Well, I think it’s proper, because once the cedilla is dropped you have people like my college professor who pronounced it “fa-KAYD”.
He might have been over generalizing. German borrow words “mit umlauts” commonly will be written with an e following the letter if no umlaut is available, for example, foehn for föhn. If so, Phönix would be approximately be pronounced “fernicks.” Why a germanic borrow word would have a ph in it would be a mystery though. How’d he do with “Chicago?”
I highly suspect that he didn’t actually pronounce an ‘r’; you’re just used to hearing the vowel used (an umlauted ‘o’) in the phoneme ‘er’ in which it’s often not pronounced fully, and thus hear the ‘r’ when it’s not actually there. The vowel is just not used in any native English words outside of that phoneme.
Most English speakers unfamiliar with German* hear the German “oe” or umlauted “o” as “er”. Ask any Chicagoan how “Goethe Street” is pronounced and you’ll likely be told “Gerty Street”.
- That would make them “non-Teutophones”, I guess. I used to think a Teutophone was something you played in high school band.
My high school band had one, he used to teut away on his Teutophone. But it would only play works by German-speaking composers.
Bodice.
Several years ago, while sewing maternity jumpers for me, my MIL would read this word from the pattern and pronounce it bow-dyce. Many times I referred to the same pattern piece as the BAH-diss, but she still consistently mispronounced it. Nearly drove me nuts! 
Anything with a silent e on the end.
needscoffee said:
It might help if they spelled it right - liaison.
It amuses me when I see someone spell “resume” (the document that details one’s career) as “resumé”. The correct spelling is “résumé”, but we Americans seem to have completely dropped the diacriticals on that word.
We have already discussed “voila” (or “voilà”) as being pronounced “walla”. However, I usually see it spelled as “viola”.
A few weeks ago, I was at a restaurant where the waitress said they didn’t have Guinness on tap, but they had it in the can. A passing waiter corrected her and said, “Sir, we do have Guinness Draught, from a can.” The waitress was annoyed at the interruption, and later said, “I yelled at him because he can’t tell people that we have Guinness Draft … what we have is Guinness Drawt, which is a different type of Guinness.” I had to explain to her that what she was pronouncing “drawt” was really pronounced “draft”, in other places, and that he was correct not only in the pronunciation, but also in setting the expectation that it was from a can and not a tap.
As a small child, I knew the word “arrangatang”, but every time I was at my grandma’s house, going through the same 3 tired viewmaster discs, I’d get to the picture of the monkey and wondered why it said Orange Utah.
Indict was one I always had trouble reading as well.
I’m reasonably sure it’s suh-NECK-duh-kee, with maybe a bit of a secondary stress on the last syllable. Kind of like Schenectady, New York.
On a related note, *Synecdoche, NY *was a great film.
pinochle
euchre
I remember the eureka moment when I figured out that ep-i-tome and eh-pit-o-me were the same word.
And ‘Magdalene’ is often pronounced ‘Maudlin’. That confused me. For that matter, it really confused me that Kansas and Arkansas have completely different pronunciations. How does that work?!
Me too. I remember a Calvin and Hobbes where Hobbes forces Calvin to sing a pro-tiger song before being admitted to a clubhouse or something. He sings: “Tigers are perfect, the e-pit-o-me (sic) Of good looks and grace and quiet dignity.” I assumed it was a different word that epitome, which I pronounces ep-ih-tome.
Quahog is the only word in this thread I had to look up. And two days later I was at a restaurant on Cape Cod that had quahog on the menu, so I tried it, just because I had seen it here. Not bad!
(It’s a kind of clam, and it’s pronounced “co-hog.”)
**The Great Philosopher ** said:
Blame the French.
Bolding added.
If you’d ever watched Family Guy, you wouldn’t have this problem. 
Me, too. I got a feeling in epitome stomach.
Years ago, in a movie I’ve mostly forgotten, characters talked about this kind of word. Chophouse, one said, looks like it’s pronounced cho-FOOSE. Misled, said the other, seems like it would sound like MY-zuld. Instead, they’re CHOP-house and miss-LED.
Chophouse never fooled me, but I’m glad I never got caught saying misled wrong. I thought is was something misers did.
I knew what sinews were, but I thought it was SIGH-nooz. I was in college before I was caught saying it that way, instead of SIN-yooz.
Rather than get into the mire of Jag-wahr/Jag-you-ar/Jag-wire, I say it as the Conquistadors taught it to the rest of the world. HA-gwahr.
Reminds me of an acquaintance who pronounced Yosemite as Yosa-mite!
The “chophouse” gag was in Carnal Knowledge. It doesn’t work when you read it, it works when you spell the word to somebody else. You say it C-h-o-P-h-o-U-s-e, and it sounds like CHO-FO-USE. The “misled” line is from The Accidental Tourist, although I remember it from the book and don’t remember if it carried over into the film.