Most of mine have already been covered, but one that really eats at me:
When people pronounce Wisconsin as WESconsin. There is no E in Wisconsin. It’s even worse when TV personalities pronounce the home of the Packers as GREEN Bay, WESconsin. The emphasis is not on the Green. It’s either equally stressed, or the emphasis is on Bay.
/rant over. I shall return to my cheese curd eating ways.
Yes, both rr’s. brairy instead of berry
One language may be missing the sounds necessary to accurately replicate sounds from another language. Nothing surprising or annoying about it.
How do you pronounce hors d’oeuvres?
Redundancy is common with borrow words where the exact meaning of the original word is strange to most people. Or even for well-known words–ever have a tuna fish sandwich?
I say “lie-brairy” with both "r"s, but, curiously, February comes out as “FEB-you-airy” instead of “FEB-roo-airy” unless I’m being particularly precise about my pronunciation/speaking in a “higher” social register.
I don’t understand your point here. “Eye” is pronounced /aɪ/.
If you are thinking it should be pronounced as separate syllables, no, that’s not so. The Japanese alphabet isn’t 100% syllabic. The characters あいうえお are generally not pronounced as separate syllables. They add a vowel sound and basically change a single vowel into a double vowel.
In fact, I think that’s the main reason why non-native Japanese speakers sound unnatural. They try to pronounce each letter as a separate syllable rather than joining the sounds smoothly.
Another good example. I say it with the b and the ru smooshed together so it sounds almost like Feb YOO airy. But I don’t get too bothered by folks that can’t quite sneak the “r” in there. That’s much better than the dumbass newscaster that say “Feberary”. Grrrrrrrrr.
Yup! Evansville Indiana!
My dear Mr. CK is from northern Indiana and doesn’t mispronounce vowels like that. He does, however, add consonants at the end of words, such as cousint.
Does Greek even have a J (or “soft G”) sound? I figured the first letter was a Gamma, which a Greek-American told me was always a hard G sound.
Is that not true? (He said "Gear’-ohss")
When people say ying and yang instead of yin and yang.
Or Eck cetera instead of et cetera
This * is an asterisk.
I have one friend who mispronounces several things:
Gorgonzola. She says gore-GAHN-zola, accented on second syllable.
Ben Affleck: She says Ben Ah-FLECK, accented on second syllable.
And then there’s Chipotle. She says… Chi-POLE-tay.
One that really bugs me is saying “homogenous” instead of the correct “homogeneous”.
It sounds like she’s getting him mixed up with Bela Fleck.
This retreads some of what I posted before. And I understand accept that there are some vowel sounds that can’t be properly formed without intensive self-practice or training. But I’ve always wondered, do people actually hear words the way they pronounce them or are they aware their pronunciation is incorrect (to whatever extent it may be), but use that pronunciation as a necessary means of communication. For example, I hear gyro as yhe-row and pronounce it that way, but I’m conscious of the distinction. And if I ever get an opportunity to ask a native speaker to teach me the correct pronunciation, I will.
Or do some people actually pronounce words the way they do because they actually hear it that way. Most of you have already heard this, but an extreme example is the Yanny or Laurel video (the aural equivalent of blue or gold dress) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDiXQl7grPQ I hear Yanny until they change the pitch and if asked to repeat what I heard, I would say Yanny.
I overheard a cow-orker discussing lunch. She wanted chip-ta-LAY.
(sorta sounds like Chik-fil-A)
mmm
Wreck havoc.
Is that almost a mondegreen? Those are fun.
Two others that I just thought of, that hasn’t been mentioned yet–
Over the the years, I’ve heard an astonishing number of traffic reporters on the radio talk about a highway “eggsit.” The word that they’re looking for is exit. Radio people, of all people, should be aware of proper diction.
I’ve also heard certain people talk about “lugsury” goods.
There is fine line between the mispronunciation of a word and the evolution of pronunciation. People from 1100 would think we’re idiots for how we say “Wednesday.” In the two examples you give, people know exactly what word they are pronouncing and how it is spelled. We’re just getting lazy about it. The only difference is that they leave the “x” voiced.