"And what is wrong with Pockeestan!? You are a bad man!"
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 ...
"And what is wrong with Pockeestan!? You are a bad man!"
I drop the ‘t’ altogether from the word ain’t with my pronunciation.
True.
If you actually live where pecans are grown you ought to have a say in how the word is pronounced.
I’ve noticed lately that “pundits” is being pronounced “pundants.”
On election night, “jubilant” was “jubulant.”
Pittsburghese:
Remember = ahmember
Washington = Warshington
And that = an’ ‘at
Sandwich at Primanti’s: Sammich at Permanti’s
She told him that she when she started in Houston, the station management gave her a list of words and Houston-style pronunciations that she had to learn for her to even begin to be accepted by the audience.
I like “DEEtroit” better than I like “Day-twah”.
Because we won the war?
I have noticed that "any" is pronounced differently around the country--in California, it rhymes with "tinny"; in North Carolina with "beany"; in Vermont with "Jenny."
I have, from the “Great Courses”, a fun one titled “The Secret Life of Words: English Words and Their Origins”. The professor in it, Anne Curzan, echoes a lot of what I hear from others, that the language (almost any language) moves and changes no matter what any expert may try to do. From the first great English Dictionary by Samuel Johnson in 1755, it has been made clear that, regardless of pronunciation guides common to such books, pronunciations will change by time, region and intention.
I personally believe that using a good vocabulary and pronunciation is one of the great tools for being successful. Learning to use proper words for social situations does wonders for most people, yet to see much of popular culture, one wonders if such work is worth the effort. Indeed, I hold that there is a lot of intent in the minority communities to go to extremes in making an emphatic idiomatic sub-tongue like the ‘black english’! Myself, I say that using such is a case of self-imprisonment and a deliberate effort to show that the individual refuses to conform!
However, we also have many cases where the Civil Rights enforcers care not a whit that a person is almost unintelligible in speech so long as they meet other qualifications. This tends to destroy any incentive to make a better use of the one singular thing that separates humans from all other animals, use of language.
Is it jengus or gengus?
Exactly. And that contributes to the richness of the English language.
To paraphrase the very old joke, because when you pay someone to paint your porch, you don't want them touching the car!
By the way:
How does one pronounce: Jinjis Khan ?
It’s also the official state tree of Texas, and it’s pronounced “puh-KAHN.”
I was standing in line at an ice cream shop in downtown Gettysburg a few years ago, and the people in front of me were thinking of ordering the pee-can ice cream. God knows how they’d pronounce “catalpa.”
It is hard to pronounce the TH “clothes” and I don’t remember ever hearing anyone say “vehicle” without the “H”. These must be regional. Enjoyed reading the list.
The PE-CAN is what your dad made you use on long road trips when he didn’t want to stop the car.
A rock station in the Palm Springs area switched to an all-news format, and one of the English disc jockeys stayed on and became a newscaster. in a news broadcast, he called the Badger State “Wiscon-SIN.”
He says the correct pronunciation of ‘Arkansas’ is ‘Ark-an-saw’ which is correct for the State but not necessarily for the river. I know in Colorado it is ‘Ar-Kansas’ river.
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