Mispronounced words and descriptions that drive you crazy

How would you pronounce umbrage? What is the “correct form”? Is it the medieval French or Roman Latin?

Like Um-breadge with without the ‘d’. I says it like I hears it! :smiley:

Spectacularly missing the point…

Agreed, but NEW-CLEAR is far better than NEW-KU-LER.

I assure you my post was done with tongue firmly in cheek. :stuck_out_tongue:

It ain’t sherbert. That’s all I got to say.

Then why not address the point?

What do you mean, exactly?

Let’s set aside the straw man that you introduced that anyone is disputing the way words are pronounced in the original language, such as the way karate is pronounced when speaking Japanese. We’re talking about the pronunciation of an adopted word.

If you acknowledge that it’s okay for an English speaker to pronounce “umbrage” as we do - and not just okay, in fact it would be wrong for a modern English speaker to pronounce it in the same way as a medieval French speaker - then why won’t you accept that the same kind of change in pronunciation may happen for more recently adopted words?

None of the above. It’s DEP-u-tee. Where do you hear dep-putty??

That’s not how I pronounce nuclear. It has three syllables: NEW-klee-er.

po·ta·ble
/ˈpōdəb(ə)l: adjective
safe to drink; drinkable.
I hate it when people say PAWT-eh-bowl. No!

I’ve given up expecting people to know the difference between “amount” and “number”. You can’t say “the amount of people” unless you’re referring to Soylent Green.

Yeah. It’s certainly better than when they say ‘Portable’ water without a hint of irony.

Maybe this is just my ears being unused to the vowel combination and approximating on a sound I’m more familiar with, but Japanese names like Aoi, Aoba or Karaoko all have an -ow sound in them to my ear.

I’m getting a bit off track here, but stands out even more to me is that the Japanese word hai rhymes with “eye”, rather than being “ha i”. But I’m neither an expert in linguistics nor Japanese, so I could easily be wrong on both counts.

Sorry, I meant “Kaoruko”, not “Karaoko”.

In this recording of someone saying ‘hai’ I swear I can hear two distinct syllables, ha-i. Makes me want to do a spectral analysis on some audio files to confirm it. Here is the same person saying 青.

Anyway, I am not surprised these words, as well as karate, etc, sound completely different when spoken with a strong English accent; the phonology does not match. Reminds me of the thread where it was noted all those Californians say ‘Los Angeles’ wrong.

I think there was another thread here that claimed that even 50% of Greeks will say JHY-ro, so I’m sticking to that.

Not a mispronunciation, but a misuse: When people use “in lieu of” to mean “because of” and not “in place of.” A former department manager at work did this all the time in e-mail announcements – “In lieu of the holidays, this week’s delivery schedule will change.”

I won’t even get started on punctuation. The same manager’s signature line included “Attitudes are contagious – is your’s worth catching?”

Back during George W. Bush’s administration, I used to fantasize that some literate member of his staff - Condaleeza Rice, say - would give him a simple mnemonic for that word: “Just remember, George: we need a new, clear policy.” Easy to remember, no?

Oh, just thought of one that does really bug me: habañero for habanero (spoken or written.) No enye there, people. I know it’s ring influenced by jalapeño, but it still needles me.

Does anybody besides newscasters say HARE-iss-ment instead of har-ASS-ment?

British pronunciations that grate on my nerves: herb with the h (which I understand Brits only started doing in the mid-19th C.) and FILL-it instead of fill-AY. Perhaps they wince when Americans and the French pronounce it correctly. :slight_smile:

American mispronunciations I find irksome:

pronouncing the final* S* in Illinois
pronouncing the initial I in Italian as a long I. There’s no such country as AY-taly, people.