Just based on how often I notice someone mispronounce a word without realizing it (or have done so myself and realized it later). Statistically I’m probably still doing it with some word.
Welcome to the world of Irish names!
We got:
- Dearbhla (Derv-la, f)
- caoilfhionn (kee-lin, f)
- Meadhbh (Maeve, f)
- Saoirse (seer-shuh, f)
- Seoirse (shor-shuh, m)
- Caoimhín (kee-veen, m)
- Sadhbh (sive, f)
And many more!
Hope do you pronounce Siobhan?
Shuh-vawn
My American accent pronounces it “Shove-on”.
There’s meant to be a fada over the a (á), so it’s definitely meant to be a longer vowel sound.
Take the name Sean for example. Spelled like that it’s actually pronounced shan, and means old. The name that we all pronounce as Shawn is actually spelled Seán
The name that we all pronounce as Shawn is actually spelled Seán
And, fun fact, is the Irish version of the Hebrew name Yohanan (יוֹחָנָן) from which we get John and Jean and Jehan and Johan and Shane and Juan and many other variants!
Everybody’s named John. All the way back. There is only one name, just lots of different spellings and pronunciations.
It actually helps a little if you realize the Russian letter В is pronounced like an English V.
We should re-do Romanization. Start over, sound it out, have a big Anglosphere conference to decide on what letters make what noise and stick to it.
Many of the slavic romanizations have largely centralised on strict roman phonetics. There are still exceptions, but many of them can be sounded out with a bit of learning.
Yeah. English doesn’t use the “bh” and “dh” digraphs the same way we use “th”, but Irish does. One you learn that, that’s like 80-90% of the confusion.
My Irish cousin-in-law recently had a daughter and named her Blathnaid. I was very surprised to learn it is pronounced Bla-nid
Worcestershire
I believe it’s pronounced “wstr”
Close, that’s Worcester. Worcestershire is “wstrshr”!
Woosta! :)
Wuss-ter
Wuss-ter-sheer
The whole word is silent
sauce?
That one isn’t silent
And nearby Leominster
And Cirencester
and Towcester (“toaster”)
Map Men have a few more examples
Sern Stir?
It’s pronounced “siren sester”.
“-cester” is usually pronounced “stir”, I’d assume then “Sir In Stir” if I got the first part wrong
It’s English. The only rule is that actually in some cases the rules are different.
Lemon Stir
Wash your sister sauce
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There’s a Worcester in Massachusetts, local pronunciation rhymes with sister (which is in turn said like “sista”)
One of my friends once called me pedantic, and I got to correct his pronunciation of it - he stressed the first syllable. One of the high points of my life.
Someone is peDANTic, but they themselves are a PEdant. Probably why they made that mistake
But did they say Ped-ant or PEE-dant?
Like how we can reCORD some music and release a a REcord
Or make some COMpost by putting those scraps in the comPOST
I still put scraps into the COMpost, but only the comPOSTable scraps.
I had a similar thing with the word contrarian!
A “niche” is not a “nitch”
You’re a bit too late for trying to complain about that one.
The latter has been the dominant American pronunciation of the word for so long that it now appears as the primary pronunciation guide in American dictionaries.
Both Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster agree that “nitch” was the correct pronunciation in both British and American English until very recently. You already linked Merriam-Webster, so here’s O.E.D:
N.E.D. (1907) gives only the pronunciation (nitʃ) /nɪtʃ/ and the pronunciation /niːʃ/ is apparently not recorded before this date. H. Michaelis & D. Jones Phonetic Dict. Eng. Lang. (1913), and all editions of D. Jones Eng. Pronouncing Dict. up to and including the fourteenth edition (1977) give /nɪtʃ/ as the typical pronunciation and /niːʃ/ as an alternative pronunciation. The fifteenth edition (1991) gives /niːʃ/ in British English and /nɪtʃ/ in U.S. English.
(N.E.D is the original name of the O.E.D. “/nɪtʃ/” is pronounced “nitch” and /niːʃ/ is pronounced “neesh”.)
I hope cache isn’t pronounced like cachet (rhymes with sashay) rather than cash.
Australians pronounce is as kaysh which Ive always used, and I was horribly annoyed by Americans pronouncing it cash.
I was even more annoyed when I learned that cash is the “correct” way to pronounce it!
Get used to it, my Australian friend
It varies by region at least in the US based on a few years of doing service desk work. Listening to YouTubers, it seems a bit all over the place as well.
It likely correlates with French influence in the South, seeing as it is a French word.
Some of the the Louisana folks would often say ka-SHAY in a wonderful Cajun accent.
They’re exactly the ones who should know better…
Well, crap. Guess I’ll eat a nice quitch to chear myself up
You mean a quickie?
As long as it’s not scrambled, I suppose
Fun fact i lost a regional spelling bee because of those exact words. I should have asked for usage example but I was like 11 and terrified
Or a niece, Eric Matthews.
For me it isn’t “some” word it is “many, many” words.
charcuterie (shar-KOO-terr-ee) (TIL)
potable (POH-tah-bull)
prerogative (preh-ROG-ah-tiv) – wait, wat? Damn. I say it (pur-OHG-ah-tiv)
preternatural (pree-ter-NAT-chur-al)
remuneration (reh-myoo-ner-AY-shun) – I’m not admitting how I say it lol
surprise - let’s just say I spelled it suprise for ages. sigh
victual (vittle) - wait, that’s how you spell it??
Indefatigable (IN-dih-FA-tih-gə-bl) not in-dee-fa-TEEG-able
Primer: \PRIMM-er\ – small book / short informative piece of writing. (Brits can use long-i for both the paint undercoat and the book).
Mischievous: \MISS-chuh-vuss\ though mis-CHEE-vee-us is a non standard alternate pronunciation.
Interlocutor: \in tuhr LOCK you tore. I had no idea how to pronounce this so I never said it.
I think some “mispronunciations” are down to regional pronunciation. Like, I say miniature as MIN-ih-chure by habit though I’m well aware of how it’s spelled and “should” be pronounced. I swear that’s how I heard it growing up.
Maybe it isn’t regional and it is just me. That would explain some things lol.
And uh, yeah I have a bunch more, some I know but am forgetting at the moment. Undoubtedly I mispronounce many more while having no idea. What must people think of me? Lol
Look, I was on board until you started throwing out made up words like preternatural, victual, and indefatigable, then I knew you were pulling my leg.
Horatio Hornblower would like a word if you think Indefatigable is a made up word!
In war we’re tough and able [steps on cat]
Quite indefatigable
Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate Clark Gable
Clearly pronounced in-de-fa-tee-gable
But many times, they’re given rhymes that are quite un-sing-able.
Looks like you’re mainly struggling with words of french origin, which is fair, the language is fucked up.
TIL it’s “prerogative”…
I’m American and have never heard “prim-er” I’ve always heard “prime-er”.
I say miniture when it’s an adjective like a smallish thing, but mini-a-ture when I’m using it as a noun, like the pieces used in tabletop gaming.
victual (vittle)
I knew that “vittle” was from the word “victual,” but I never knew that they were actually pronounced the same!
Mischievous: \MISS-chuh-vuss\ though mis-CHEE-vee-us is a non standard alternate pronunciation.
I hate that alternate pronunciation. How do you get “vee-us” from “vous”?
Idk. Likely some people misheard or misread it way back and then repeated.to others and it spread. How does any word change over time, right?
The only time I have actually heard someone use indefatigable is in the Monty python, where they intentionally pronounce it wrong
/prəˈrɒgətɪv/ Huh. I guess usually when a schwa and a rhotic is involved, my dialect drops it. I pronounce it /prˈrɒgətɪv/ which could be romanized to pur-ROH-guh-tiv. But there’s no actual separation between the u and the r there.
Interesting. I find the combination of rhotic - schwa - rhotic rather awkward. That could explain why it is commonly mispronounced.
I was like 25 when I found out it was wheelbarrow and not wheelbarrel
It’s pronounced ‘gif’
The German girl Ginger gave George gross gelatin.
Giblet
Jiraffe
