Posted on 11/18/2016 12:35:53 PM PST by EveningStar
Fred Astaire drew laughs back in the Thirties with his song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" in which the lovers can't agree on the pronunciation of words like either, neither, and tomato.
On a personal level, I cringe when I hear someone sound the "t" in often or pronounce pecan with a short "a," but I have to acknowledge that both these pronunciations are widely accepted alternate pronunciations that can be justified by the spelling.
Alternate pronunciations, however, are a different matter from out-and-out mispronunciations. The latter, no matter how common, are incorrect, either because of the spelling that indicates another pronunciation, or because of what is widely agreed upon to be conventional usage. Word of caution: I'm writing from an American perspective.
Here are 50 frequently mispronounced words. The list is by no means exhaustive, but provides a good start.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailywritingtips.com ...
“Mispronounce?” . . . What’s wrong with it?
“... and Letts do it Let’s do it,...”
A ‘PEE-can’ is a port-o-let. The nut is ‘pe-CAWN’.
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My biggest irritant in all of alternate pronunciation is use of a hard pause instead of a hard sound. For example instead of “eating” or “eading” someone see “ee in”.
Because you?
Pecan is a Native American (Algonquin)word and is properly pronounced pehcahn. It is also a Native North American tree, found only in America anbd Mexico.
A pox on them!...............
LOL. Me too.
Hate it when pecan is pronounced ‘pee-can’ ..right or wrong that’s not the way we say it in Tx.
Prostate: The late mayor Tom Menino of
Boston on a public service announcement:
“Together we can beat prostrate (sic)
cancer.”
Names mispronounced: Ray or Dave Davies
of the Kinks: should be “daviss” not
“day-vees”.
Have heard Britishers pronounce Michigan
as “Mitch-i-gen”.And what’s with lieutenant as “lef-tenant”?
when I wus laidup in the Horsepistal thay gave me a PEECAN, to yourinate in!
Texas is a differnt story...............
Well that worked out well. NOT.
The only place you can get it these days is on eBay.
Or “praline.”
Why would someone spend $50K - $200K for a Porsche and not learn to pronounce it.
Even the TV ads mispronounce “Volkswagen.”
In his reading the audiobook of
Killing Lincoln, O’Reilly pronounced
cavalry as Calvary
I think a lot of these are not so much mispronunciations as they are non-standard pronunciations, or regionalisms, or pronunciations based in dialect.
I remember “bob-wire” was common where I grew up in southern Illinois. That area was originally settled by southerners, and there was an influx of southerners in the area when I was a kid.
As for ask/ax — “ax” was evidently common in some parts of England going back a number of centuries.
Listen, that's the way we said it back in my castle when we were moistening our fasteners ...
A few characters in Stephen King’s The Stand say bob-wire; also family as “fambly”
the word is ‘height’ not ‘heigth’
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