He probably picked it up from his parents.
For some oddball reason my dad pronounces “also” as “altso.” I picked up on this when I was little and started spelling it like that. I was really confused when the teacher kept correcting me.
It’s phonetic, yes. “An en ee ess”. The sound “en” for the letter N begins with a vowel, so it gets “an” before.
If NES was pronounced as a word, rather than being spelt out–“ness”-- it would take “a” before: a NES (“a ness”). But it isn’t.
Now why we spell out NES (“en ee ess”) but pronounce NEC as a word (“nek”) is another question…
[sub]Oh, and that’s “a moot point”, rather than “a mute point”. [/sub]
My sister pronounces “especially” “ecspecially.” Since I noticed that she does that, I’ve noticed a lot of people doing it.
Then there’s esculater*, perculater*, hammurger, and Emmonton (for Edmonton).
*I’m not willing to give people that pronounce “escalator” as “esculator” the benefit of the doubt that they would spell it with an “or” on the end.
Ah, thanks. I just got smarterer.
Yeah I know, I was just being a jackass.
No, actually, it’s a moo point - you know, a point that cows make - it doesn’t matter.
It would be too perjorative of me to pass judgment on other posters when I have also sinned on this board, so let me just say I have enjoyed this thread, along with these: Common Errors in English Usage | Common Errors in English Usage and More | Washington State University
I await further examples with baited breath, although I leave the posting of them to your perogative.
You passed up a perfectly good opportunity to use “judgement” (which, to my dying day, I shall continue to use, Yankee blood notwithstanding).
Crap. I sure did.
My direct supervisor’s a very sweet lady. She’s from Nebraska, so she’s basically a midwesterner like me. She doesn’t sound funny or have a heavy accent, a speech impediment, or a manner of speaking that’s any different than most, but I noticed she does this funny thing when she says the word “across”. She pronounces it “acrost” (or “acrossed”, I guess). When I first heard it, I thought she’d just misspoken, or tripped on her tongue, or was perhaps even coalescing words together (i.e. “across to”), but it quickly became apparent that this was simply how she pronounced it. I don’t know if it’s a Nebraska thing but it still throws me … I can’t seem to keep myself from saying “across to what?” in my head every time she says it. 
I was stunned to learn, on this vary board, that not only is “hamster” not spelled with a p, it’s not prononced with one, either. I’ve been saying “hampster” all my life.
And I’m not about to stop now.
I probably won’t either - I’ll just avoid using the word on the SDMB, ever! Now I’ll never be able to own one!)
You could pretend that it’s a gerbil.
I just encountered this one: oversite. What ever happened to oversight.
Nope. Not to be prescriptivist or anything, but that piece of butchered orthography belongs in the dumster. 