Very stupid overheard conversations

I had a professor in college who pronounced “trough” as “trow” (as in rhyming with “row” and “throw”). And he taught Econ 101, so he used that word a lot when referring to graphs of demand curves and such.

Although to be fair I’m not entirely sure if English was his first language. He didn’t speak with any noticeable foreign accent, but his bio mentioned he’d previously taught at a university in Italy. So I suppose it’s possible he was Italian but had been in the US for do many decades he’d mostly lost any accent he might have had. And if that was the case, I could understand how it wouldn’t be obvious that “trough” shouldn’t rhyme with “through” but it should rhyme with “tough”.

In another message board I saw “prima donna” spelled “pre-Madonna”…

I once saw “medieval” spelled “mid-evil” on another board.

Oh, I screwed up a ton of pronunciations in my youth. It was a function of getting my vocabulary entirely from the written word.

I think the funniest one was pronouncing epitome as ep-i-TOME. I got a lot of ribbing for that one from my college friends.

Oh, and decipher. Clearly pronounced DES-I-fur.

But “trough” doesn’t rhyme with “tough” either.

“Trough” = trof
“Tough” = tuff

Heh, as a kid I thought “queue” was pronounced “kwey-yoo” because I had never connected it with hearing “cuing up” on line. Those must be two different words! (Like “quay” and “key.” I was actually in my late 20s before I realized that one.)

Wait, those are the same word?

The baker-man was kneading dough
And whistling softly, sweet and lough.

Yet ever and anon he’d cough
As though his head were coming ough!

“My word!” said he,” but this is rough:
This flour is simply awful stough!”

He punched and thumped it through and through,
As all good bakers dough!

“I’d sooner drive,” said he “a plough
Than be a baker anyhough!”

Thus spake the baker kneading dough;
But don’t let on I told you sough!

As a teenager, while driving to a vacation at Prince Edward Island with my parents and siblings, we were reading Anne of Green Gables (as you do in that situation) and I was reading the part where Anne takes Marilla’s “Amethyst Brooch”. Which I pronounced "Ameetheeist Broooch (like pooch). How was I to know?

I have a long list of words I only learned how to pronounce years after I knew the word.

Me, too!

And then I started living in Japan and started pronouncing unknown words with Japanese vowel sounds. . .

Forty years later and I can still hear my mother and my then girlfriend (*) bonding together by laughing at me saying ep-i-TOME.

(*) Just to be crystal clear - those are two different women.

Overheard at a restaurant: “Remember the time Roseanne sang ‘O Canada’ to the tune of ‘O Christmas Tree’?”

It was Dennis Park who sang “O Canada” to the tune of “O Christmas Tree” (or something vaguely resembling it) at a 1994 CFL game. This person apparently had that incident confused with Roseanne Barr’s memorably off-key performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a 1990 San Diego Padres game.

That’s an Ernest P. Worrell (Jim Varney) gag from his early days in commercials. “The ep-i-TOME of used car dealers!”

I also pronounced ‘banal’ as BANE-ul, not bun-ALL.

For me it was segue. It took me a long time to realize SEG-way and segue were the same thing.

Crap. I doubt I have ever heard it spoken in my life. It is definitely BANE-ul for me.

Both are correct, although bun-All is more common in the US.

I did not know that, but the dictionary confirms. Thanks.

Ditto!


For me it was execrable. Whaddaya mean, it’s not ex-EC-ra-ble?

Flip that sequence for a Dope poll and it might get majority support. Leave it as is and it would probably still have at least 20% in favor.