# Words you know you're pronouncing wrong, but still do **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 11, 2012, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459 "2012-04-11T11:47:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2012, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/81 "2012-04-13T20:52:44Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > There is a Rio road in Charlottesville VA and everyone pronounces it as RYE-o, myself included. There aren’t many Rios on this side of the Rockies. Rio Grande in Ohio is pronounced that way too. ---
**Author:** ![Laggard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de053/32.png) [@Laggard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laggard)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2012, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/82 "2012-04-13T21:29:28Z")
Lackadaisical. I always want to say Lack-sa-daisical. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/83 "2012-04-14T18:16:49Z")
> [@Laggard](#): > > Lackadaisical. I always want to say Lack-sa-daisical. Me too, and I don’t know why. ---
**Author:** ![Tapiotar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tapiotar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapiotar)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2012, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/84 "2012-04-14T18:36:38Z")
> [@grude](#): > > I used to say it correctly in the USA the Greek way, then when these places exploded in Trinidad EVERYONE said jye-row so now by force of habit I say jye-row because once the guy running the jye-row cart thought when I said yee-row I was saying euro as in the currency.:smack::smack: > > Forget about asking for tzacki sauce, you’ll get watery mayo mm mmm.🙂 I was told by the Greeks in an American Greek restaurant to say hee-ro. Got the impression that the Greek word was the origin for “hero” for sandwich. But looking it up, Wiki tells me that hero for a sub sandwich came into usage _decades_ before gyro sandwiches were known in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Nature\_s\_Call](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nature_s_call/32/19006_2.png) [@Nature\_s\_Call](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nature_s_Call)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2012, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/85 "2012-04-14T19:22:54Z")
There are two words I have to make a conscious effort to pronounce “correctly” Jewellry I still slip on occassion and say JEW-luh-ree though I try to say JEW-el-ree. I got on myself about this after Bush was criticized for NOO-cyoo-ler. I became sensitive to similar words **I** may be mispronouncing (our grade school teacher exorcised FEB-you-ary early so I was good on that one). Kilometer I’ve pretty much habitualized KILL-o-mee-ter instead of the more common kill-AW-mit-er. People may defend kill-AW-mit-er, but that (IMHO) misapplies the measuring device pattern of (for example) thermometer and barometer. No one says kill-AW-grum, or kill-AW-pa-skull, nor is cent-IH-mit-er or mill-IH-mit-er widely used. I like metric prefixes consistent, thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Humantorch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/9fc29f/32.png) [@Humantorch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humantorch)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/86 "2012-04-16T04:34:18Z")
I hate when people say “axe” instead of ask. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/87 "2012-04-16T04:59:53Z")
> [@Laggard](#): > > Lackadaisical. I always want to say Lack-sa-daisical. > [@cmyk](#): > > Me too, and I don’t know why. Because you’re being lax when you say lackadaisical. > [@Humantorch](#): > > I hate when people say “axe” instead of ask. I chopped down the tree with an ask?!?! That doesn’t make any sense. ---
**Author:** ![svd678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@svd678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/svd678)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/88 "2012-04-17T04:24:02Z")
I thought the Greeks pronounce “gyro” as “hero”. Not so? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/89 "2012-04-17T05:56:06Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > I’m half Italian. My grandparents were straight off the boat. I consider the “correct” pronunciation to be the middle of the road American way. My Italian family pronunced it the “incorrect” way as per the NYT article. To me and my Italian relatives the cheese is mozzarell. I hear most non-Italians say motzerella which is like nails on the blackboard to me. You hate the z pronounced /ts/ and the final vowels of standard Italian? 😕 Did a Tuscan spit in your pasta fazool? Hate to break it to you, but in most of Italy, dialects and regional languages are giving way to standard Italian, among the younger generations at least. Your relatives in America have probably preserved some dialectal features that are already obsolete back in Italy. > [@](#): > > Same with pro-shoot (prosciutto), pasta fazool (pasta e fagioli), provaloan (provalone), managout (manicotti), scungeel (scungilli), galamad (calamari), rigawt (ricotta). > > As John said, its not wrong, its dialect. I’m fine with this. I grew up hearing both Sicilian and standard Italian in my family, but when I went to study and learn better for myself, standard Italian is all I could get. If there are any Sicilian language courses, I’ve never found any (Sicilian was taught at DLI back in the WWII era, but that was before I was born.) When I went to Sicily, my cousins in my generation all spoke standard Italian, and it was only my grandparents’ generation I had difficulty understanding. What’s your region? ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/90 "2012-04-17T07:06:21Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > I’m personally fond of calling them “horse doovers” and seeing who figures it out. Try [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1-ndsRPxbM). ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/91 "2012-04-17T09:46:16Z")
> [@Nature\_s\_Call](#): > > Kilometer > I’ve pretty much habitualized KILL-o-mee-ter instead of the more common kill-AW-mit-er. > > People may defend kill-AW-mit-er, but that (IMHO) misapplies the measuring device pattern of (for example) thermometer and barometer. No one says kill-AW-grum, or kill-AW-pa-skull, nor is cent-IH-mit-er or mill-IH-mit-er widely used. I like metric prefixes consistent, thank you. I am the same with “hydrogenated”. Most people seem to pronounce it with the “ro” rhyming with the “do” in “dog”, but I just can’t do that, it just sounds so wrong. We don’t mangle oxygenated or carbonated the same way, so why hydrogenated? ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/92 "2012-04-17T13:31:31Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > As a birder, I know that a buteo refers to a hawk. Now, which of the following two pronounciations strongly suggests a big macho winged killing machine… > > Boo-TE-o > > Beeu-tee-O > > …and which one suggests a feminine hygiene product? ["Beeu-tee-OH’s! For that time of the month!] Yet the dictionaries insist that the latter is correct, but I’ll never say it that way until they pry the binoculars from my cold dead hands. I’ve never met a birder or seen a dictionary that used either of those pronunciations. BYOO-tee-oh is pretty universal. I recently learned dour should rhyme with tour, not sour, but it just sounds wrong that way. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/93 "2012-04-17T13:56:01Z")
> [@svd678](#): > > I thought the Greeks pronounce “gyro” as “hero”. Not so? Well, first of all, the singular is “gyros” (γύρος). I am not Greek, but there are at least two Greek pronunciations of “gyros” that I am aware of. One begins with a palatal glide (the pronunciation that starts with what English speakers would call a “y.”) From my research, that’s the most common or standard one. There are apparently dialect variations where the initial sound is a voiced or voiceless velar fricative. That’s closer to the “h” pronunciation you’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/94 "2012-04-17T14:58:12Z")
> [@phreesh](#): > > In the spirit of the OP, my son refers to his lego instructions as ‘constructions’ and I quite like that. When I come upon instructions for constructing something, I now refer to them as constructions. Hee. My husband likes to call them “destructions,” which according to him is what usually happens. 🙂 Mine is “Neanderthal.” It’s supposed to be neeander-TALL, but I feel like a big goober saying it that way. Neeander-THALL was good enough for insulting people for most of my life. ---
**Author:** ![slightly\_askew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d07c76/32.png) [@slightly\_askew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slightly_askew)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/95 "2012-04-17T16:00:22Z")
Steel mill. It comes out stil mil. I really have to stop and think to pronounce the ee. Of course I grew up less than an hour from Pittsburgh… ---
**Author:** ![Emily\_Litella](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emily_litella/32/3370_2.png) [@Emily\_Litella](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emily_Litella)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/96 "2012-04-17T16:27:19Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > Cat fud (rhymes with “Fudd”) - came from that old Far Side cartoon. > [@Soylent\_Juicy](#): > > HAHA - I do that for all my pets “fud.” I even write it that way on the shopping list!😃 Every morning for the past 20 years when I go in the kitchen I’ve asked “Who wants Cat Fud?” My problem is anything that starts with the prefix “pseudo”. I say Suede-Oh instead of the correct Soo-Doh. (Pseudointellectual indeed.) ---
**Author:** ![Woeg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@Woeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Woeg)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/97 "2012-04-17T17:03:14Z")
When I first moved to the Deep South, I had to learn to pronounce a lot of things based off the local dialect. I have a bunch that I call “Georgiasms” (Like orgasms, with Georgia). “Houston” is the county I live in - it is not pronounced HEWS-ten, like the place in Texas, but “HOWS-ton”. There is a place named “Adele” that is not pronounced “uh-DELL” but instead is pronounced “AY-dull” (like edelweiss?). Another town is “Albany”, which isn’t “ALL-buh-knee” like in NY, but “al-BAN-ee”. And coming from Colorado, it was very odd that “Pio Nono” wasn’t “PEE-oh NO NO” but “PIE-uh nuh-nuh” And “theater” isn’t “THEE-ter” but “the-ATE-er”. Ahhh, the south… ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/98 "2012-04-17T17:21:43Z")
> [@Woeg](#): > > When I first moved to the Deep South, I had to learn to pronounce a lot of things based off the local dialect. I have a bunch that I call “Georgiasms” (Like orgasms, with Georgia). There’s not really anything unique about Georgia in this respect. For example, Ohio has a lot of odd local pronunciations: Russia – ROO sha Delhi – DELL high Bellefontaine – bell FOUN tain Rio Grande – RYO grand I think this kind of thing happens everywhere ---
**Author:** ![Woeg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@Woeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Woeg)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/99 "2012-04-17T17:59:14Z")
Doesn’t make me pronounce them any less “wrong” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Sparky812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Sparky812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparky812)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2012, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459/100 "2012-04-17T18:34:33Z")
Stragedy - I use it as a combination of strategy and tragedy. Brefess - Breakfast Titleist - will always be Tit -leist for me. I had a friend in university that was famous for his mispronounciations and I still use some of them today. Those I can remember include: Szechuan - Shway-zen Carafe - Cara-fay Pheasant - Peasant Vegetable - Veggie-table The funniest argument I ever had was with former drug addled room-mate, who fancied herself an intellect despite not even completing high school (she was too smart for their learning, LOL). She adamantly insisted that the word “pronunciation” was pronounced “pro-nunk-shoo-a- tion.” This was, in itself hilarious to all but the fact that she didn’t see the irony in it was so funny that we were on the floor of the pub laughing and my sides were sore for a week. I still chuckle out loud thinking about it now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-know-youre-pronouncing-wrong-but-still-do/618459.md?page=6)