I took a geometry class in college with a young woman who could not pronounce “asymptote” as written. Instead, she said “ASS-a-ma-tote.” That killed me.
As I write this, I’ve suddenly realized that I barely pronounce the p in that word, but I’m not sure why. I pronounce it more when saying “asymptotic,” probably by analogy with “symptom.”
A couple more:
That big belt worn with a tuxedo? It is NOT a cumberbun! It is a cummerbund!
Momento is NOT an English word. Memento (a sentimental souvenir) is.
OK, that does it, y’all are learning proper spelling. Diptongo, leche ya. (The leche ya is optional).
Brings to mind for me, a semi-autobiographical novel read long ago; recounting at one point, an episode in England a bit more than a century ago. Boys aged ten or eleven are sitting an entrance exam for a grammar school (tailored to the brighter pupils). The young hero – well below genius-level – is struggling with the question,“What are the main products of Africa?”. He ends up writing: “Gold, diamonds, argichigo nuts and momentoes”.
I would assume because it’s on a boundary between the “m” and the “t” so the consonant combination already makes a light, implied “p” sound. I’d really have to stop and make a discrete, plosive “p” there for anyone to notice that I’m actually pronouncing a “p.” Same with “symptom.” If I say the “p” there – and I’m not completely sure if I do – it’s very light, as the transition from “m” to “t” already makes me say something akin to a “p” sound there. Looking a Merriam-Webster online, their pronunciation guide [lists it as \ˈsim(p)-təm]](Symptom Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster), so it’s not unusual to elide or just “suggest” the “p” there.
Once I was in Baltimore’s National Aquarium when a woman was pointing into the one of tanks, reading the label, and telling her daughter, “There’s an AN-ə-moan!”
The less I hear about this nonsense “issue”, the happier I am.
ELL-i-noy or ILL-i-noiz
WES-con-sin
MELK
brain implodes
The dictionary-happy teachers I had in school tried to teach less v. fewer with the following: use one for amounts, and the other for quantities. Which, no one ever remembered, because for us, quantities and amounts were synonyms! Seriously- a dictionary of that era reads:
quantity: a definite amount or portion: use an equal quantity of nuts and raisins in the cake.
amount: the sum total to which anything mounts up to or reaches: quantity: a great amount of snow.
No wonder many baby boomers are confused.
I hear the current method is to teach fewer for things one counts (five apples are fewer than six), and less for the other quantifications (five pounds is less than ten pounds). This seems much more logical.
When I grew up in Boston, the name of our hockey team was pronounced with one syllable: BROONS, to rhyme with prunes…
When I hear BROO-ins, I want to scream.
I suppose it depends on where you’re from. But the standard pronunciation of syrup is “seer-up”. I tend to think of “sur-up” alongside “sherbert”.
For me, it’s closer to “sih-rup” (with a “short i” like in “sit”), but I’ll say “surrup” sometimes when I’m playing around with accents. It’s definitely not said that way in my dialect area. But I am one of those “sherbert” folks. I’ve only once heard it said without the second “r.”
I thought that sirup was strictly a reduced sugar/water liquid used for things like iced tea or coffee. But according to Merriam-Webster, it’s an alternate spelling for syrup with the exact same definition.
I was never explicitly taught the less/fewer distinction, but it just sounds better to me to say “fewer” with countable objects. “I have less apples,” just sounds wrong to my ears.
And I say that as someone who doesn’t care about the vast, vast majority of these “incorrect” pronunciations. I do share the OP’s distaste for people who incorrectly teach that a variation is the one correct pronunciation, but I don’t care about most of these.
The ones that juxtapose letters or syllables do bug me a bit. Along with “lie-berry” for library, it carries a class association to my ear. Oddly, the same is not the case with “Febuary” and “suprise”–though those could be because they are how I say them.
ampersand != “oppersine”
Massachusetts != “masstooshuts”
Saturday != “sairdee”
Social Security != “soscurity”
constitution != “constooshun”
“Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!” – William Blake, Jerusalem
Brings back memories of my briefly and very unsuccessfully “doing” physics at school, not far off sixty years ago. A total lack of any scientific bent on my part, plus – I think I can fairly say – a not very good teacher. He was an irascible Ulsterman who “didn’t suffer fools gladly”, and was far less endowed with patience than would have been ideal for his profession. I remember him fiercely saying, in his strong accent: “I utterly hate the word “amount” ! It should be obliterated from the dictionary !” I was puzzled as to the reason for his quarrel with the word; it didn’t occur to me to ask for an explanation – I was scared of the guy, and probably such an enquiry from a dimwit like me, would have elicited heavy sarcasm and no understandable enlightenment.
Clarification from other sources, much later, would suggest that as a physicist – desiring that everything should be meticulously counted and measured – he found “amount”, actually referring to that which is not countable, annoyingly imprecise and wishy-washy.
Most of my peeves are listed here but I’ll add a couple I’ve heard.
“Tubalization” for tubal ligation
“Peasant” for pheasant
“Care-a-fay” for carafe
I also cringe when people say “niche” and “foyer” in english but apparently they are the accepted American pronunciations so I’ll give it a pass.
Which reminds me…
I once had a roommate who thought of herself as very intelligent. She insisted that it was “Pro- Nunk- chew- A-shun”. No matter how many times I explained and spelled it for her. We were at the pub at the time and this went on for hours. The irony was lost on her… but it was side-splitting hilarious for everyone else.
(My bolding)
Squire Squint, aiming at a pheasant,
Hit instead, a sitting peasant.
“Well,” he laughed, “sport can’t be stopped
Just because an h is dropped”.
Ha ha ha! I had a friend that came over freaking out that there were peasants all over her front yard. She was scared to death and couldn’t get out of her front door!
Not for modern Greek, at least. Gamma in Greek makes one of two sounds:a voiced palatal fricative (/ʝ/) before a front vowel (/e/, /i/), or as a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/. Neither of these is /g/.
The second one is closest to /g/, but it’s a fricative, not a stop. It actually sounds closer to a the French back-r.
But the one for gyro is the first one, as the y represents a front vowel. It sounds more like a harsh, emphasized “Y” sound, with a hint of the sound of the S in measure. Or like I’ve heard the ll pronounced in Spanish.
So both YEE-ro and ZHEE-ro make sense to me. JIE-ro does not. Not because it couldn’t be anglicized, but because that pronunciation is short for gyroscope or gyrocopter. At least, it is for me.