Veterinarian is becoming vet’narian. They’re chopping out a huge chunk of the word.
People who say “mano a mano” and think it means “man to man”. The phrase actually means “hand to hand”, as in combat. Even worse are those who say “mano y mano”, which means “hand and hand” and makes no sense.
There’s a guy who does traffic and weather on a local radio station, and he pronounces “overnight” as “oval-night” and Saturday as “Sattle-day.”
This one may be slightly off-topic, as it is a commonly misspelled word rather than commonly mispronounced. Nevertheless, it grates me just the same: Defiantly when definitely is meant.
What’s wrong with “lugsury”? If you pronounce the second half as “zhury” instead of “shury”, then you pretty much have to voice the “k” in the first part of the “x” sound, so it becomes a “g.” “Luck-shurry”(/ˈlʌkʃəɹi/) sounds slightly odd to me. “Lug-zhurry”(ˈlʌɡʒəɹi/) sounds right. Your dialect may vary. (Like the first or third pronunciation on this site).
Like this?
In the UK, we just say “vet” 
. (I know that that word of three letters, has a different meaning in the States. I don’t think we have a specific single word which denotes a former member of the armed forces.)
“Vet” is also commonly used for “veterinarian” here in the US, as well.
We could have a whole other thread titled “Apparently there is no such thing as a proper radio voice anymore”. What is the prerequisite these days to get an on-air job?
See, to me, “egg-zit” is the correct pronunciation. If you look at dictionary.com or Merriam-Webster, it’s the first pronunciation listed. “Eks-it” just sounds odd to my ears. Letters get voiced in English all the time, depending on their context. The most obvious example is the letter “s” for a plural. It can be the sound “s” or the sound (voiced) “z.” If the preceding sound is a vowel or a voiced consonant, it becomes a “z” sound. I assume a similar thing is happening here where “x” gets pronounced as “'gz” instead of "ks."For example, a terminating “x” I would always pronounce as “ks.” But an intervocalic “x” I think I usually pronounce as a “gz.”
Strike that. It seems that in most cases, I will pronounce it as “ks.” I’m trying to figure out if there is a linguistic “rule” I follow as to when I pronounce it “gz” and when I pronounce it “ks.” Looks like the “exi” combination usually comes out “egg-zi” with me. Existential. Exit. Exhilarating (ok, “exhi” there, but silent “h.”) But “sexing” comes out as “seksing.” There is some kind of rule at work, but I can’t quite figure it out.
Yep. I always assume they misspelled “definitely” so badly that autocorrect couldn’t tell what word had been intended, but IMHO that’s still no excuse.
It’s neither egg-zit nor eks-it. it’s exit. X has a distinct sound, but eks probably comes closer to the x sound than egs. It has a completely different mouth feel when saying it.
Try these words:
Flexible
Chex Mix
Mexico
Exit
Exemplary
Exotic
If you’re like me, it’s “X” in the first set, and “Eggs” in the second set. When the “ex” is preceded by a consonant, I get a hard X sound.
With one exception: Brexit. The eggs in Brexit come with the portmanteau.
Agreed. I was just thinking the other day about my co-worker whose last name is Cox. Keep in mind I work with a most prurient, juvenile group and said co-worker is the leader of the pack. Anyway, it occurred to me to wonder if he was ever self conscious about his last name and then I thought “* I* never hear “cocks” when I hear “Cox” , so why would he?” (if that makes sense).
All that aside, the comment I made about radio personnel really wasn’t about this particular issue. If only this was the biggest problem with the way most of them speak 
Yep, same pronunciation as yours in all cases.
I don’t see how “x” has a different pronunciation to “ks.” They feel exactly the same to me the way I say it, and the IPA marking for it is /ks/. Perhaps some dialects distinguish it in some way, but I’m not aware mine does. I would say Mexico and Meksico exactly the same way. And I sure as heck wouldn’t even know how to distinguish “cox” from “cocks.” They are pronounced exactly the same in my dialect. The only place where “x” would be pronounced different than “ks” is in those exit/examplary/exotic examples. If spelled with a “ks,” I’d probably pronounce it voiceless (as a “ks”) as opposed to voiced, as is done in my dialect (“gz.”)
Except wait, I’m gonna fuck up the execution of my proposed rule with an extreme excess of words that break it. Who, for example, lives in Texas? All my exes.
Completely agree that unvoiced x and ks are the same sound, just represented differently in spelling.
This is one of those times I’d love to do an experiment with someone who says they’re different:
Record various people saying word pairs such as flex/flecks, hacksaw/Texas, extra/huckster, lynx/sinks…where the sounds in question appear in different positions—after a vowel at the end of the word, before a vowel, before a consonant, after a consonant.
Then isolate the x and ks/cks sounds in the recordings. Play them and ask the listener to identify which are representing the letter x and which are not.
I’d be really surprised if people could do this consistently. I’m sure I couldn’t.
Ah, yes. It’s “eks-iss” there, too, not “egg-ziss.” There must be some rule!
For me, ex is pronounced eks (exit = eksit) unless
- the word starts with the spelling ex- (no leading consonant)
- and the accent is on the second syllable.
- and the first *sound *after the x is a vowel sound, except for words starting with exs- or exc-.
So
exist = egzist
** exact = egzact**
** exhume = egzoom**
but
except = eksept
** exsanguinate = eksanguinate
**
So “eccentric” is still pronounced “eksentric”, although I think “eccentricity” I may pronounce either way: “egzentrissity" "eksentrissity”. I guess eccentricity is WEIRD.