Term for this type of mis-pronunciation?

Question

When I was a kid, for years I thought

nihilism

was pronounced "nil-ism".

I guess this is because I only ever read it, rather than being exposed to hearing it.

Since "nil-ism" perfectly expresses the concept by coincidence, it stuck, until I embarrassingly learned I was pronouncing it wrong! (Making it hard to discuss Sartre, etc.)

{For anyone learning English reading this, it's just pronounced nye-ill-ism - it's a variation of "annihilate".}

A similar thing, I once heard an adult (well-educated) say "pseudo" as "puh-sway-do" rather than sue-doh.

(Again, I assume since the person had only read it and not heard it.)

A similar word might be segue: I bet lots of people say "seeg".

In fact, do linguists (or .. someone?) have a technical term for this? What's the deal?

Mispronunciation due to, I suppose in short having never heard the word in use but rather just reading it.

So, if you have a wonderful liberal education with professors saying "nihilist" and "pseudo" all the time, this wouldn't happen - it's kind of a, let's say, "self-taught pronunciation misunderstanding!"

Term?

Answer 1

A pronunciation of a word influenced by its spelling is called—wait for it—a spelling pronunciation.

A pronunciation or substitution of a word with something else that sounds similar and may still plausibly convey a similar meaning by analogy, as in nil-ism for nihilism, is called an eggcorn.

Answer 2

In phonology, I think this is referred to as syncope.

One should note that the hypernym for syncope (loss of sounds/syllables from the middle of the word), apocope (loss of sounds/syllables from the end of the word) and apheresis (loss of sounds/syllables from the beginning of the word) is clipping in morphology. Unfortunately, it doesn't connote the 'self-taught misunderstanding' meaning.*

More generally, if you wish to connote the meaning of having 'excluded a syllable/sound', elision may be a good choice, and one can use adjective forms of the aforementioned terms to specify the type of omission. Some notable instances of syncopic elision: Mississippi as Missippi; mathematics as mathmetics.

We therefore have an accurate word that describes the end result of what you've said, without any reference to the circumstance. Now the trouble lies in connoting the 'mistaken' aspect, and then additionally qualifying the fact that the mistake resulted owing to having encountered it only in a written form... i.e. we need a word for 'mistaken elision owing to having only ever read it'. If not a single word, I would say that oculocentrically nascent elision is a laborious way to say exactly what you want.

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Fortunately, it seems like Calley-ope syndrome or Booklish exist, which seem to refer to this phenomenon. I've also heard it being referred to as the reader's curse.

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*->This is because it is mentioned in this article that clippings, while not coined as words in standard vocabulary, are often acceptable/correct in the milieu they arise in.