What words are commonly mispronounced by literate people who read them before they heard them?

Question

Quite a few words are mispronounced by under-educated people, or people learning English as a second language. Some words are often mispronounced by quite educated people who read, and began reading high-level literature before they heard the vocabulary spoken.

This can lead to a vocabulary dissonance, occasionally leading to the belief that there are two words (the known spelling of one, and the verbal hearing of the same) where only one exists. Epitome is a common example that springs to mind.

Answer with a word and its proper pronunciation (and potentially, the commonly mistaken punctuation).

Answer 1

I stumbled upon this thread today and I am so pleased that someone resurrected it just a few hours ago.

I grew up in a small town in the deep South, which didn't create a lot of opportunity to hear the words I was reading in spoken form. I was in my twenties before I learned that hors d'oeuvres (ôr dûrvz) was NOT pronounced (whores duh vree).

Recently, I discovered that my own teenager was having similar difficulty with a word that she had seen written but never heard aloud. This discovery was made when she jokingly called me a twat (pronounced to rhyme with brat), lol! Not only did I corrected her pronunciation (twot), but also told her the meaning of the word since she had no idea. Her response? "Oh my gosh!! Why are people calling each other THAT??"

Answer 2

Askance. Not ASK-ance, but a-SKANCE. When you look askance at someone, you're giving them a sideways look, not a questioning one, as I used to think.

Answer 3

This question calls for a mention of The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité:

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

…

Answer 4

Paradigm |par-uh-dahym| (OED: Brit. /ˈparədʌɪm/, U.S. /ˈpɛrəˌdaɪm/)

I've winced a couple times when people have said |par-uh-di-jum|

Answer 5

Rapport /ræˈpɔr/

Pronounced ra-PORE, not ra-PORT. French, but not obviously so.

Answer 6

Inventory. I (and no doubt many others who spent a significant amount of time playing text adventures), thought it was in-VENT-uh-ree, not IN-vuhn-tree.

Answer 7

Height sounds like high+t, which is logical I suppose, but I used to think it rhymed with eight. Like another poster, I got 'recipe' wrong too, rhyming it with 'ripe'. And when I told a native speaker about that, he said that 'recipe' followed a common pattern, like 'Hebrides' - that's how I learned that wasn't pronounced he-brides.

And how is a poor foreigner supposed to know whether 'ea' is pronounced 'ee' or as 'ea' in 'bear'? For example, if an activity wears you out (ea), you get weary (ee). Yeah, that makes sense(!)

Answer 8

I'm guessing French words are at the top of the list.

Answer 9

Moot, as in The point is moot. I often hear people say The point is mute. Not only mispronounced, but misunderstood.

Answer 10

I too had several of these while growing up. Two that spring to mind:

Integer — pronounced with a soft ‘g’, but I used a hard ‘g’.

Elite — rhymes with ‘delete’, but I would rhyme it with ‘delight’.

Answer 11

Many mythological names. The one that stands out for me is Terpsichore (rhymes with "hickory").

Answer 12

Infrared. Took me a while in my early teens to figure out that this is not equivalent in construction to words like "inflamed", and therefore is not pronounced "in-FRAIR'd"; the prefix is "infra-" and therefore the word is pronounced "In-fruh-RED".

Answer 13

Shibboleth.

Maybe not anymore.

Answer 14

Arkansas - Americans may get it right, but to most of the rest of the world it looks like "Are Kansas"

Potpourri - I've heard it called Pot-pour-ee. Though, admittedly, it's not common

nuclear - Many say "Nyuu-kyuh-lur"

foyer - It's "foy-ay". Not "foy-er"

Leicester square - (Less-ter square) Only added because it's a famous place in London, otherwise place names are always unpredictably difficult.

Best I could come up with at the moment. Of course, there are Britishisms, or Scottish words like ceilidh or niobh (pronounced "Kay-lee and Neeve" respectively) but these words aren't common enough to enter into most people's regular lexicon and are borrowed from other languages.

Answer 15

Ubuntu |oǒ'boǒntoō|

I always thought it was oo-BUN-too.

(source)

Answer 16

Carotid. /kəˈrɒtɪd/ It is a big artery in the neck. Not sure where the stress goes, but it goes in an unnatural place.

Answer 17

Two for me:

parsimony Brit. /ˈpɑːsᵻməni/ , U.S. /ˈpɑrsəˌmoʊni/

boatswain /ˈbəʊtsweɪn/ , usually /ˈbəʊs(ə)n/

Answer 18

The British pronunciation of "vitamin" must have been based on someone reading it. Note that the word was invented by an American, and it's a contraction of "vital" and "amine", so it should have been pronounced "vai-tah-min" but British people read it as "vit-ah-min".

As it happens, the British pronunciation has actually gone into other languages, so e.g. Japanese has a word "bitamin" based on the British mistaken pronunciation.

"In 1912 Polish biochemist Kazimierz Funk isolated the same complex of micronutrients and proposed the complex be named "Vitamine" (a compound of "vital amine").[12] The name soon became synonymous with Hopkins' "accessory factors", and by the time it was shown that not all vitamins were amines, the word was already ubiquitous. In 1920, Jack Cecil Drummond proposed that the final "e" be dropped to deemphasize the "amine" reference, after researchers began to suspect that not all "vitamines" (particularly vitamin A) had an amine component."

Answer 19

Adage.

I hear this spoken so rarely even right now I question whether I remember the right pronunciation. I always want to say a-dage (with "age" pronounced like the actual word "age").

Answer 20

I literally just learned a month ago (25 years into my existence!) that the h IS pronounced in herbivore. There are two kickers to this-- the first one being I was corrected by a 5 year old, and the second one being I have been vegetarian for 15 years!

Answer 21

The US state of Oregon is commonly mispronounced, even by Americans, as "Oh-ree-gawn." I've even heard this mispronunciation on national news programs. It's actually pronounced "Ory-gun".

I also come from the Willamette Valley of Oregon, which produces some great wines. To those vinophiles out there, please note it is "Will-lamb-it", emphasis on second syllable, not "William-etty" as some mistakenly say.

Answer 22

Albeit - pronounced "ahl-bee-it", and not "ahl-bite"

Answer 23

Can't believe no one has mentioned "cache". It's pronounced "cash". It's like nails on a chalkboard every time I hear someone say "cashay"

Answer 24

Disheveled /dɪˈʃɛvəld/

I always read it as dis-HEAVE-eld. I was wrong.

Answer 25

Antipodes /ænˈtɪpədiːz/

Apparently it's not pronounces anti-podes

Answer 26

I'm so late to the party, but I can't resist.

Words with silent letters like subtle, (not sub-tel), receipt, (not reseept).

And others like lettuce (not lett-yuse).

Panacea ( Brit. /ˌpanəˈsɪə/, /ˌpanəˈsiːə/, U.S. /ˌpænəˈsiə/) Besides "pa-ne-see-ya", why can't it be "pe-nay-shuh"? Or "pa-ne-ka" like Q. Boudicea,

Finally, when I was a kid, Don Kwikzote for Don Quixote (kee yo tay)

IPA: /dɒn kiˈhoʊteɪ/, /dõŋ kiˈχote/

Answer 27

Buoy. The number of people I meet who pronounce this boo-ee (instead of boy, as I pronounce it) staggers me. Is "buoyant" to be pronounced "boo-ee-ant" also?

Answer 28

Years ago, I was familiar with (and sometimes used) the spoken word superfluous. I also sometimes read the word spelled “superfluous” but pronounced it /SOO-per-FLOO-us/.

I had no idea that these were the same word.

Answer 29

Goon Show

Mispronounced as the "Go On Show" by the Governor of the BBC (or maybe it was a BBC Head of Department)

Quote:

“Those Crazy People”, leading one BBC governor to ask what, exactly, this "Go On Show" was all about.

Answer 30

Beribboned

"Be-ribboned", not "berry-boned"!