All the talk about “fiance” vs. “fiancee” reminds me: If you’re not sure of the distinction between “alumnus”, “alumni”, “alumna”, and “alumnae”, nor of how to pronounce them (and I can hardly blame you for that; probably neither you nor the people you’re talking to have ever taken Latin), then save yourself the trouble and just call someone of either gender who used to go to a school an “alumn”, or a group of them “alumns”.
EDIT: Kenm, in the US, pronouncing “herb” with the H is more likely to be regarded as pretentious. People who leave it off aren’t doing so to be pretentious; they’re doing it because that’s how folks they know say it.
For some reason, unlike awry or Hermione, I cannot seem to get my brain not to read hyperbole that way. I know it’s hyPURRbolee, and I say hyPURRbolee, but I just can’t read it that way.
It even just sounds better to me. HyPURRbolee sounds like a loan word from another language.
Here are a few very commonly mispronounced words. Chances are good many gentle readers here are mispronouncing at least one of them: larynx, pharynx, plantain, zoology, antimony, cummerbund, cavalry, and salmon (here in S. GA).
The first two have the r before the y- why don’t people notice that?
The Greek stuff tends to drive one round the bend, even if one reckons oneself reasonably well-educated. The transliteration (if it is indeed that) seems so far removed from how things are supposed actually to be spoken. (And isn’t there a much-loved blogger nowadays, who calls her blog, “Hyperbole-and-a-half” – the first word actually intended to be pronounced “hyper-bowl”?)
I’ve tied myself, mildly, in knots recently, over the period-murder-mysteries heroine called Phryne Fisher. (IIRC, her father was a classics professor, hence her given name.) How the hell do you pronounce it? Sort-of figuring it out: the better-known Greek word / name Psyche, we know is pronounced “Sye-kee”. On that model, Phryne is presumably “Fry-nee” (or just possibly not).
I love the tale from the nineteenth century, when British railway companies gave to all their locomotives, names, which were affixed on a metal plate to each side of the loco’s boiler. One such company named one loco, “Psyche”. The poor proles who tended and cleaned and manned the locomotives – whose reading and writing was at best rudimentary, and to whom Greek was a closed book – called this machine variously, “Fish”, “Pish”, and “Physic”.
Alumn- -ae,-i, has a bigger problem, complicated by a little knowledge of latin. In latin, ae is pronounced “I” and I pronounced “ee”, the reverse of English. So which language are you using?!
I can forgive many pronunciations as dialect/accent/regional differences, but these drive me insane:
Prolly (spoken and written)
Draw (as in “the top draw of the dresser”)
Acrosst or Acrossed
Should OF and could OF
Do people just pronounce them this way or do they actually think they are spelled this way?!
I can tolerate “prolly” from someone in a text message where they have a very limited number of characters. The rest are awful, especially “should of,” etc. And yes, I have seen those written.
I was guilty of ‘segue’ for a long time, but not in the pronunciation in normal speech. I knew the word was pronounced ‘seg-way’ when I was speaking, but when I would read ‘segue’, I’d always read it in my head as ‘seeg’. For a while I think I thought there were two different words that meant the same thing. It honestly took until I was in my early twenties before I realized that they were the same word. Even now, I have to remind myself when reading that it’s actually saying segue…you know ‘seg-way’.
I had the same thing with ‘naive,’ though I caught on to that around middle school. (Why is it ‘nai eve’ in speech, but writers always write it with a ‘knave’ pronunciation… :smack: ).
A couple of buddies of mine joined me in making frequent reference to things as “suave and debonair” to avoid being in the “cool” speaking coterie. Except we would abuse the pronunciation by saying “swayve and de-BONE-er.” We enjoyed the looks we got for that invention/adaptation.
I also like to tamper with words like “naïve” and “au revoir” which , as you might guess is “aw river.”
Hyperbole and a Half hasn’t updated since October 2013, but the archive is well worth a visit. I don’t remember any pronunciation guide to the title, but I’m prepared to slog through the touching hilarity later in the week to be sure.
Oh, and I think the book has material that was never posted in the blog. I’m prepared to slog through that, too. Just to be sure.
I thought of another one! I might be crazy on this, but I SWEAR that some people around here (Madison, WI) pronounce “milk” as “melk”. I used to listen to AM talk radio on the way into work, and the woman who did the agriculture report would always say it that way. It drove me crazy.
My dear spousal unit does this, and he grew up in northern California. It drives me crazy too! I tease him about it and try to get him to fix it, but after 25+ years I’ve given up.
One of my local Chicago friends does this. No idea where he gets it from, though, as we used to tease him as a kid for pronouncing it “melk” instead of “milk.” I think of the “melk” pronunciation as a Wisconsin (or maybe a general Midwest) thing, but, to my knowledge, he hasn’t had much exposure to a Wisconsin accent.
I’ve worked in the routing business starting in the early 80’s and continuously since around 1990. I usually pronounce “a route” as “a root”, and usually it’s unambiguous but recently I had to clarify since we were also discussing roots of trees!
Regardless, I found that the vast majority of Europeans in the business used the “rooter” pronunciation. The “rowter” stuff seems to be mostly American. Lately my work is less international and things may have changed.
The word I heard is that the T was originally pronounced, when it was first written in English. Subsequently, the T was dropped in standard pronunciation, but the T in the spelling remained. Pronouncing the T crept back into the language due to its spelling. While it may now be regional as well, there are plenty of places where both pronunciations are used, and I’ve heard different people in the same family who went to the same schools say it differently. I think I heard that on John Ciardi’s “Words With You” program (or whatever it was called).
Both pronunciations are common. The “vahze” option is more typically British, and “vayce” is more typically American, but I hear both. I know some people who use the former trying to sound more cultured, but I also hear that by people who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about sounding cultured or even seem to go out of their way to sound low-class.
lol
Having never heard it spoken, I always assumed the Spanish pronunciation, and it does turn out to be a Spanish wine. However, the story is set in Italy, and the Italians might well pronounce the L’s as L’s. I do remember hearing it mentioned on the radio or something and it seemed so wrong, but on looking it up, found that it might not be. Maybe we should get the Straight Dope on that!
It’s pretty common where I grew up in Michigan.
That’s also common where I grew up in Michigan. I remember being surprised to learn that it was spelled with an ‘i’. However, to my ear today, when I hear my family say it, it sounds “milk” and not “melk”. So I’m not sure where my young ear picked up the “e”. It might have been in kindergarten, as it’s a word I would have been reading by1st grade.
The days of the week are Sunday Moonday Tiwsday, Wodensday, Thorsday, Freyday, and Saturnday.
Saying goodbye becomes Arriva-Dirty, Reservoir, Hasta Lumbago (or Hasta La Googoo), Don’t Spit On Ya, or Buenos Nachos (in the evening). Or sometimes I will say, “As they say in the south of France, ‘Bon jour, y’all.’”
I also sometimes say compooter, especially if I am going to the 'pooter room. Maybe that lady that says computter is a golfer?
I’m fully aware of “Hoosier”, though to me it still means means someone who attended Indiana University. Though I get that other natives of the state take that name.
I won’t excuse “Wess-consin”. Sorry. I doubt they would excuse “INE-diana” or “in-DYE-ana”. We’re all midwest here
