Listening to Comcast Local Edition. This is a show that features local spokespeople; in this case, in the Seattle area. I didn’t catch who the guest was, but he talked about improvements to the freeway system in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, B.C., so I guess he’s with the Department of Transportation, Freeway Commission, or something.
Anyway, he said something like, ‘There will be several vignettes…’ Except he didn’t pronounce it ‘vinyetts’ – he pronounced it ‘vij-in-etts’. I wonder if he also says ‘para-dijum’?
Honestly, spokespeople should learn how to pronounce the words they want to use.
Yikes! :eek: Paradigm is harder to mispronounce than it is to say it correctly. I had to say it out loud a few times before my mouth would make the way he said it.
I don’t talk enough about pecans to know for sure how I pronounce it. There are many words I hear mispronounced by newscaster types all the time (e.g. “esculate”, "afFLUent, "eriudite [trick question-“would you describe yourself as eriudite?”]) but my favorites are when the blowdried prettyboy imported newscaster calls the nearby pro football team the “jints” (with a short ‘i’ sound) or refers to the mayor as “HIZzoner”.
If anyone is interested, there was a thread about 3 months ago on regional pronunciations of “pecan” that rapidly spread to other common US English words.
Are the American/English speaking tourists who think it’s a Hawaiian word, or are they non-English speakers? If they’re non-English speakers, it really isn’t funny.
Bwah. In western Montana, there is a region called Ninepipes. It’s simply a pair of English words, but some tourists (who do speak English) think it’s an Indian term and pronounce it ninny-pippies.
It’s funnier than when tourists try to pronounce the name of my hometown.
I just checked out erudite on the Merriam-Webster site, mostly because I was sure I pronounce it wrong. Would you believe they give both pronunciations as correct?
Well, they give the alternative of “U” as in unicorn, or sort of a schwa sound for the middle syllable. With “eriudite” I was trying to convey a four-syllable rendering. But it is a pretty close thing so I’ll try not to be so annoyed by it in the future. I’ll let you know how it works out.
Well, I say PEE-kahn, so I guess I’m somewhere between “regular guy” and “insufferable twit”. ;j
When I was a high-school sophomore, I read that the correct pronounciation of impious was IM-pee-us, so I pronounced it that way when it was one of our vocabulary words in English class. The teacher “corrected” me by pointedly saying “im-PIE-us”. Apparently quite a few people now agree, as this page confirms, but my desk dictionary (which has a 1974 copyright) gives only “my” pronunciation.
Until I moved to Indiana, I only ever heard the word suite pronounced like “sweet”, but there’s a local furniture-store commercial which features an announcer talking about “bedroom suits”, and I’ve also heard a Hoosier auctioneer or two pronounce “suites” in that apparently acceptable manner.
Gee, didja know that “spa” is NOT pronounced “spay”?
Am I the only person on this board to routinely mispronounce a three-letter word? (Not that I pronounce it, any more. There’s always an alternative. “The gym.” “The hot tub.” “The health club.” “The place where I get my pedicure.”)
Even semi-intellectual NPR is cracking under the strain. More than once I’ve heard one of their correspondents say “di-oh-sees” when they mean dioceses.
Jeez, I crack myself up![/sub]