There was a gag in yesterday’s How I Met Your Mother that Ted said “Chameleon” wrong because he only read it and never heard it. I can sympathize. I said “Omnipotent” wrong for years because I only read it. Also “Hyperbole”. That was another one.
For quite a few years I thought there were two singers: the one named “Fiance” that I kept hearing about and the one named “Be-younce” that I kept reading about.
It as only when I noticed the accent over the “e” in print that I realized it would be pronounced Be-youn-cee, and then further realized that she was the one I kept (mis)hearing about.
Chamois Ennui (I thought it was pronounced en-you-eye, I thought on-wee was a french name spelled like Henri. I was making this mistake up until a year ago actually)
**Hyperbole **(10th grade English sorted me out there, though)
**Milquetoast **(seriously why is this not spelled milktoast?)
Also, on a similar note, for years I thought that the differently-pronounced versions of the word “separate” were spelled differently [verb (SEP-uh-rate) spelled “separate” and adjective (sep-uh-RIT) spelled “seperate”]. All because of a typo in a Babysitters Club book I read when I was 8.
That was like me and “segue”. I thought there were two different words that meant roughly the same thing: “segue” and “segway” (and this is long before the two-wheeled vehicle thing). My rational was that the was a word “segway” that some how came from “segment” and “way” while the other word meant the same thing but had different language origins.
So “segway” and “segue” were kind of like “hors d’oeuvre” and “antipasto”.