Something that always puzzles me, is this: there is a city in Indiana named Terre Haute. It’s French for “High ground.” In France, it would be pronounced something like “Te[glottal-r][very-mild-schwa] Oht.” Hoosiers call the city something that is a pretty close Anglicized version of that: “Terruh Hote.” Indiana State University (not Indiana University) is there. For some reason, people who are not from Indiana frequently call this city “Terra Hut,” like “Pizza Hut.”
I don’t understand this.
My Aussie mother-in-law pronounces Vinaigrette as Vin-NAY-gray. Drives me mad. We go out of our way to say it aloud whenever possible because we each KNOW that our pronunciation is the right one!
The Aussie “Fill-it” steak rather than “filet” is pretty odd to my ears as well. 
I’m starting to see “should of” and “could of” written that way so often that I believe many people truly don’t know the word is “have” and not “of.”
No, she’s from Saskatchewan. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else in Saskatchewan pronounce it that way, so I don’t know where she’s getting it from! Maybe one of her parents? (I never discussed tigers with my grandparents, to my knowledge.)
I think what they hear, and are trying to write isn’t “could have” or “should have,” but “could’ve,” and “should’ve.”
In my local area, we have a city called Versailles, like the Palace in France. Except, unlike the the palace, locals pronounce the city name as it’s spelled, ie. Vurh-sail-es, instead of Vurh-sai. We also have the town of Russia, which is pronounced as Roosh-e instead of the normal pronunciation. It’s very odd, because people acknowledge that the pronunciations aere wrong, but they continue to do it.
My mother, from a small eastern Alberta town near Lloydminster (not “Lloydminister”, wink-wink) also says “tagger”. Until this thread, she was the only individual I’d ever heard do that.
For my part and contribution to this thread, I pronounce the word “escape” as “ee-scape”. My wife pointed this out to me. I grew up in New Brunswick, and assumed I’d developed that pronunciation in keeping with the local dialect. However, when I later visited there and paid attention, I found it not to be the case.
So, I don’t know where I got that from, but I really need to cut it out and say the word properly. I’m working on it.
Sorry Leaffan, you are incorrect in your 3rd example and your explanation.
It would be nice if you actually explained, then, so we can learn. (His explanation is how I learned it, but I often use “bring” where “take” would be considered more correct in speech.)
Another local place name variation, Pompeii, MI pronounced “Pom-pee-eye”
I hate the Target = Tar-ZHAY people. Maybe cute the first time you ever hear it, but give it a rest.
Library = LIE-bare-ee is irritating
Februrary = feb-er-air-ee. No, it’s feb-brew-air-ee.
I admit that to me, buried and berried are identical. That’s how we talk around here. And merry, marry, and Mary are identical.
Chevrolet = chiv-a-lay is maddening. It’s chev-row-lay.
I find “feb-brew-air-ee” pretentious. Nobody I know says it that way. Everybody says “feb-yew-air-ee.”
I agree that “feb-er-air-ee” is annoying, though.
My wife says warsh for wash, which makes me crazy.
Worse, she says eye-talian. What? I haven’t heard that since Archie Bunker!
Okies, God love em.
Sorry, I didn’t want to hijack this thread about pronunciation too much. I’ll try to make this as short as I can and hopefully you’ll be able to see where I’m coming from.
The usage depends on more than just the particulars of the sentence in which the word appears, but is affected by the locations of the speakers while speaking, as well as (in his examples) the location of the office relative to the speakers and indeed the location of the report or whatever object is being moved between places.
If you and I are standing together in the office and are talking about a report that is at that moment in my house, I can communicate my intent to provide it to you at the office in the future by saying “I will bring it to the office [tomorrow].” For that scenario, “bring” is correct.
On the other hand, if you and are standing together on my yacht, and talking about a report that we will need in the office on Monday, but which is at that moment on the yacht with us, I can communicate my intent to return it to the office by saying “I will take it to the office.” In this scenario, “take” is correct.
We can both bring things to offices and take things to offices. The word we use depends on where we are geographically when we are describing our plan.
What Marlonius says.
Some examples that I think convey the concept without needing much explanation:
“bring it here”
“take it there”
and
“bring it when you come”
“take it when you go”
The distinction between “here” and “there” or “come” and “go” seem clear, but I can’t think of a simple rule that I can’t find a good exception to. I’ll leave that to the experts.
Yes, that’s exactly the way it was taught to me. You bring something here. You take something there. Which is how I understood Leaffan’s explanation. But Marlonius is adding some nuance, I think. I would use “bring” or “take” in his examples differently, myself, depending on whether the focus is on bringing it to the office, or the action of taking it from home. ETA: Or, basically, the difference between “I’m coming to the office” vs “I’m going to the office.” Both acceptable, but slightly different meanings.
The concept that you are looking for is known as deixis which is a term describing references that cannot be understood by a listener without knowing extralinguistic context such as who is speaking, who they are addressing, where they are located and so on.
For me, there are synonymous usages of bring and take that I find completely unobjectionable. Neither “Can you bring me there?” nor “Can you take me there?” feel wrong to me, but I would never say “Bring these plates away.”
This reminds me of what always bugged me about that half full/half empty question, and that stupid “An optimist says half full,” yadda yadda.
While I like the answer that the glass is half full of liquid and half full of air, what always bugged me since I first heard the dumb thing when I was 10 or so, was that you can’t know the answer without knowing whether someone was in the process of filling it up or pouring it out (or drinking from it). Pouring it out? half empty. Filling it up? half full.
The novice engineer says that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. The experienced engineer says that with a safety factor of 2x, the glass is exactly as big as it needs to be.
2x? Depends on what notation you use.
It’s not just mispronounciation.
So many people refer to using the microwave as “nuking” some food.
Of course there is nothing radioactive about using a microwave. But some dumbass referred to the verb “microwave” as “nuke” one time and I guess it was just so extremely stupid that dumbasses everywhere just loved to use it.
There are many other examples.
I feel that that’s a bit harsh. Would you – if it were in your power – forbid all slang expressions / figures of speech, and insist that everyone toe your own line re straightforward, literal use of language? If so, good luck with that: coming up with daft, slangy expressions is just something that humans do – and have been doing, ever since they first developed speech.
Clearly the “nuking” food in a microwave expression, annoys the hell out of you. There are a lot of slang expressions which similarly, piss me off; but getting angry about people’s using them, strikes me as a sure-fire way to misery and frustration.