, using words that you’ve only read in books. I get in trouble when I think I know the meaning of the word, but someone points out that I clearly don’t. Like “penultimate.” It means next to last, not next to best.So why is “ultimate” in the word at all?
I totally guess at word pronunciations that I use, but have only seen in books!!!
I am SO GLAD my husband is not the only one with a pronunciation problem. This has really hit home since Game of Thrones came on HBO. My husband and I both read the books years ago, and have argued forever about how to say the names. Totally sucked to find out that George R.R. and HBO also don’t talk right.
From “War-shington state”, my mom named me Teresa from something she read but pronounced it Ter-ess-a (rhymes with Vanessa)..not the usual long e =Tereeeeesa. ..and I live with most people getting it wrong… But I have a heck of a time saying drawer= drawyer or some other tongue hurdle, but I also say “suede-o” for psuedo as in fake suede is pseudo suede on purpose and drive my family crazy
When I want to pronounce a word I have only read, I go to http://www.howjsay.com/ Several times I have found out that how I want to pronounce a word wouldn’t be correct.
I don’t pronounce the h in huge or human. Never have. My sister mocks me every single time.
I’m 31 and I just recently learned that it’s wheelbarrow…not “wheel-barrel”…I always assumed that in the olden days they used barrels on wheels to transport stuff and that eventually morphed into our modern day wheel-barrel. Are you sure it’s not wheel-barrel??
As someone mentioned above, I too spell ya’ll incorrectly. Well, at least according to the majority of the population. I’m originally from Houston. My cousin, from the Houston area, also says “uge.” My husband tells me I pronounce many this incorrectly. Like pink, I’m not sure how he thinks he says it, but it sounds the same to me. I pronounce the “i” as one would the “ee” in seen. There is also no difference in between pin & pen. I could go on…
Growing up in rural Missouri led me to pronounce the word “leg” as “laig.” At 12, I moved to Mississippi and swiftly changed my pronunciation after being teased by southerners that I could barely understand.
Also, I like to spell it “gray” because it sounds sadder that way.
My husband says ‘ideel’ for idea. I used to correct him, but after almost 20 years, I think he does it on purpose.
He also says ‘Ty-ota’ for Toyota. I asked him if he even listens to the tv commercials, or to the racing community when they pronounce it. He now emphasises ‘TOY-ota’, so I know what a good boy he’s being.
My dad had a brother named ‘Author’. I was a grown up when I realized the name was really ‘Arthur’. My dad was country Texan (Copperas Cove), and had several words that I’d have to translate in my head.
I knew someone who pronounced ‘milk’ as ‘mewlk’, it was so cute, I’d have them say it just for my own perverse amusement.
I was in my 20’s before I figured out that ‘idiot’ was not ‘i-a-dot’.
Hmm.. you are pretty sassy, but I bet #5 is the one that isn’t true.
Oh, and I hear you on #4 — I had problems saying my vowels as a child, so I sound out words in my head and try to say them slowly if I’m unsure. I worry this make me sound like William Shatner. This is a constant fear of mine.
For some reason mispronounced food names drive me crazy. Ongion for onion.. where are you getting a g?!
My uncle, an attorney, pronounces the word ‘deaf’ as ‘deef’ (as if it rhymed with ‘reef.’)
back in the day when cars had a small window that was a part of the front passenger and driver side windows, i called them ‘wing wings’ when in reality the proper name for them was ‘wind wings.’
So with you on #4!! Just cause I can spell it doesn’t mean I can say it, as hubby reminds me affectionately.
Kindles are great to prevent the learning to mispronounce words only ever read..you can get them to say it for you! Has worked really well for my Mr 13 (he has learning difficulties). And I go with 5 You do not keep Victor in the crawlspace.
Once in an antique shop the owner said, “I wonder what this little dish was used for?” My teenage historical romance reading self said, “maybe sweetmeats?” She looked at me like I had three eyes…lol!
I can’t help spelling expereince wrong every time. My fingers have trained themselves to flip the i and e, and it’s out of my control! But for the sake of example, I will not correct it. (And that’s my excuse for all the times I’ve left it wrong in blog comments . . . or tweet . . . or essays . . . or texts . . . or anything, ever.) ~Catherine
I saw something on Pinterest the other day you’ll like, based on this post: “Sometimes I use big words I don’t fully understand in an effort to make myself seem more photosynthesis.”
I’m another one who has a constant issue with using words that I’ve only read in books.
I was at university before I discovered that ‘ethereal’ was pronounced ‘eh-thear-ee-al’ instead of ‘eth-er-real’. It also took my mum to point out to me that ‘Phoebe’ was ‘fee-bee’ not ‘Fo-ee-bee’. Mind you, she used to pronounce ‘Persephone’ (‘per-seph-phone-ee’) as ‘percy-phone’.
I would also horrify Ben, since I pronounce secateurs ‘seck-a-terrs’, but in my defence, I’m British.
When I forget to pronounce the t’s in ‘Bottle’ I revert to using my accent as an excuse. In reality, my mind is usually a wandering onto the next subject…..
i pronounce “historical’ with the “h”. But when it comes to “an historical” it comes out as “an istorical”. I simply cannot say ” a historical ” anything. “a history” is fine. no idea why. and its always “erbal tea” or “erbal anything”. Herb is a guy’s name. Got into a towering hissy fight years back with a Philadelphia woman over rhymes: she manages to rhyme tar and far but ALSO tar and fire and tar and hire since she also pronounces fire as far and hire as har. I would expect this from someone from further south than Philadelphia. She says the dictionary has it wrong.
Vanessa, i have always longed for complete photosynthicity. There’s hope yet.
I so have to add to this . . . maybe confessing it here will help my family to forgive me. My entire life I’ve been corrected for this. I pronounce the “l” in “salmon”. I can’t help it. It’s like a gambling problem or something. And so my solution? I just use the word “fish”. Always.
Most of your pronunciation peculiarities can be explained by saying, “Hi, I’m from Texas.” Maybe you wouldn’t get flak from grammar weenies if you just preface your conversations with that disclaimer. “Hi, I’m from Texas and I’m fixing to say something.”
I am Australian. As far as we are concerned Americans pronounce everything incorrectly!
In my family, it’s a running joke that I can’t pronounce words correctly. For the same reason you listed. I’ve read them, but never heard them. I’m guessing that you actually pronounce huge correctly, H and all!
#4 is quite common for us readers. Authors names trip me up too. I just found out I’ve been pronouncing Tolkien wrong my whole life. Or at least since I was ten when I first discovered The Hobbit.
Happy New Year. I’m so glad 2012+1 is over. Really really glad.
#4 for the longest time, I thought that “epitome” was pronounced “eh-pit-tome.”
That’s awesome! Confidence is the key.
When our town’s new library was built I was in first grade, and I started reading at one end of the new bookshelves, working my way to the right. That shelf was Greek mythology. Thanks to the Electric Company I had already mastered the “Silent E” (http://lyrics.wikia.com/Tom_Lehrer:Silent_E) .
It was fairly traumatic re-learning how to pronounce “Aphrodite” with four syllables….
I do #4 all the time, especially since I work in a scientific library. When I’m talking to scientists, I have had moments of panic when I realize that I might be pronouncing the words wrong and they will think I’m even more stupid than before! Of course, now they want to do most interaction via email so that is less of a problem these days.
My husband is from Chicago, and he says “yooge” for huge. He also calls the city in PA “Philadel-th-i-a” and insists that this is the correct pronunciation, despite the way it is spelled.
#4 applies to me as well. It was a long time before I knew the correct pronunciation of “epitome”, and that was a word that my mother used in everyday conversation, so I should have figured that one out!
I’m pretty sure I will be pronouncing it ‘uge from now on too! That’s awesome!
I always thought it was “all of the sudden” and not “all of a sudden.” I was shocked when my editor corrected me. Shocked and feeling very stupid.
However, I no longer think it’s “all intensive purposes” nor are we pledging allegiance to the “witches stand.” So I’ve grown. Some.
Quite a long time ago you posted a blog with a picture of a girl walking over an alligator…could you please send me the link to that page? I want to share it with a friend and can’t find it!! Happy new year!!!!!!!
Every state probably has their share of Indian or unusual place-names and thing-names to trip up the unwary; Washington state (not Warshington state) is no exception. We have Sequim, Puyallup, Ohanepecosh (by gosh), Skykomish, Snohomish, etc. There was a pretty, new talking head/news reader on the local TV news the other night who just massacred the name of a famous object of desire of some Washingtonians – the geoduck. She pronounced it GEE – oh – duck. So thousands of us got to feel superior to her beautiful big-haired self for not knowing that it’s GOOEY-duck, the giant, slightly pornographic clam. Google it for an OMG moment.
Clearly it’s No.1, after all – we’ve all got jerks buried in our crawlspace.
i do #4 all. the. time.
I pronounce “basil” as “baa-zil” (like the name.) People will not let this go.
so, if “antanna” is not the correct pronunciation, how IS it supposed to be pronounced? Ah’m frum Texas, Ah say “antanna” (and Massatusetts 🙂 )
i dated a guy when i was younger,,,he corrected my grammar repeatedly on our first date,,,let’s just say he didn’t stand a chance,,,and if Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says i can say ” irregardless” even though “it’s not a proper word”,,i’m still gonna,,,irregardless,,
for a long time, i thought the word “subtle” was pronounced “sub-till” because i’d only ever encountered it in books. also, when reading, i say the word “infrared” as the past tense of the verb “to infrare,” not as, you know, infra-red. that word needs a hyphen.
I drop the h in all hu words too. I get so much shit for it too. Yuston, Yuge, Yuman.
For most of my life, I pronounced ‘woman’ and ‘women’ exactly the same. I read the word ‘misled,’ but had never heard it spoken, so I thought it was pronounced ‘my-zulled.’ I do not have a crawl space.
I’m too embarrassed to say the words I know from reading but have never heard aloud. It dumbs down my vocabulary. But nobody knows I am pronouncing them wrong when I write them.
Too funny!! I have problem with place names – I switch up the letters and no matter how many times hubby corrects me (he’s not in the crawlspace yet, but it’s close) I can’t fix it.
#4- I have the same problem! However, now that I read mostly on my Nook, I try to take a moment and look up said words with the dictionary function and read the pronunciation guide therein, which has been extremely helpful. Happy New Year!
The first word I had only read and wasn’t pronouncing correctly was “behemoth”.
Oh, and I used to be totally confused about “draught” (drawt) and “gauge” (gawge). Why are there u’s in those???
I had only ever seen the word “self-deprecating” in print so the first time I used it in conversation, I said “self-depreciating” because that makes sense, right? He’s self-depreciating because he doesn’t appreciate himself.
And, YES, I got called on it immediately and without mercy.
How would we ever get through blogging without being able to look up words on Google? lol.
It’s ok I read about a jewish holiday in a book once and so when I asked my jewish friend about it I found that no you do not pronounce gefilte fish like Goulifette fish.
Undeniably, #4 applies to me. I just talk, and assume I’m right. People don’t correct me. Confidence baby! Everyone knows I read voraciously, therefore I must be right, right? Yet I know, they are totally questioning my vocab in their heads. And that is okay.
Also, chest-of-drawers. Until I was an adult, I thought that word was chesterdrawers. I still prefer to call them chesterdrawers because it makes me happy.
And finally, my youngest son -who is now 18- still pronounces ‘commercial’ as commartial. Like it’s the martial arts of the commercial set. His senior project dealt with advertising and he purposely avoided the word, using alternatives from the thesaurus, so no one could tease him.
We are awesome 😀
My boyfriend is now living in fear of being buried in the crawlspace. Just today I learned that Samuel Pepys is pronounced “Peeps”. What?!
I also pronounce antenna as antanna. My kids think I’m weird. I also say pillow wrong and pen and pin sound exactly the same to me.
I use many words I read and I always wonder about that! Ohh, another one. I say foyer as foyay. Sounds weird to me when people pronounce the r in foyer. It’s silent I believe…maybe I need to google. 🙂
1. I’m a native Oregonian and it’s definitely ore-uh-gun or ory-gun. Never gone. Or gin.
2. I pronounce “ruin” like “rune.” My kansan husband gives me so much shit. I thought it was right until I asked my Facebook friends and everyone from my hometown said I’m wrong.
Every time I say the word horror, it comes out sounding like whore. This is usually always a problem, but it becomes a huge problem if I’m reading aloud to my children and the book somehow contains this word. I can spot it two pages away, and my palms start sweating.
Yeah, children’s books should never include the word horror.
My wife and three kids have been making an issue out of the way that I say “pin” and “pen”. I am born and raised in Texas so I pronounce them both as “pin”. I can get the correct i or e sound in every other word, but that ending n really throws me for a loop I guess. I tell them that it should be a contextual issue, and that they should know when I want a pin or a pen. But they still make fun of me.
This woman sold a chess set on ebay made entirely of taxidermied mice. I hope it was a Christmas gift for you…. it seems perfect: http://twentytwowords.com/2013/12/28/chess-set-made-entirely-of-dead-mice-4-pictures/
I do number 4 all the time, and have secretly fantasized about number 5 usually after I use one of my number 4 words.
#4. macabre – mack’-a-burr, reconnoiter – re-con’-i-ter, Eloise (from Nancy Drew) ee-loyse’. Just a few of many…
I believe #4 is actually a badge of honor.
Wish we could comment on the comments — #40 (KristenSue), my dad used to pronounce it as “horse divers.” To this day I do not know if he was joking.
I hear people pronounce pillow as “pell-ow” and that is wrong! I am sure it is just a weird thing they do here in southern Indiana but man…stop!
And yes to #4. And when I do hear someone else say a word that I have read and never been sure about I want to say out loud “yes! That’s how you say that word!” ha
Eddie Izzard once made a pronunciation joke that made me spew my drink across the room when I heard it. He was prattling on about the differences between England and America and it works better in person:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs5H7cgcpkg (it’s only a minute long!)
I think the lie is #1. Amiright??? Or maybe it’s #5 and they’re really buried in the back yard.
I pronounce it antanna too, even though I know better. A LOT of people pronounce it that way. I think it’s really just misspelled. Let’s start a petition to change it to be spelled properly! An.TAN.Uh.
For the first time I’m confessing this publicly, but it’s sort of hilarious. I have the problem of your #4, and a few months ago I actually REALIZED a word was not what I’d been reading for the last 20+ years.
Any time I see the word “misled” in print, I have thought it was pronounced ‘my-sld’ or “mice-elled”… I KNEW it meant to trick, lead astray, etc. but I never realized it was another tense of mislead and I carried my Nook upstairs laughing so hard to tell my family. They now say things like “Are you trying to mice-ell me?” and laugh in my general direction.
/shame.
When I was in high school some friends and I would try to construct sentences out of words that were not pronounced like they were spelled and say them the wrong way. (Yes we were nerds). The problem is, some of the sentences were catchy and to this day I struggle pronouncing certain words because I hate a mental check where I really,really want to say things like ep-uh-tome instead of epitome and zeel- et instead of zealot. Really annoying. And my husband is a total diction snot. He’s like the epitome of a pronunciation zealot.
I sometimes stay home and work while actually surfing the web and sleeping.
I pronounce toilet “TALLET” which makes my wife crazy every time!
I secretly put onions in her Irish Stew recipe. While she loves it, she wouldn’t eat it if she knew about the onions.
I cruse your blog while at work – and I’m getting paid while enjoying the read.
There was a word I discovered once while reading a book. I loved it because it felt like something that I had been missing. I took it to mean a combination of being slighted, being on the receiving end of done-wrong, and a sort of affront. I used it often and with great passion.
I pronounced it- My-sulled. My mother, a great lover of language herself asked me about the word. She wanted to work it into her lexicon. I spelled it, twice.
misled
And so I was.
Still miss that word, we need something that means all the things that I thought it did.
Also, I still hear “Rock the Sasquatch” instead of “Rock the Casbah,” so I suppose I have several issues at work.
I think you’re saying antenna right. At least, that’s the way I say it too.
I’m always using words I’ve only read and not heard spoken. It does produce some interesting results for sure!
I am guessing that you spell trifling correctly:)
I have a friend who can’t spell. He’s actually had a very unfortunate life, being removed form his abusive family into state care, so he had very disrupted schooling. Another friend, who just graduated uni as an english teacher, has tried to give him a few lessons, not sure how successful that has been. I see his statuses all the time on facebook- words spelled phonetically, single words split in half into two words (like ‘my selfe’), out-of-place words you have to guess at from the context (like ‘outer’ instead of ‘other’), wrong tenses, apostrophes missing or added in where they don’t go.
The thing is though, he doesn’t give up. If it was me, I’d be so self-conscious I wouldn’t want anyone to know, but he keeps on writing. I think that’s pretty impressive.
Mind you, I swear, as I get older my spelling is getting worse. I have to physically write a word out sometimes if I can’t picture it in my head. And I misspelled ‘apostrophe’ in the first paragraph. Twice. I’m glad I’m not alone!
My comment has absolutely nothing to do with this particular blog post, but look – you and your red dress are in this photo montage of beautiful women!!
http://www.upworthy.com/finally-pictures-of-gorgeous-women-that-make-you-feel-better-about-yourself-inst
#4- YES!! I can think of several times I’ve embarrassed myself because of this! At least I have a good vocabulary though.
Happy New Year!
I am originally from Wisconsin. Although I’ve lived in Colorado for 26 years, I still pronounce “about” with a bit of a long O….My A’s are a little on the long side too.
Every so often, someone will point and laugh. Next time, I’ll bring them to your crawl space.
I used to pronounce Civilization as Civilisization.
Hey, did you see this? You’re an inspiration AGAIN!! I hope you see this little comment or already know that Upworthy used your picture as a gorgeous woman.
http://www.upworthy.com/finally-pictures-of-gorgeous-women-that-make-you-feel-better-about-yourself-inst?g=2&c=ufb5
xoxoxox
I was delighted to sell a copy of your book this week! Fortunately, I have no solecisms in my diction, but I will attempt to extend indulgence toward my coworkers who do.
I’m sure lots of us do number 4.
I love regional accents and pronunciation quirks. I didn’t know it til college but I had a professor call me out on saying “acrost the street” and “elementARY” bc it was a regional accent. Now I do it deliberately bc why wouldn’t I want to show off my regional accent? (Plus when I tried saying “elemenTREE” I began spelling it wrong!)
I pronounce Calvary and cavalry the same way–and I’m wrong on both counts.
Also, I ate all the candy out of my Christmas stocking before Christmas.
I have to be the most notorious mispronouncer in the galaxy. I don’t even know where to begin. If I haven’t heard someone say it, chances are very, very high that I will say it horribly wrong. The art world, especially, thinks I’m an idiot because of how I’ve said the words “stippling” and “giclee”. I’m still reeling about those two, but I’ve honestly lost count of the words. Legions. And my Creole heritage? Forget it. I can read and write basic French, but God help us all if I have to speak a word of it. Never happening.
LOL.. When I listened to your audiobook (twice) I’d internally correct your pronunciation of huge, “It’s huge, Jenny, not ‘uge.”
#4
I presented a paper at a conference for an English honerary society in college. It was a big deal for me. I practiced reading it in front of my professor and BFF multiple times before the big day. I couldn’t figure out the strange looks I was getting from the audience or the weak applause I got when I was finished. It wasn’t until I walked off the stage that they bothered to tell me that “pious” is not pronounced “pee-us,” and “piety” is not “pee-ity.” I died. I used those words at least 10x each.
Honorary. Dammit.
Can’t spell either.
As a little girl, I always wondered why every motel we passed driving to Grandma’s was off-ice.
It was probably a full summer before I asked Mom and Dad what off-ice meant…it was the office.
My current issue is calling orange, yellow and visa versa. Also July/January. Some weird brain fart.
I also have “no accent” apparently. I’ve had people in TX, SC, NY, CA, OR, MT, GA, all try to place my accent and see the disbelief when I say Canada. Most guess Midwest but never Canada.
NUMBER ONE. WTF?!?!
When I met my husband-to-be, who was from West Virginia, I thought it was so cute the way he said “collar” instead of color. Also, when my sister and I first heard the name Seven Up, we both exclaimed in unison, “I always called that Zup!”
I have been laughing hysterically at these comments. Happy new year, Bloggess. Blog on!
No. 4 can apparently be a sign of intelligence- many bright kids pick up a huge vocabulary from reading, but never hear anyone else actually SAY all those words, so they grow up pronouncing them wrong.
I’m proud to say that at age 9 I was mocked for talking excitedly about “Australian Abro-geenies.”
i identify with #4. I’m sometimes afraid to say particular words because I’ve never heard them pronounced.
My dad used to say ga-zah-bo instead of gazebo, and he always spelled toilet as toliet and dining as dinning (as in “please clean the dinning room table and put away the toliet paper”. My grandmother used to say calshum for calcium. My husband says aigs and melk instead of eggs and milk – it drives me nuts, but he’s still a keeper.
My misspoken word was inevitably. I had heard it many times, but i read it as in-e-VIT-a-bly (I put the accent on the wrong syllable). Now we often put the accent on the wrong syl-LAB-le just to amuse ourselves. My daughter and I make up words all the time (on purpose). We get confusicafied or confusificated instead of confused. We’re fans of the musical “Wicked”, so she claims we are speaking Ozian.
I really hope number 3 is a lie because it really freaks me out when people do that.
I once wanted to use the word “dour” because it was the only word that exactly captured some people I was trying to describe. I looked up how to pronounce it so I would be certain. And everyone I described those people to said, “Is that how you pronounce that word?”
So “huge” is pronounced “Ooj”? That’s cool, I like it. At least you’re not pronouncing “frustrated” the way Kanye does
I can’t say pal. You know buddy old pal. I say it more like pale or pail. My husband likes to tell me he is not my bucket.
I can’t seem to pronounce the word stamp correctly…I am forever saying stomp. I work at a university and am constantly telling applicants that official tranacripts remain in their sealed envelopes ‘stomped’ across the back flap by the issuing institution.
I say the “psychotic” in place of the word “psychic” just because I think it’s funny. For example, “How did you know that? You must be psychotic!” I imagine people overhearing me and laughing. For some reason I’m hugely (ugely?) entertained by that.
I am guessing you would always pronounce the H. But what so I know. Just in case… Dictionary.com has a speaker… if you press it… it pronounces the word. I can neither confirm nor deny that I have used it.
I was listening to ‘Pride and prejudice’ (Again) last night and noticed that they use ‘an’ instead of ‘a’ in front of words that start with H, and I CAN’T REMEMBER WHY and it’s driving me up the wall.
It will come back to me. Or I could look it up.
I think you you’re really from Yorkshire. Your pronunciations would fit it perfectly there.
I had someone tell me recently that talking to me actually improved their vocabulary…I was like, DAMN, they must have been raised by monkeys (not even apes). I blogged once about one of my most embarrassing moments, which was pronouncing Maryland as “Mary Land” in school…as opposed to Joseph Land, I guess.
Thanks (once again) for your wit!
#4….totally happened to me with “ethereal”.
You got me with #4.
rendezvous=rin-dezz-a-vus. (in head only, thank god)
album=alblum (I think I said this to my mother & was mocked many, many yrs. ago)
ludicrous=lud-ri-shus (got caught out on this one in 10th grade when I exposed my ignorance to a scornful upperclassman)
Still, being a voracious reader in a world of not so eager readers means that sometimes you’ll use a word absolutely correctly and still inspire laughter. I used “perhaps” in high school and had a good friend laughing her ass off. But that was in another century, and besides, the wench is… probably her mother now.
are you saying ooooge or youge with your silent “H”? (Both are fine, really, I’m just curious).
My parents say “uge” for “huge” and “uman” for “human.” It would drive me crazy growing up. Bruce Springsteen does it too. It’s a New Jersey thing.
It took me till college to realize that epitome and ep-IT-o-mee were the exact same word. Embarrassing!!
It’s so interesting to see how so many of your readers are from the South!
Album= Abum…that’s it!
I totally do the thing where I read a word that I never really say out loud. One being “politics”. I never talk about politics until I had this one room mate that did. And she made fun of me because I pronounced it “Po Lit Ticks”. There are a few other words that I cannot think of at the moment.
My MIL pronounces it YEWJ, too. Just so wrong. Sorry. I feel okay challenging you on this despite the crawl space confession because I don’t even live in the same time zone as you and you would have to go to GREAT effort to drag my dead body to Texas for burial.
Somewhat related: My MIL also always says, “Holy cats!” Which until just last week I always thought was “Holy Katz!” But I’m pretty sure it’s cats. She doesn’t know anyone named Katz. As far as I know.
My husband makes fun of me because I cannot, for the life of me, pronounce the word “Dwarf”.It comes out sounding like Dorf(like Dorf on Golf).I told him they’d rather be called little people, but it gets awkward when we’re watching “The Hobbitt”
I find that listening to audio books helps with number 4. Ask me how I know.
ok, now I’m stumped. I’m with ya’ll (or yawl) on the #4 thing. We all did/do it. (Heck, for years I thought there were two towns in Southern California: La Hoya and La Jolla.)
But, seriously, how ELSE would you pronounce An-Tan-uh? Since it used to be spelled Antaenna, obviously there’s a sort of bend in the “a” but we’re American’s we’ve changed other things, like Mediaeval, too.
So, what’s the allegedly ‘correct’ pronunciation? I really want to know!
My husband unintentionally says “Valentimes Day” … he spells it correctly, I think he just has no idea he’s putting the “m” in – and it is so sweet and uncharacteristically “cute” that I refuse to correct him (he’s very educated and professional… so it’s really funny to me)
I am a band director and just TWO WEEKS ago learned that what I thought were two separate things are actually just the spelling and the correct way to pronounce the same word… Soldering (like in repairing instruments, for me)… I had heard colleagues talk about “soddering” (how you say it) and I had read about “soldering” (how you spell it)… and just found out that they are the same. I actually asked someone “How do you know when to solder (sold-er) something and when to sodder it?” 🙂 I got laughed at. A lot. 🙂
I alllllways cross my fingers and hope I’m saying it the right way. ?
Oh yes #4 is the best of the worst. Nothing worse than looking completely dumb founded when you hear someone pronounce a word you know but have never actually heard spoken.
#5…I know this because you are much to fearful of zombies to put a corpse underneath your own home or probably even within a 100 miles of it. However, if it was true, I wouldn’t recommend confessing it in your book for legal purposes…I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on t.v. so my legal advice is really more common sense, so I’m not practicing law without a license here….but I digress…if it was true…It would have only been true for one night and by morning you’d be calling your friend over to come and help you dig up and move the body and explaining to Victor why there is a shovel coming up through the floor from underneath the house and we’d have a whole new awesome chapter of how your agent is trying to figure out how to write an addendum to your home owners policy to cover damages caused by potential zombie apocalypse’s (real or imagined) and how to charge you for the rider without losing his job….is it apocalypse’s or apocalypsi…is that ever pluralized? Who knows…but I think you understand my reasoning for my guess.
My husband is one of those smart people who cannot spell. The other day I was using his phone to make a call. In his contacts I found his cousin Holly listed as Holy. And a local take out place listed as No 1 Chineese. I laughed for an hour.
OMG! I also say antenna antanna! My family is always teasing me about it. Also, I am told I say boat strangely, but I am pretty sure that is just everyone else.
So. I’m listening to Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and I can’t help but notice that you say umor. And Ouston. And uge. And I’m like…is this a thing? Have I been pronouncing these words wrong my whole life. And so I googled Jenny Lawson mispronounce H words. And I found this blog entry from 4 years ago. And now I feel better that you are aware of this issue. And now I can finish the book in peace.