Eh? What’s unusual about that one?
I’ve seen many people who thought that “voila’” was spelled “walla”
I don’t get it. How would YOU pronounce it?
I (non-native speaker) used to say “vine” (as in grapevine) and then “gar”, two syllables in total. That’s what it looked like to me.
Or Luxury Yacht (pronounced Throathwobbler Mangrove). But even without Python, “yacht” would count.
Renege.
THat last G should be pronounced J. But it’s not!
Why?
Another Scottish name is Menzies, pronounced Mingus. The z is supposed to be a “yogh,” hence the weird pronunciation. Many Irish and Scottish language words look weird, until you realize that “h” is not the letter, but a character that modifies the letter before it.
Pronunciation (the word itself - a little irony there).
Or any word with -tion of course.
English (and certain other languages such as French) has favoured what’s called etymological spelling, in which spellings reflect the origin of the word rather than the pronunciation. For example, knight is spelled that way because it indeed used to be pronounced k-nikht, more or less. (Most of our words beginning in kn- have direct cognates in German and other Germanic languages where the k is pronounced, such as Knecht, Knie, and so forth.)
Some additional insight into the early stages of standardizing English spelling, from one of the first English printers:
'Cause it’s followed by an “e.”
So what word was it you were trying to say? Caution?
Cation, which is pronounced cat-ion because it’s a kind of ion.
I pronounce this as spelled. Virginians like you probably think I sound like a damyankee. 
Pretty awesome, but I’m at a loss to figure out how this is about standardizing spelling. This shows that common English (as every other language, there’s nothing special about it and it has nothing to do with being born under the moon which is ever waxing and waning, I assure you) displayed variation; for instance, it had two words for eggs, one of which was ‘egges’, which was not understood in Forlond (i.e. Isle of Wight) and another was ‘eyren’ - a cognate, no doubt of Dutch ‘eieren’ and German ‘eier’, both meaning eggs - which was understood there.
Still, I think it is pretty hilarious, especially when ‘the goode wyf’ says she does not speak French. It also contains a neat example of literal spelling (or whatever the opposite of etymological spelling is): an hows, which shows that the ‘h’ was apparently not pronounced (this is also true for the ‘y’ sound at the beginning of words starting with ‘u’ - you’ll occasionally see ‘an university’).
Yeah, but cat-ion would be pronounced cat-ion!
For want of a hyphen, his dignity was lost …
chamois.
Chamwow!
I was surprised about this, too, when I learned how to correctly pronounce victuals. I’d always pronounced it as its written, and thought that “vittles” was a slangy variation.
This is the a new one for me. If I’d seen this word, I would have pronounced it as it’s written. I have heard of “chitlins,” and even seen the word spelled this way. Again, I thought that this was a slangy variation.
You’d better learn how to pronounce “anion,” too. (Both cation and anion end with the pronunciation of “ion.”)