Probably struggle with the spelling of the first one for starters which, despite common pronunciation, has an extra “a” in there (much to my surprise twenty years ago when I first had to use it for addressing purposes). Even Maori speakers differ as to the pronunciation of the “wh” sound in modern Maori.
I’m with the zed speakers, though. Zed rules in NZ – and zee should stay offshore.
Negotiate - [n@goUsieIt] “nuh-go-see-ate” instead of “nuh-go-shee-ate”
Species - [spi-siz] “spee-seez” instead of “spee-sheez”
Processes - [prA-s@-siz] “pro-suh-SEEZ” instead of “PRO-suh-siz.”
Oops. Well I have been labouring under a misapprehension, haven’t I.
It’s not so much a matter of pronunciation, but a mannerism? Uptalk? I’m sure you know what I mean?
Maybe you’re thinking of words like “gyros” (the Greek doner kebab type thing) or “kudos” which are singular but look plural. Speaking of, the “JIE-rose” pronunciation of “gyros” also mildly irks me.
That’s how I’ve always heard it. How is it supposed to be pronounced?
And I agree with everyone who said axe (ask.) SK. It’s S-K! Do people who axe a question also backs in the sun or drink from a flacks?
I suppose I ought to be tentative after my last intervention here, but ah well, here goes: it’s GHEE-ross .
Wait a minute…that bothers you? Its freaking candy.
I’d be interested to discover how you came to believe what you did. Did someone teach it to you? Did you read it somewhere?
-FrL-
I’ve always been told it’s “yee-ross”. That’s what signs in the places serving them have said, anyway.
Here’s a relevant link
Spoken examples:
Gyro Stop Commercial
Gyro Time Commercial <— w/ purposeful mispronounciations as well!
-FrL-
Edit window closed. I wanted to add something about how of course the commercials weren’t meant as authoritative examples. They were just meant as spoken examples of the pronounciation I was talking about–the only ones I could find through google. Also, an ‘s’ belongs at the end of the word ‘gyro’ in my two links. Oopsie.
-FrL-
After giving it some thought, I shouldn’t have asked that. Pronounciations aside, its common word mispellings that set my teeth to grinding. Not just the old loose=lose, ridiculous=rediculous stuff either. In another forum I shall not name I saw these gems
Payed instead pf paid. By someone who claims to be a legal adult living in the US. How the hell can english be your first language and you can’t spell paid by the time you reach adulthood. Seriously.
Grate=great. sigh
Screem=scream. Really. These aren’t words that people don’t come by. Children can spell these words or should be able to. I find it hard to take anyone seriously when they can’t spell Paid.
Maybe you’re thinking of kudos. 
Prolly. […wince…] I’ve ended friendships over it. It’s the thing I hate most about Bill Clinton.
Acceptable, although we’ve always been taught YEE-ross here in Chicago (thanks to the Kronos Gyros posters which point out the correct pronunciation, or one of the correct ones. ISTR that GHEE-ross is fine, too.)
edit: Wikipedia just gives the “YEE-ross” pronunciation as the Greek one.
I’m fairly certain I remember reading there’s dialectical variations on this matter, and that one of the variants is “GHEE-ross,” but I cannot say this with any authority.
“Painstaking” should be pronounced with a voiced “s.” The word comes from “pains-taking,” not “pain-staking.”
True, but the compulsion to devoice a normally voiced constonant when it directly precedes an unvoiced consonant is pretty natural in English. To say “PAINZ-taking” requires me to slow down to voice the first consonant and not voice the second. It’s just much easier to say “pain-staking.”
Emphasis added.
I know this is a peeve thread, and there’s no need to explain, but I just wanted to point out that it’s very natural, for me and many native speakers of English, to devoice in such a context.
As a child, I used to wonder what the grown-ups meant when they got cranky and used terms like “God’s ache” or “cry sake”. Then I finally grokked those at about the time my dad would affectionately call me “guts ache”. “Gut sake?” Huh?
I really don’t know. I think it might have been by unconscious analogy with other Spanish words that came my way, such as Los Alamos and Los Angeles - perhaps I extrapolated that Spanish words that ended in vowel-S are not plurals, even when rendered in English. In Australia we don’t come across Spanish words as routinely as USAns must.
pulykamell, you seem almost apologetic for something that is a fundamental aspect of English phonology. You don’t need to apologize for assimilation any more than for sneezing. Just look at (or rather, listen to) the morphology of plurals.