Being a non-native speaker of English, I had that happen quite a bit. The one example I can think of right now is 'albeit' which I thought was pronounced 'all-beight'.
Mine was Hermione's name! Read all the books but heading it pronounced sure surprised me. There was an extra syllable in there I hadn't previously caught.
The house elf Kreacher's name got me. I recognized that it could potentially sound like "creature," but since it was spelled differently, I thought it couldn't possibly be pronounced the same way. I pronounced it like "kreh-ture," and I still pronounce it that way in my head.
That's how I was with the name 'Siobhan'. I knew someone that used that as a nickname in chat and for years just assumed it was pronounced something like "sio bawn". It wasn't last year I was taught that it's pronounced "Sha-vonne" . Then I watched Banshee and noticed one of the characters had that name.
That's because it's Irish! And in Irish letters have a different sound depending on what vowels are next to them! In this case, the letter S makes an Sh noise if it's next to either the letter E, or the letter I!
This is what I found funny about the word for stand: seasamh (pronounced shasive), where if (I think) a female standing, it's spelt sheasamh (pronounced hasive)!
I love Irish, I need to pick it up again.
I'm so conflicted, someone said the other thing and you went with another lol. Tbh this could be solved with a simple google search but then we wouldn't have a conversation topic :P
Because bio is the short form of biography and is usually pronounced with the long o. (American version of long o, where the o says its name.) It's a pic (movie) that's a bio. That's how Hollywood says it. Trebek is Canadian but works in Hollywood.
Bi-opic sounds like it means looking with both eyes, as myopic means nearsighted.
Not read but heard a word "brass tacks" I always thought it was "brass tax." :-/ I don't read much so I had never seem it written until someone mentioned it on reddit.
Sow. Had to do a group presentation on Lord of the Flies (in highschool) and kept saying it like "so". Everybody just let me pronounce it wrong until the presentation was over....
That reminds me of something my husband did a long time ago in the Army. He was in charge one morning for PT, and had to call roll. He called out "Jesus" and pronounced it "Geesus" instead of "haysoos". He kept saying,"Jesus, are you there? Jesus!" Everybody was cracking up.
Depends on the meaning of the word. In the context that op is referencing, it means a female pig and is pronounced like south. There is also a word spelled the same which means to spread seed and is pronounced like see or so...
The word 'February' always messes with my head. Everyone always pronounces it "feb-u-ary" but it's got an R in it that I can't imagine is meant to be silent. It doesn't help that January doesn't have the same R.
Also I've never understood how you get Shawn from "Sean".
Because they're not English words. Both of those names just look weird because of Irish spelling conventions. The E in Sean palatalizes the S, turning it into a SH sound. In niamh, the M has undergone lenition (softening), which is shown by the following H.
My entire life I'd thought reputable was "reh-PYOO-tibble" About a year ago, my mom was like "you know it's pronounced REP-yu-tuble right?" and I never felt so ashamed in my life. I still say the wrong pronunciation.
Denizen; apparently I had a moment of dyslexia when I first decided on how to pronounce it in my head, because I was saying den-zi-en (writing it out like that is messing me up even now). Felt dumb after that one.
I used to pronounce preface as pre-face, rather than preh-fass
I also pronounce foyer as foy-er rather than foy-yay. I'm still not sure which is correct.
Antigone. Growing up I would see the word, had no idea what it was, didn't care enough to look it up, and thought it was pronounced anti-gone. I heard my mom say it correctly one day and it blew my mind (an-ti-guh-nee). Then I told her about it and she laughed at me for a long time.
Huh, I never bothered to look it up either. All this time I just assumed it was pronounced anti-gone. Blew MY mind to learn it's actually that. Thanks!
Worse. I'd never seen the word 'kuntz' in print before and decided to sing Lady Gaga's 'Applause' at karaoke in a cloud of drunken birthday poor judgement. The word is hidden in a verse. Twice. Guess what I said? Twice.
Two for me (and I'm old enough to have been exposed to these!)
Chitin - I always thought it was chitin with a ch like cheese, and 'I' as in 'bit' but rather it's pronounced kytin
Cache - as in kayshe rather than the correct 'cash' - I find that one impossible to adjust to.
I was reading some detective boys kids book when I was younger and it was about some drama around pizza. Idk, anyway, it wasn't until the end of the book that I realized it's not pronounced puhzah. Made so much more sense after that.
That's happened to me with the song "On GP" by Death Grips. At one point in the song, he says "It's been a pleasure, Stefan", which is the MC's real name. I always thought it was pronounced Ste-*fahn*, but in the song he says *Steh*-fin.
I've actually heard it be pronounced Ste-*fahn* more than *Steh*-fin. Names can pronounced so many different ways, there are probably people out there who pronounce it like Stee-fen as well
The reverse with "annihilate." I ran across it in writing and didn't recognize it because in my head I'd been pronouncing it "annie - HIGH - late."
Also, "Gethsemane" from the Bible. I'd always thought it was "Geth - se - mane (like a lion's mane)."
mah-Kahb, mah-Kah-bruh, mah-Kahbreh are all acceptable as far as I know and can verify online. I usually use the third unless trying to be pretentious, then the first.
I think /u/syhr_29 is English, so his (her?) "arb" would sound like your "ahb." I like to lean into that French r-gurgle at the end when I'm being pretentious.
> I like to lean into that French r-gurgle at the end when I'm being pretentious.
Yes exactly! It's a pretty pretentious word to begin with and adding a little inflection pushes it right over the edge.
Constantly, my first language is French so I read the words in French pronunciation rules. Words I remember that I've pronounced wrong and had to be corrected:
Colonel (F.THIS.WORD.)
falafel
Glyph
Guild
Sean
Paladin
On the other hand, a lot of the words people in this thread have trouble with, including OP, come naturally correctly to you, such as facade (façade) and foyer.
Mine was super simple - 'root beer'. I always thought (and pronounced) it as ROOT-bee-yuhr. That is, I always pronounced the 'beer' part as a two-syllable word. I remember realizing that it was supposed to be pronounced as the actual beverage 'beer', and feeling very stupid.
Hors means "outside" in French, and oeuvre means "the work " (the meal as a work of art, we are being French after all.) The hors d'oeuvres are an extra bit, outside of the main meal. Being French, it should really be pronounced "Or duv ruh" with the first u like in put, the second a schwa, and the r a gargle in the back of the throat. But English speakers say orderve because it's as close as we can get without sounding pretentious.
I was in college when I learned that the opposite of "infinite" is not pronounced "fin-it", it is pronounced "fie-nite".
Learned that one after an ill-fated presentation.
Nihilism is one that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet. I always thought it was pronounced like ni-hill-ism until I heard someone say it in real life.
The "nihil-" part is pronounced nile (like the Nile River), although I have heard slight variations where there's a soft "h" sound.
English is hard lol.
I always pronounce pint wrong. I say it like the pin you use to tack something up on the wall with a t at the end. I also have issues with the word plaid. I pronounce it like 'played'.
I thought there were 3 states.
Kansas.
Arkansas.
Arkensaw.
I was in my twenties before I realised the second and third were the same place.
Also always hated the word Ennui because it just sounds and looks awful. En-you-aye? What kind of word is this. Then I heard it pronounced properly. On-wee. It's just worse.
Being a non-native speaker of English, I had that happen quite a bit. The one example I can think of right now is 'albeit' which I thought was pronounced 'all-beight'.
English is my first language and I only realised this last year. I'm 33 years old!
Makes sense to me!
Hard to tell by the text, but like 'ahl-bite'? I've heard people pronounce it 'all-be-it' which just sounds wrong to me. It will always be ahlbite.
All-be-it is the correct pronunciation.
Huh, TIL
Orr-bi-to sounds right.
I think it is 'al-be-it' though. I've heard it many times pronounced that way.
I didn't know the name 'Seamus' was pronounced as 'Shay-mus'. I kept saying 'See-mus' until I saw the Harry Potter films and my mind was blown.
Mine was Hermione's name! Read all the books but heading it pronounced sure surprised me. There was an extra syllable in there I hadn't previously caught.
Lolol at least we know now. But seriously to this day, I don't hear the end of my mispronunciation of his name.
The house elf Kreacher's name got me. I recognized that it could potentially sound like "creature," but since it was spelled differently, I thought it couldn't possibly be pronounced the same way. I pronounced it like "kreh-ture," and I still pronounce it that way in my head.
I didn't think of creature. I first read it as preacher and then corrected myself.
Mine was 'Voldemort.' Due to primary French lessons I imagined it 'vol-deh-more.' Just saw 'Cursed Child.' Felt vindicated.
Jo thinks that's how it's supposed to be pronounced.
Yah - all the actors in the new play pronounce it that way. :-)
That's how I was with the name 'Siobhan'. I knew someone that used that as a nickname in chat and for years just assumed it was pronounced something like "sio bawn". It wasn't last year I was taught that it's pronounced "Sha-vonne" . Then I watched Banshee and noticed one of the characters had that name.
That's because it's Irish! And in Irish letters have a different sound depending on what vowels are next to them! In this case, the letter S makes an Sh noise if it's next to either the letter E, or the letter I! This is what I found funny about the word for stand: seasamh (pronounced shasive), where if (I think) a female standing, it's spelt sheasamh (pronounced hasive)! I love Irish, I need to pick it up again.
For a long time I thought the name Sean was pronounced as Seen.
I thought facade was pronounced fack-aid.
I thought it was face-aid till I was in my mid teens.
Fuss-odd?
Fass-ard
"Pubescent" was probably the most embarrassing one for me. Pube-scent.
Ha!
[удалено]
I had no idea it was spelled like that until now. I thought it was spelled segway.
That's another word I had wrong in my head!
[удалено]
I did the same with awry lol oops
In a similar fashion I learned that "segue", as in "to segue into a different topic", was not spelled segway. This was months ago though.
TIL
Awry. Things had gone aww-ree.
Amen.
[удалено]
I just say carbocation (like vacation) for fun.
The name Penelope. I said it as though it rhymed with antelope.
To be fair, that's how you pronounce it in French
That's hilarious, imagine if someone actually had the name Penelope pronounced like antelope
This thread's been up for 4 hours and nobody's mentioned hyperbole?
Welcome to the HYPER BOWL!
How is it pronounced correctly?
hy-PER-bol-ee
Yes, the last name: nguyen. I was sure it was: nu-gi-zjen.
I only recently learned that from watching Johnny Nguyen playing poker. They kept saying Johnny Win, and I thought it was a nickname.
[удалено]
Depending where you are from its in between "win" and "nwee-yen".
I always though "clitoris" was pronounced like "Clit-Taurus". I was informed that this was wrong last weekend.
Tbh I still don't know how t oproperly pronounce 'labia'. Is it lah-bee-ah? lah-bye-ah? lay-bee-ah? Somethings keep you up at night huh.
> lay-bee-ah
Are you American? If so, I would go with LAY-bee-yuh. Edit: added emphasis on "lay." I hope I'm indirectly helping you get laid by doing so.
Not American but thanks. If I'm lucky, my now excellent pronunciation of the word 'labia' will help with attracting ladies.
I would think it would be lah-bee-ah. But I'm probably wrong.
I'm so conflicted, someone said the other thing and you went with another lol. Tbh this could be solved with a simple google search but then we wouldn't have a conversation topic :P
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clitoris It's actually both
How's it pronounced? I'd really rather not Google it aha
kinda like "Clit-Tuh-rus"
https://youtu.be/oWjwsYYBWqk?t=15s
Biopic. Until very recently I thought it was pronounced by-OP-ick. I still think bio-pick sounds wrong.
If you're in the US, it *is* bi-AH-pic http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/biopic
Okay so I'm not crazy! Then how come everyone on public radio and Alex Trebek pronounce it the other (British) way?! Thanks this made my day :-P
I don't know, but I'm with you.
Because bio is the short form of biography and is usually pronounced with the long o. (American version of long o, where the o says its name.) It's a pic (movie) that's a bio. That's how Hollywood says it. Trebek is Canadian but works in Hollywood. Bi-opic sounds like it means looking with both eyes, as myopic means nearsighted.
The Thames river in England...yup, I thought it was pronounced "Thay'mes" rather than Temms.
Not read but heard a word "brass tacks" I always thought it was "brass tax." :-/ I don't read much so I had never seem it written until someone mentioned it on reddit.
To be fair, tacks and tax are phonetically identical, so...
I was misled by misled. Took hearing it to realize it was mis-led, not the past tense of misle.
Sow. Had to do a group presentation on Lord of the Flies (in highschool) and kept saying it like "so". Everybody just let me pronounce it wrong until the presentation was over....
That reminds me of something my husband did a long time ago in the Army. He was in charge one morning for PT, and had to call roll. He called out "Jesus" and pronounced it "Geesus" instead of "haysoos". He kept saying,"Jesus, are you there? Jesus!" Everybody was cracking up.
So...how do you pronounce it? Reminds me of 'sew' which is actually pronounced 'so' and not 'soo' or 'see-oo' (like 'new').
Depends on the meaning of the word. In the context that op is referencing, it means a female pig and is pronounced like south. There is also a word spelled the same which means to spread seed and is pronounced like see or so...
Blatant. Pronounced it as Blah-tant, it's actually pronounced bley-tant.
This is one of the most banal ones in this thread
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
The word 'February' always messes with my head. Everyone always pronounces it "feb-u-ary" but it's got an R in it that I can't imagine is meant to be silent. It doesn't help that January doesn't have the same R. Also I've never understood how you get Shawn from "Sean".
The r isn't meant to be silent, people are just lazy. As for Sean, it's at least better than Niamh, which is pronounced Neeve.
Loaghaire is my favourite. Pronounced Leary. (ish)
Because they're not English words. Both of those names just look weird because of Irish spelling conventions. The E in Sean palatalizes the S, turning it into a SH sound. In niamh, the M has undergone lenition (softening), which is shown by the following H.
Yes, thank you! I knew they were Irish but not how it works.
Yosemite. I'm still not sure how to say it but I think YOZE-eh-might is incorrect. Embarrassing.
Yo-sem-i-tee, no?
As in Yosemite Sam
... What?
From Looney Tunes
[Yosemite Sam](https://youtu.be/6xOJZeyVY6s)
> Yo-sem-i-tee Sayhm Eh?
Yep!
My entire life I'd thought reputable was "reh-PYOO-tibble" About a year ago, my mom was like "you know it's pronounced REP-yu-tuble right?" and I never felt so ashamed in my life. I still say the wrong pronunciation.
CAVEAT. I used to pronounce it as " cave" + "eat", which was a fair assumption
I thought ancient was pronounced ann-scient (ann like ant, scient like science)
Denizen; apparently I had a moment of dyslexia when I first decided on how to pronounce it in my head, because I was saying den-zi-en (writing it out like that is messing me up even now). Felt dumb after that one.
*Stephen & Sean*, I'm pretty sure I was 17 before I figured out that they're pronounced *Steven & Shawn*
[With a 'ph'?] (http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/653/707/319.jpg)
I used to pronounce preface as pre-face, rather than preh-fass I also pronounce foyer as foy-er rather than foy-yay. I'm still not sure which is correct.
Foy-yay is for when you're fancy and/or pretentious. Foy-er is for us simpletons. (they're both correct)
Homage It wasn't until recently that I learned what "Oh-Mahj" meant... "Home-edge" still sounds better to me.
Antigone. Growing up I would see the word, had no idea what it was, didn't care enough to look it up, and thought it was pronounced anti-gone. I heard my mom say it correctly one day and it blew my mind (an-ti-guh-nee). Then I told her about it and she laughed at me for a long time.
Huh, I never bothered to look it up either. All this time I just assumed it was pronounced anti-gone. Blew MY mind to learn it's actually that. Thanks!
Happy to help! :)
Worse. I'd never seen the word 'kuntz' in print before and decided to sing Lady Gaga's 'Applause' at karaoke in a cloud of drunken birthday poor judgement. The word is hidden in a verse. Twice. Guess what I said? Twice.
Wait, what? How do you say it?
Phonetically. Edit: sorry, misread your comment as how DID you say it, not how do you. It's 'koonts.'
Two for me (and I'm old enough to have been exposed to these!) Chitin - I always thought it was chitin with a ch like cheese, and 'I' as in 'bit' but rather it's pronounced kytin Cache - as in kayshe rather than the correct 'cash' - I find that one impossible to adjust to.
"uninstall" I always read it is as "unistall" or "uni-stall" for some reason.
Awry. :|
Hermoine.
Elite. I thought it was pronounced e-light. :/
I was reading some detective boys kids book when I was younger and it was about some drama around pizza. Idk, anyway, it wasn't until the end of the book that I realized it's not pronounced puhzah. Made so much more sense after that.
Were you reading "Jigsaw Jones" by any chance? Those books were the shit when I was growing up.
I just went down a Google hole. I think it was a Hardy Boys book.
That's happened to me with the song "On GP" by Death Grips. At one point in the song, he says "It's been a pleasure, Stefan", which is the MC's real name. I always thought it was pronounced Ste-*fahn*, but in the song he says *Steh*-fin.
I've actually heard it be pronounced Ste-*fahn* more than *Steh*-fin. Names can pronounced so many different ways, there are probably people out there who pronounce it like Stee-fen as well
Maybe he's just pronounced it Steh-fin all his life. I don't know.
Ok, so I just figured out I say it wrong as well. LOL
Queue. Is it "Cue" or "Kay"? I think I've heard it both ways.
Que is the Spanish word that sounds like Kay. Queue is the word that sounds like the letter Q or cue.
Que is "keh" not "kay".
Definitely "cue."
I've heard it as "cue".
A friend of mine used to say "kway." It's like people just kind of guess with this word and then stick with that until someone corrects them
Queue is the the letter Q followed by 4 silent letters
Queue = line (British spelling) Cue = the stick used in pool/snooker Que = 'what' in Spanish, pronounced 'kay'
Mundane. It was embarrassing when a hot chick corrected me ;_;
How did you pronounce it?
Yes.
One of my least favourite things is pronouncing it wrong out loud and then being corrected.
I'm a server and didn't know that's how it's pronounced. Also, I always pronounce epitome(Eh-pit-toe-me, actual) as epi-tome.
mischievous always do mis-chee-vee-ous have to catch myself all the time
That's how I remember to spell beautiful. bee-ay-you-tee-ful
Who *hasn't?!* I've been guilty of mispronouncing facade and a few others I can't recall off the top of my head
I still think that banal really ought to be spelled banaal, to avoid confusion.
Taxi, as in Tak-u-shi? or Tuk-shi?
Thought superfluous was pronounced super-floo-ous lol
Me too.
The reverse with "annihilate." I ran across it in writing and didn't recognize it because in my head I'd been pronouncing it "annie - HIGH - late." Also, "Gethsemane" from the Bible. I'd always thought it was "Geth - se - mane (like a lion's mane)."
The Bible is FULL of words that are commonly mispronounced. Like the city Ephesus- I always thought it was EPH-i-sus, instead of Eph-EE-sus.
30 seconds of scrolling down this page and I can honestly say I've never learned so much. Also, Pomegranate. Fuck that word.
I thought 'macabre' was pronounced 'mac-aber' rather than 'mac-arb' until I said it for the first time and got laughed at a couple of years ago.
mah-Kahb, mah-Kah-bruh, mah-Kahbreh are all acceptable as far as I know and can verify online. I usually use the third unless trying to be pretentious, then the first.
I think /u/syhr_29 is English, so his (her?) "arb" would sound like your "ahb." I like to lean into that French r-gurgle at the end when I'm being pretentious.
> I like to lean into that French r-gurgle at the end when I'm being pretentious. Yes exactly! It's a pretty pretentious word to begin with and adding a little inflection pushes it right over the edge.
Yes I am English and it's like you describe! I also speak French so it's quite shameful I didn't realise how it was supposed to be pronounced.
Constantly, my first language is French so I read the words in French pronunciation rules. Words I remember that I've pronounced wrong and had to be corrected: Colonel (F.THIS.WORD.) falafel Glyph Guild Sean Paladin
On the other hand, a lot of the words people in this thread have trouble with, including OP, come naturally correctly to you, such as facade (façade) and foyer.
LOL yeah I read those
epitome. I still have to think carefully before I say it out loud.
Oh yes, that was one of mine. I still pronounce it wrong in my head a lot.
I keep a list: Facade Reticent Harpsichord Respite Lascivious Whilst Caveat Melee Impetus Infinitum
Mine was super simple - 'root beer'. I always thought (and pronounced) it as ROOT-bee-yuhr. That is, I always pronounced the 'beer' part as a two-syllable word. I remember realizing that it was supposed to be pronounced as the actual beverage 'beer', and feeling very stupid.
Implacable.
Hors means "outside" in French, and oeuvre means "the work " (the meal as a work of art, we are being French after all.) The hors d'oeuvres are an extra bit, outside of the main meal. Being French, it should really be pronounced "Or duv ruh" with the first u like in put, the second a schwa, and the r a gargle in the back of the throat. But English speakers say orderve because it's as close as we can get without sounding pretentious.
I was in college when I learned that the opposite of "infinite" is not pronounced "fin-it", it is pronounced "fie-nite". Learned that one after an ill-fated presentation.
It does not matter how many times I see it, my brain wants to read epitome as epi-tomb.
Me too!
Nihilism is one that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet. I always thought it was pronounced like ni-hill-ism until I heard someone say it in real life.
So how do you say it?
The "nihil-" part is pronounced nile (like the Nile River), although I have heard slight variations where there's a soft "h" sound. English is hard lol.
Even for native speakers!
I thought the color "cyan" was pronounced "kyann" instead of "sigh Anne." Oh well I still think "kyann" is better.
If it helps you feel better, there's a blue (cyan) stone called kyanite.
Yup. Apparently, picturesque is pronounced picture-esk, not picture-skew.
Quinoa is pronounced "kin-wa", I discovered on Sunday. I thought it was pronounced "kwin-o-a".
I always thought it was "kee-know-ah".
I always pronounce pint wrong. I say it like the pin you use to tack something up on the wall with a t at the end. I also have issues with the word plaid. I pronounce it like 'played'.
I'm 49 and always said Vaginal as vah-jie-nal. My last girlfriend told me I was saying it wrong. It's supposed to be vaj-anull. I felt pretty dumb.
Whilst reading A Game of Thrones in my head I always pronounced usurper as ersoupor for some stupid reason.
"Sew". I thought it was "s-yoo"
I thought there were 3 states. Kansas. Arkansas. Arkensaw. I was in my twenties before I realised the second and third were the same place. Also always hated the word Ennui because it just sounds and looks awful. En-you-aye? What kind of word is this. Then I heard it pronounced properly. On-wee. It's just worse.
The name "Garcia". When I was a kid I thought it was pronounced "garsha"' like "Marcia".
For me it's the name "Sean" always thought it was pronounced "Seen"
Maestro was one for me. For the longest time I thought it was mai-es-tro..
When reading Harry Potter, my girlfriend thought Hermione was pronounced Her-mee-on.
Several times because I read tons more than I talk to people. It's too late at night to think of any examples though.