There are some words - of course, I can’t think of any right now - that I don’t even try to pronounce.
No one says them, they only use them in writing, so no one knows how to pronounce them. They’re like “demesne”.
What, a bad haircut and they just pop into existence?
Oh, wait. Gee, that was odd.
On a special interest board today, a woman (not a lawyer) giving legal advice said there were “proto calls” that needed to be followed when terminating someone’s employment.
Yeah. I’ll take legal advice from her. You betcha.
Ooo. That’s something like a pre-Madonna.
Bono Fide. Not me, I saw it on a sign.
Yeah – יהוה comes to mind.
Hmmmm … “Dane?” No, it’s probably somebody who tried and failed to spell “Dwayne.” …right?
Your cohort can be found in your milieu, but certainly not reliably. If you can’t find them there, try checking your ambit. Persons, of course, are on the premises.
That’s my guess. I don’t think I have heard that one pronounced!
I’ll admit I was around forty before I found out how the name Nguyen was pronounced. (It basically sounds like “win”.)
This is a bit backwards, but …
I was in my third semester at Columbia University. I’m dropping the name to give you an idea of the general student body–few people are in there without taking a bunch of AP courses and at the very least have four years of high school science.
I was admitted and pulling my weight academics-wise, despite being a high school dropout.
To survive, I busted my ass playing catch-up with all the basic subjects, taking out books and tutorials in advance of my classes in order to learn the basics of what I was missing.
Chemistry class.
Lecture hall.
300+ people.
I forget what the question was, but my answer was:
cashon.
As in cat potion …
cat potion …
cation.
:smack:
I say Dwy-ANN. Dwyane probably says Dwayne.
Ok, but what did you mistakenly infer? That Steve Wynn was Vietnamese? That some scenarios were Nguyen-Nguyen?
It was only a few years ago that I finally figured out that it isn’t “Knights in White Satin”…
Way back in the olden days on AOL, I wrote “hear hear” in response to a post I agreed with.
Another poster came in and called me an idiot because it should have been “here here” instead.
I was embarrassed and had to admit that though I’d heard the phrase all my life, I couldn’t say with any certainty that I’d ever seen it written.
Another poster eventually came along and disagreed with who the idiot was, but this could have gone either way.
It’s even a valid word in SpellTower.
I’m seven, doing a reading in church. Thankfully this was the practice, but still my entire class was there. I’m pretty sure I was doing a reading from the Book of Jacob, chapter Jacob, verse Jacob. I think I said the name about a dozen times in the course of a few sentences. Except I pronounced it “Juh-Cob” with a very hard “B” sound.
I’ll admit I wasn’t following the OP. This wasn’t a situation where I misspelled a word based on how I had heard it pronounced. But other people had already expanded on the topic and posted examples of mispronouncing words based on how they saw them spelled.
No, it can’t. “Hear, hear” is correct, and has always been correct for registering agreement.
“Here, here” can only be appropriate if one knows the answer to the question a teacher is posing to the class, and wishes to attract the notice of the teacher, who is looking around for someone who can provide it.
I used to struggle with AW-ree, DEB-ackle, and MY-zled (awry, debacle, misled).
When I was a kid I used to hear the name “Aloysius” and have absolutely no idea how to spell it. Then I saw it spelled (with no context) and had no idea that was what it was.
Interesting about “suped/souped up.” I always thought the “souped” people were doing it wrong, and the “suped” spelling was correct (as in, “made super”). Ignorance fought!