Crepuscular (or is it crespucular?). That sort of dusk-dawn time when mosquitoes are active.
My mother can’t say Ibuprofen. It comes out “Ibebarfin.”
Syntagm.
Not that I want to use it in polite conversation.
I’m really confused as to why “rural” is so hard for people to pronounce… ??? I’d have never guessed that it posed a problem to anyone. My cousin does “Ax” for “ask” and it makes my skin crawl.
Even though I know the difference, I always confuse “bought” and “brought.” I say things like “I brought this shirt at Lerners,” or “He bought the cake to the party.” Argh! Plus, I have a real hard time saying “wings.” It always comes out “wangs.”
I was so ashamed about my speech impediment. I am so glad to see there are others with my particular problem:
I cannot say either
Worcestershire
or
Massachusettes (sorry if I spelled it wrong, but you should hear me try to say it.)
I just can’t. One other, when I was younger I was only able to say “specific” when I slowed down and thought “Just like pacific”.
Oh, I have to be careful with “self-sufficient.” Selfish FISH?
My brother used to mispronounce “abominable,” as in the Abominable Snowman in the Rudolph special. I told him to say, “A bomb in a bull,” and then he got it.
Roger Ebert cannot say “humor.” He says “YOU-mer.” Argh! That’s SO downstate Illinois! If we can teach Gene Hackman and Dick Van Dyke to pronounce it correctly, why can’t Roger get it right?
This may sound moronic, but I have the most trouble with my own name.
You see, my parents inadvertantly played a rotten trick on me by naming me Jeff…Not so bad you say?
My last name starts with a V. The V sound is easy enough to pronounce, but the mechanics of clearly producing the F sound with the V immediately following, are a bit of work.
On a sidenote,
Did anyone else see Regis Philbin tonight on W.W.T.B.A.M. say: Ant art ica?
Somebody shoot me!..no wait, Shoot Regis!
OK…I posted too soon.
I simply avoid this one. I don’t think there is a correct way to say it.
Comfortable.
The R obviously comes before the T, but that trivial fact dissuades none from saying Kumf-ter-b’l.
Admittedly, I have a dictionary right here, that lists this as an acceptable pronunciation…UGH!
Yerrrrrkkk! I CANNOT say ornithischian, as in bird hipped dinosaurs. And of course my 5 year old LOVES dinosaurs and we read books about them every night!
Also I cannot get lunch rush right without thinking first… it always comes out lush runch
And I always said cren until someone pointed out when I got to high school that it is crayon
My trouble: Monticello and Armadillo… I don’t hear it, but my girlfriend says I say “Monticeller” and “Armadiller”.
Pen and Pin? What’s the difference. I always assumed these were pronouced the same… homonymns, aren’t they?
What really urks me are “Skreet” and “Aks”… you know, “Aks someone from the skreet.” Makes my blood boil.
Rural… No problem… think of it as being spelled “Roo-Rul”
Fire: How can you say “I-yer” without two syllables? Its a dipthong… saying it as one sylable would either give you Far or Fir… maybe your’re supposd to say it realy fast like Beavis “FIRE FIRE! HEH HEH”
I HATE the word “Multiplication”… always endup with Multiplitacation.
Also, people from south florida hate hearing folks from up here in north florida say the name of the state. They say “FLOOR-eh-dah” We says “FLAR-duh”.
Screw em, we’re the real “Flur-ID-yans”
Cthulhu
oeuvre - Can’t say it without turning into a nasty French waiter and craning my head forward while it dribbles out as “oooovverregghh.”
Antarctica - I have the same problem as Regis (An-ART-i-cah), unless I concentrate.
Arctic, for that matter, comes out “Artic.”
Strangely, I can say Worcestershire. At least I think so.
As a child, I pronounced these wrong:
pseudo = “suede-o”
chaos = “chay-oss”
chute = “chu-tee”
Somewhat along the same lines as ‘rural’… I can’t pronounce the word ‘girlfriend’ properly. I mean I do, but it always feels really wrong when I say it.
There are more, but I can’t think of them right now.
‘Sixths’ is actually a lot of fun to say
Forgot a couple…
Mirror and Horror
I don’t botch them, but it requires conscious effort nonetheless.
About everybody I know says Meeor, and Hor-rr.
Add me to those who find rural problematic. Add mirror to that. Oddly enough, I have no problem with horror and terror, which would seem to follow.
Starnbergersee drives me bats. Luckily, I usually don’t need to use that one more than once a year. I have no problem with Yoknapatawpha, though.
muffinman—pin and pen are pronounced differently in most places where English is spoken. However, it’s exactly the same in the American South. A fellow teacher at the English-as-a-second-language school where I teach is from north Florida, originally, and will lapse into his native accent when he’s mad. He’s written academic papers about his dialect, and the non-standard words y’all have, like fis’n’a, which is fixing to according to the Northern pronunciation, though we Northerners don’t have this idiom, ourselves.
My native western Pennsylvania has an accent of its own, which is y’uns can see is poked fun at here.
My husband makes fun of the way I pronounce asphalt.
I put an H in it = ash-falt. Blame it on my mother. The other way sounds too much like a butt-crack.
(She also says cahparation - for corporation - that one I managed to avoid!)
So whenever he asks what that black stuff is on the road, I say … “macadam.”
rhythmically
for me…
comfortable= com-FORT-uh-buhl
vegetable= veg-ET-uh-buhl
hard to say: the sixth thing
my dad has a problem with “eh” he says “tray-sure” (teasure), “may-sure” (measure), “bayg” (beg), and “ayg” (egg).
It’s weird…he’s from California. My aunt from there too speaks the same way.
I always have trouble with “particularly”. I want to put an “ul” in there somewhere. Maybe I’m to particular.
isthmus - it’s brutal. My tongue is still in a sling.
[slight hijack]
In 7th grade, the first day of a new unit in History, we had an asian substitute teacher. He proceeded to tell us that today we were going to study the “arps”
silence.
“The arps. You know.”
more silence.
“When Hannibar crossed the arps with his erephants.”
much laughter.
[end slight hijack]