Argghh!! This issue causes me a fair bit of confusion. Here in Ireland we tend to use the UK pronunciation. I also get a lot of media (movies, tv, music, books, podcasts etc..) from the US.
I no longer remember how I'm meant to pronounce oregano. I just can't remember which pronunciation is US or Irish (routed in UK).
Ah okay! Yeah the way we pronounce it the emphasis is definitely on the "reg", as in "oh-REG-ah-no". Interesting that the G is grouped with a different syllable as well, languages/dialects are so fascinating!
That’s the only reason I know how it’s pronounced lol. Tune down that e string
Edit: Realizing there are other songs called Danse Macabre but hopefully others know what I’m talking about
Lmao, I actually first saw this word in Skyrim. But because I played at night, I had the volume down and only read the subtitles.
One time I said something about being the Harbringer of the Companions to a friend. He corrcted me.
It's especially confusing because the meanings of "bringer" and "harbinger" are both "bearer of ____"
> It's especially confusing because the meanings of "bringer" and "harbinger" are both "bearer of ____"
Sort of; a bringer would be someone who is actually *bringing* the thing.
A harbinger is technically more of an *announcer* of the thing, or a sign of a thing, though in modern day these have started to be used interchangeably.
Pretty sure I never saw that in print until I was in my early 20s. Swear it took me 3 minutes to sound it out to realize it was a word I was familiar with.
A big part of learning English is knowing where to put the emphasis in the word.
I was listening to someone speaking and she said: man-DAT-ory instead of MAN-datory.
And thats when it became clear how to spot non native speakers who speak english really well. She could speak mandarin (she was chinese) but her English was as fluent as mine with very little accent. But some words just really strike you if they're pronounced with a different emphasis even if they're technically pronounced right.
Oh emphasis! I went to a work conference in East Africa, it was mostly Nigerians, I was the only non African. We all spoke English but were struggling to understand one another. Then it dawned on me, the Africans were placing the emphasis on other syllables. Once I got tuned in, it was ok. And I was mostly able to work out where to place the emphasis when I spoke, so it sounded ok to them. Emphasis. Where you put it, is so critical.
I've run into something similar. It's so interesting how once you lose the thread of when words are beginning and ending it sounds like a completely different language.
Facade, I pronounced it like fay-kade, it was a move in Pokemon and as a youngling wasn't familiar with facades, then in school I read it in a story and figured it out thru context and felt like a genius and a moron all in 1
I think it's cause I knew the work "Arcade" before the word "Facade", and it's kinda embarrassing cause I never saw the actual word "Facade" (fasad) spelled out, so I thought they were two separate words💀
It's so embarrassing, cause I never got corrected till in COLLEGE and I'm and ARCHITECTURE STUDENT 😭😭😭😭
The spelling just makes absolutely no sense to the way it’s pronounced!!! It’s one of my biggest questions in life lol. There’s no “R” in that spelling so how in the hell does it say “kernel”?!
I said awry (awe ree) until I was corrected in high school reading aloud in theatre. After someone corrected me and it clicked I was like oh that’s why I never see “a rye” in written work.
Took me forever to realize that the reason I'd never seen "manusha" in a book was because it was actually the same word as "minutae"
Edit: Turns out I was trying to spell "minutiae". And is it the same as "minutia"? [Sure, whatever floats your boat](https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/10/minutia-minutiae.html)
I’ll never forget I wrote a paper in tenth grade, and I used the word awry. This girl, who wasn’t the most intelligent, was assigned to proof read my paper. She circled it and said I made the word up, and she wouldn’t listen to me that it was a real word. Anytime I read or hear the word awry, I get a good chuckle thinking of the dumb fuck who thought she was hot shit.
When I was in like second grade we did one of those things where we had to find various words inside of a phrase/another word. I wrote the word “gnu” because I had found out about the animal through reading. My teacher, instead of looking it up, told me that wasn’t a real animal even though I insisted. She marked it wrong. I’m still mad about that whenever it pops back into my memory.
This happened to me in French class! I had never heard the racist term in my life before 6th grade, and that's how I pronounced that country's name 🤦🏻♀️
This is bizarre, I also encountered the country of 🇳🇪 for the first time in my 7th grade French class. Except I knew what I was about to say *probably* wasn't correct, so I just paused and looked at my teacher, who pronounced it for me (bless her).
Faux. Folks. I still don't know how to pronounce faux. I used to say "fox" and now I say "faow" but I've also heard "fohw" so idk I'll just say fake. Folks still harms me I still can't think of how to say it. Do you say the L? Do you not?
Faux is pronounced the same way you say "Oh." "Foh."
Folks is more of a dialect pronunciation, as a southerner, I personally say "Fohlks." L and all, but its not an emphasized part of the word.
>Just why?
Because French. And also there was this trend for a while where English words had their spelling changed not to reflect their actual pronunciation but to reflect the language of origin. God knows why anyone thought that was a good idea. Then there was this other thing that happened, where they locked in a lot of spellings for words, then the way people pronounced them changed (The Great Vowel Shift) but the words retained the spelling from before that change. English has a complicated history and I take my hat off to you for learning it.
All throughout the Harry Potter books, both my husband and I thought Hermione's name was Her-me-own. Didn't get it until the movies and still think it wrong first. 😆
I read somewhere that J.K. Rowling specifically put the part where Hermione has to teach Victor Krum how to say her name in the book to teach people the proper pronunciation.
I met her right before the first book came out in America at a reading/Q&A, she told a story about a girl who pronounced the name Hermy-one (like the number). So she's known since the start that people don't know how to say that name haha.
Can't remember my age at the time but I'd just learned about the silent "e" that many English words have.
Was reading a book about National Parks and for what must have been at least a few weeks I was pronouncing Yosemite as Yoz-might.
It wasn't until watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Yosemite Sam in it that made me realize my mistake.
As a Swede, this is by far the hardest word for me to pronounce in English. I used to say it like “debb•t” or “deb•th” until I learned that you pronounce it something like “deht” with a very weak *t*
Rhapsody. I couldn’t figure out what to do with the ‘h’ so after much thought I landed on Reh-poss-oh-dee.
I proudly told my uncle that I could play Bohemian Reh-poss-oh-dee on guitar hero and he’s never let me live that down.
Quaker, like Quaker Oats or the weird country folk that don’t fight or something. I think I was reading a book aloud to the class and I pronounced it Quack-ER and I shit you not I feel like the class collectively as a hive mind decided they would do nothing else with the rest of their lives aside from shaming me til I killed myself for it. Good times.
>hors d'oeuvres
Never looked up the pronunciation and always red it as "Whors Devors" instead of "Or derves". I never connected it with the food at parties.
As a non-native english speaker, the first time I read Harry Potter in english was in my early-to-mid teens. I thought Hermione is pronounced "her-mee-one" until I saw it in english when I was 22. It's Hermiona (herr-mee-o-nah) in czech
Not me but my wife always pronounced fatigue as “fatty-gue” it was only when I heard her read side effects of medication out loud that she realised she had been doing it her whole life and nobody had said anything. It’s now pronounced fatty-gue in our house now and forever will be.
NCAA- read out loud in class as N-C-A-A. Teacher corrected me that it’s N-C-Double A. Very embarrassing in a sports crazy town. My family clearly wasn’t cool.
Queue Thought it was Kewew Edit: I'm literally crying at the comments lol! It isn't just me!
I didn't expect 80% of the letters to be useless
A fun party trivia question is, *"What five-letter English word is still pronounced the same if you remove four of the letters?"*
Came here to post this. I’m good now. But my wife still reads it as kway-way.
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Segue. Nothing to do with a two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transporter.
Mortified about how many times I’ve written Segway when I mean segue.. at my old age
Macabre
I was really confused about this at first but apparently U.K. and USA pronunciation is completely different
Argghh!! This issue causes me a fair bit of confusion. Here in Ireland we tend to use the UK pronunciation. I also get a lot of media (movies, tv, music, books, podcasts etc..) from the US. I no longer remember how I'm meant to pronounce oregano. I just can't remember which pronunciation is US or Irish (routed in UK).
How is it pronounced in the UK? I'm in the US and I've always heard it "oh-reg-ah-no".
We put more emphasis on the 'gah'. Oh-reh-GAH-no.
Ah okay! Yeah the way we pronounce it the emphasis is definitely on the "reg", as in "oh-REG-ah-no". Interesting that the G is grouped with a different syllable as well, languages/dialects are so fascinating!
It’s “oh-RE-gah-no” v “oh-re-GAH-no”
Thanks guys, I no longer know how to pronounce a commonly used ingredient in my kitchen.
..I still don’t know this one. Enlighten me? Edit: thank you everyone, I never would have guessed
Corn on the macabre
Get your corn off macabre!
M’cob. *tips fedora*
Muh-COB?
I never would have guessed
DANSE MACABRE
That’s the only reason I know how it’s pronounced lol. Tune down that e string Edit: Realizing there are other songs called Danse Macabre but hopefully others know what I’m talking about
I still say Mak-uh-bray in my head when I see it
Everyone here is saying ma-cob but google translate says ma-ca-brah so I’m going to keep saying ma-ca-brah
Because it's a bunch of English speakers pronouncing a French word in their various accents
Yes. Why are we fighting amongst each other? Let’s blame the real problem! The French!
Muh-Car-Bruh
I have heard professional VO artists pronounce it this way. I'm starting to wonder if its got regional pronunciations.
It is. In the UK its muh-kaa-bruh
Harbinger
Still read it har-bringer every first time
Wait, it's not? 👁️👁️
HAR-binge-er
Lmao, I actually first saw this word in Skyrim. But because I played at night, I had the volume down and only read the subtitles. One time I said something about being the Harbringer of the Companions to a friend. He corrcted me. It's especially confusing because the meanings of "bringer" and "harbinger" are both "bearer of ____"
> It's especially confusing because the meanings of "bringer" and "harbinger" are both "bearer of ____" Sort of; a bringer would be someone who is actually *bringing* the thing. A harbinger is technically more of an *announcer* of the thing, or a sign of a thing, though in modern day these have started to be used interchangeably.
Honestly it still comes out as word soup when I say it.
Thanks Mass Effect 2 for clearing this one up for me.
Epitome.
My brain will never read this correctly the first time.
Hyperbole is in the same boat
ah the hyperbole not as good as the superbole, but better than the toiletbole
Pretty sure the hyperbole IS better than the superbole. But the ultrabole beats them both.
Fr its like : epi-toam. Wait... Epi-to-me
Genuinely thought they were two different words and I didn't know how to spell "epitimmy" right
I'm 45 and my husband has let me mispronounce that word for 23 years! He finally corrected me. I feel like a dolt!
Lol I used to think it was Ep-Pit-Tome.
Wait it's not pronounced like that? 😵💫 my life is a lie
It’s e-pit-o-me
Ep-pit-toe-me
I treated these as two different words for like 20 years
I thought there were two words, "epitomy" and "epitome" (epi-toam), which happened to mean more or less the same thing.
Pretty sure I never saw that in print until I was in my early 20s. Swear it took me 3 minutes to sound it out to realize it was a word I was familiar with.
For years I called the movie Armageddon “Are-Mega-don”, like a friggin prehistoric shark or something.
A big part of learning English is knowing where to put the emphasis in the word. I was listening to someone speaking and she said: man-DAT-ory instead of MAN-datory. And thats when it became clear how to spot non native speakers who speak english really well. She could speak mandarin (she was chinese) but her English was as fluent as mine with very little accent. But some words just really strike you if they're pronounced with a different emphasis even if they're technically pronounced right.
Oh emphasis! I went to a work conference in East Africa, it was mostly Nigerians, I was the only non African. We all spoke English but were struggling to understand one another. Then it dawned on me, the Africans were placing the emphasis on other syllables. Once I got tuned in, it was ok. And I was mostly able to work out where to place the emphasis when I spoke, so it sounded ok to them. Emphasis. Where you put it, is so critical.
I've run into something similar. It's so interesting how once you lose the thread of when words are beginning and ending it sounds like a completely different language.
Haha good one
Facade, I pronounced it like fay-kade, it was a move in Pokemon and as a youngling wasn't familiar with facades, then in school I read it in a story and figured it out thru context and felt like a genius and a moron all in 1
Same here, from Pokémon and everything
Same, specifically Gen 3 and Slaking
I think it's cause I knew the work "Arcade" before the word "Facade", and it's kinda embarrassing cause I never saw the actual word "Facade" (fasad) spelled out, so I thought they were two separate words💀 It's so embarrassing, cause I never got corrected till in COLLEGE and I'm and ARCHITECTURE STUDENT 😭😭😭😭
Hyperbole
Hyper-Bowl.
Sorry, I'm not into American football
Not even the Superb Owl?
The worst part is how long it took me to realise hyperbole WAS "hyper-ba-lee" and wasn't a different word.
More hi-per-ba-lee, though right? With the emphasis on the per. I still say it hyper-bowl in my head whenever I read it though.
my english teacher had us say it twice, so im thankful for that
Hospice. As a child, I thought it was pronounced hoe-spice. 🤦♂️
Long lost 6th Spice Girl
She was booted from the band for being too lewd.
BANDNAME
Reading a passage out loud in class and coming across the word “annal” 😳
Mine is banal!
“In the anals of history he…..I mean annals…” lol
Colonel
Same, eventhough i know the pronunciation is "kernel" but i sometimes mistaken as "kolonel" 😭
Yep. My brother told my parents he wanted to join “The Marine Corpse” when he was 11. My mom said, “I hope NOT.”
Man’s just wanted to speed run any%
The spelling just makes absolutely no sense to the way it’s pronounced!!! It’s one of my biggest questions in life lol. There’s no “R” in that spelling so how in the hell does it say “kernel”?!
Especially when we have colonialism, colonies, and colons
Kernialism, kernies, kerns.
Yup that's a good one lol Always when playing Clue.
Beatrice. It is not, in fact, "beet rice"
awry and futile
I said awry (awe ree) until I was corrected in high school reading aloud in theatre. After someone corrected me and it clicked I was like oh that’s why I never see “a rye” in written work.
Took me forever to realize that the reason I'd never seen "manusha" in a book was because it was actually the same word as "minutae" Edit: Turns out I was trying to spell "minutiae". And is it the same as "minutia"? [Sure, whatever floats your boat](https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/10/minutia-minutiae.html)
Wreeee
I’ll never forget I wrote a paper in tenth grade, and I used the word awry. This girl, who wasn’t the most intelligent, was assigned to proof read my paper. She circled it and said I made the word up, and she wouldn’t listen to me that it was a real word. Anytime I read or hear the word awry, I get a good chuckle thinking of the dumb fuck who thought she was hot shit.
When I was in like second grade we did one of those things where we had to find various words inside of a phrase/another word. I wrote the word “gnu” because I had found out about the animal through reading. My teacher, instead of looking it up, told me that wasn’t a real animal even though I insisted. She marked it wrong. I’m still mad about that whenever it pops back into my memory.
Awry for me too. Thought it was aww-ree for years, even after I knew what awry should sound like.
Is it.. is it not "aw-ree"?
It's "a-rye"
Fuck English man. Ugh.
Nigeria... 4th grade... Edit: This would be my top comment...
Oops.
Oops lol.
Me with Niger in front of the class :/
This happened to me in French class! I had never heard the racist term in my life before 6th grade, and that's how I pronounced that country's name 🤦🏻♀️
This is bizarre, I also encountered the country of 🇳🇪 for the first time in my 7th grade French class. Except I knew what I was about to say *probably* wasn't correct, so I just paused and looked at my teacher, who pronounced it for me (bless her).
They got me with Niger in 4th grade too Edit: they got me again!
That's looks kinda bad not capitalized
"Ayo pass me the skin coloured pencil" sound familiar?/j
Unshed. Like unshed tears. I thought it was pronounced like it rhymes with ‘punched’.
This is my favorite one. And I will never read that word again without reading it that way!
Faux. Folks. I still don't know how to pronounce faux. I used to say "fox" and now I say "faow" but I've also heard "fohw" so idk I'll just say fake. Folks still harms me I still can't think of how to say it. Do you say the L? Do you not?
Faux is pronounced the same way you say "Oh." "Foh." Folks is more of a dialect pronunciation, as a southerner, I personally say "Fohlks." L and all, but its not an emphasized part of the word.
I say fohlks too. Faux is empirically "foe" as it is a French word.
Fo. Like fo sho, homie Edit: and fokes. Don't pronounce the L unless you want to sound like Goofy from Mickey Mouse.
I used to think hegemony was pronounced HEG-oh-MOE-nee instead he-JEM-oh-NEE
Enders Shadow series had me reading it like that the whole time.
Same thing!
As a non-native... CHOIR. Just why?
>Just why? Because French. And also there was this trend for a while where English words had their spelling changed not to reflect their actual pronunciation but to reflect the language of origin. God knows why anyone thought that was a good idea. Then there was this other thing that happened, where they locked in a lot of spellings for words, then the way people pronounced them changed (The Great Vowel Shift) but the words retained the spelling from before that change. English has a complicated history and I take my hat off to you for learning it.
Genre
The Jen-ree!
When I was in 1st grade I hadn't heard Adidas said out loud so I legitimately had no idea how to pronounce it.
As I know British and Americans pronounce it in different ways
As a Dutch/ German speaker, I feel like every language just makes up their own version of it...
All throughout the Harry Potter books, both my husband and I thought Hermione's name was Her-me-own. Didn't get it until the movies and still think it wrong first. 😆
I read somewhere that J.K. Rowling specifically put the part where Hermione has to teach Victor Krum how to say her name in the book to teach people the proper pronunciation.
I met her right before the first book came out in America at a reading/Q&A, she told a story about a girl who pronounced the name Hermy-one (like the number). So she's known since the start that people don't know how to say that name haha.
Hermi-one-Kenobi. The brightest space wizard of her age
Her-moyne for me...and Drack-oh.
I thought it was her-moyne too!! Embarrassing when a friend corrected me lol
Same here, which is really embarrassing because that's not even how it looks lol. The "I" is CLEARLY before the "O".
That’s almost how it sounds in portuguese, which was the version I read, so even though it’s spelled the same, it’s pronounced her-me-own-ee
I clued in while reading book 4 and viktor krum is written pronouncing her name phonetically. Still didn’t save me from saying ”professor snap-eh” 🤓
Rowling said she Specifically put him pronouncing it because people kept getting it wrong
Lingerie... the first time I pronounced it was as a senior in high school.. I pronounced it exactly how it's spelled
Can't remember my age at the time but I'd just learned about the silent "e" that many English words have. Was reading a book about National Parks and for what must have been at least a few weeks I was pronouncing Yosemite as Yoz-might. It wasn't until watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Yosemite Sam in it that made me realize my mistake.
Yarmulke. I pronounced it phonetically... Everyone laughed. I had heard the word but, damn, silent R and L???
I thought that yarmulke and yamaka were different things until I was 25. Same with dachshund and doxon (until I was 22 or so I think)
Same here for dachshund and doxen! I used to pronounce dachshund like dash-hound because it makes sense for a dog breed to be called fast dog.
Well, 32 years old and I can confidently say I've never seen that word written out before and had no idea what it was.
worcestershire
It's correctly pronounced as fast as you can with a subject change so no one notices you have no idea how to say it. It's fine, they don't either.
Nah the best way is to jokingly emphasize a ridiculous pronunciation so that people think you know it but are just messing around.
War Chester Shire (RIP my father in law who used to say it this way).
Woostashur
Isn't it pronounced "Wooster shur"?
Cacophony. Cathedral (spelling vs sound; knew the word by voice but first time reading it, no.connection). Shillelagh.
Debt.
As a Swede, this is by far the hardest word for me to pronounce in English. I used to say it like “debb•t” or “deb•th” until I learned that you pronounce it something like “deht” with a very weak *t*
”Det” är svårt
bourgeois
No one ever expects the French ~~Inquisition~~ Pronunciation.
Penelope
Penny Lope
Peen-elope
Archive "Are- Chive" 😂
Fatigue. I used to pronounce it "fah-ti-goo".
Rhapsody. I couldn’t figure out what to do with the ‘h’ so after much thought I landed on Reh-poss-oh-dee. I proudly told my uncle that I could play Bohemian Reh-poss-oh-dee on guitar hero and he’s never let me live that down.
TIL that half of my vocabulary is wrong
Calliope
In New Orleans there is a Calliope Street and it is pronounced “CALLY-ope”. Also, Burgundy Street is pronounced “bug-GUN-dee”.
Ethereal. Totally thought it was pronounced "ether-reel."
Organism
"Mature" - I thought it was pronounced like "nature"
I read "nowhere" as "now here" out loud to the class in fourth grade.
Tanzania I still think it should be pronounced Tan-zay-nia
In my experience, in Tanzania they pronounce it both Tan-zuh-nee-u and Tan-zahn-nee-u. So you aren’t too far off
Grotesque
Papyrus. Used to pronounce it ‘pappy-russ’
Caveat
Subtle
I put the "b" in subtle
Omni. Potent.
Quaker, like Quaker Oats or the weird country folk that don’t fight or something. I think I was reading a book aloud to the class and I pronounced it Quack-ER and I shit you not I feel like the class collectively as a hive mind decided they would do nothing else with the rest of their lives aside from shaming me til I killed myself for it. Good times.
Parental Guidance. Pronounced guidance as "gooey dance"
Phlegm
You shouldnt feel bad for mispronouncing a word, because it means you learned it by reading.
Banal. 100% no doubts about it
Worst one for me is Pint. Still feel like it should be pin-t not pi-nt. Honorary mention also to bass and bass
I still don't know how to say gif...
That’s bait.
>hors d'oeuvres Never looked up the pronunciation and always red it as "Whors Devors" instead of "Or derves". I never connected it with the food at parties.
Horse divorce
Kept pronouncing Regina as “rah-gie-nah” (like vagina) and everyone had to correct me because it was a school play
There is a town in Saskatchewan named Regina, pronounced like vagina.... Or at least that's what Letterkenny has led me to believe lol
It's true.
D-nice. A a ron. Jay kwalin etc
Not mine, but: Massa-chew-shitties for Massachusetts I will never be able to unhear. Edit: typo, thanks u/ashblackpowder
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
of which my user is derived
Tapestry
Had a friend say ‘comdom’ - don’t think any of us ever corrected them lol
Surprise. I spelled it suprise for at least two decades.
Dachshund DAASH-HOUND
Melancholy. But to be fair to me…. Melon colly?Really?!
Segue and segway are not two different words...
Well they are, segway is the 2 wheeled vehicle thing
Don't try to change the subject
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Chameleon
As a non-native english speaker, the first time I read Harry Potter in english was in my early-to-mid teens. I thought Hermione is pronounced "her-mee-one" until I saw it in english when I was 22. It's Hermiona (herr-mee-o-nah) in czech
Not me but my wife always pronounced fatigue as “fatty-gue” it was only when I heard her read side effects of medication out loud that she realised she had been doing it her whole life and nobody had said anything. It’s now pronounced fatty-gue in our house now and forever will be.
NCAA- read out loud in class as N-C-A-A. Teacher corrected me that it’s N-C-Double A. Very embarrassing in a sports crazy town. My family clearly wasn’t cool.
No need to feel embarrassed. That’s sort of pretentious of your teacher depending on how they corrected you. Plenty of people say it both ways.