That’s a great idea! I need a better dictionary app than I have, one that actually shows the pronunciation and can be used offline.
Install a second language keyboard, perhaps? I have both English and French loaded up so the autocorrect does more or less catch on and give me suggestions in the language I’m writing. Android Gboard apparently is what I’m using.
I work in aviation, often on the subject of emergency equipment. I consistently mix up life vests and life rafts when I speak. Never in writing and I know damn well which one I mean when I’m talking but the incorrect word comes out often! My colleagues have just kind of accepted it and figure me out by context, or gently clarify, but they’ve stopped trying to correct me every time because clearly this isn’t something I’m going to learn. For all my skills, my brain and mouth can’t agree on this set of words.
Seems reasonable to me.
I saw “subtle” in books and pronounced in my head the way it’s spelled. Only learned the proper pronunciation during a spelling test in 7th grade. We had the same spelling test on Mondays and Fridays. If you got all of the words correct on Monday, you didn’t have to do the test on Friday. If you didn’t you had to study. I got “subtle” correct on Monday’s test, but messed up another word.
Not me, but a neighbor. She told a late comer to “Behave yourself” instead of “Serve yourself”.
Serve yourself = Bedien dich
Behave yourself = Benimm dich
IPhones do this as well. I have German and English, which is also helpful for all those pesky umlauts.
I’ll probably come back to this thread with more examples of mis-said words. 
Is this a common instrument? This is the first time to hear about it.
Where to begin?
I grew up saying so many words wrong that my family got tired of correcting me. I threw a “t” on the end of across. I pronounced a lot of short e vowels as short i, including words such as lemon and a friend named Swen. I mangled aluminum and even now I have to stop and think which the correct pronunication is. I thought that the hill Christ was crucified on was cavalry, like soldiers on horseback, rather than calvary.
Since I was in Japan at the time Seinfield was on air, I never saw in the 90s and only saw clips on YouTube. For some reason, I added a “t” and it came out Steinfield. I used that until a friend laughed at me.
I also learned a lot of vocabulary words by reading, and said hedonist with a short e like bed. I also jumped over words I couldn’t pronounce and I still tend to not read carefully.
And I’ve managed to make some really bad mistakes in Japanese.
Not weird at all. I pronounced “recipe” as “re-SYP,” and even worse, “rendezvous” with the Z and S pronounced out loud.
I grew up thinkIng:
- “climate” rhymed with “limit”
- “Satan” rhymed with “baton”
- “apparel” was pronounced “app-a-RELL”
Not as common as guitar, it’s true.
Just to further confuse things, Calliope St. in New Orleans is pronounced “CAL-ee-ope.”
I heard a guy on the radio pronounce paradigm as puh-RID-i-gum.
In college, I pronounced victuals the way it looks. Vittles is a completely different word, right?
In middle school (the most embarrassing time of life) I said PEE-c’n instead of p’-KAHN. It’s how my parents and grandparents pronounced it.
Then there’s the county seat in nearby St. Charles county. The locals say La PLATE-uh for La Plata.
40+ years ago, a friend bet me $5 (handshake and everything) that the Beatles sang the (Bee Gees) song “Lonely Days”. Even after I proved him wrong, he waffled, saying that I had to prove that the Beatles never, ever sang that tune.
What would $5 plus 40 years of interest amount to?
mmm
Grandpa used to get his insurance from Allstate Farm.
And his favorite TV show was She Wrote Murder.
As far as my one:
- I embarrassed myself in 2nd grade class by pronouncing Chevrolet with a hard T.
- I embarrassed myself to my sister by saying GREENwich Village.
- And, just last year, I embarrassed myself to a family member by pronouncing trebuchet trebucket.
- Finally, to this day, when I read the word infrared I say it in my head as if it rhymed with scared.
As many others have identified, these come with learning words through reading.
mmm
I actually use both of those pronunciations, depending on which sounds better in the moment. However, butter pecan ice cream is always butter p’KAHN.
Mine was “misled” which, of course, is pronounced “MY-zled”. How else would you pronounce it?
You’ve never heard Blinded by the Light? It’s that song about calliopes and feminine hygiene products.
I see what you did there!
Until this year, I thought the word “segue” rhymed with “egg” and that there was a separate word “segueway”. Oops.
You probably know how to pronounce hors d’oeuvres at least approximately. Just drop the hors d and you got it.
But then I think I am getting Old Timer’s disease.
Not any more, certainly. The only place you’ll see one nowadays is in contexts that are trying very hard to be old-fashioned. It’s also the name of my school’s lit mag, so it gets mentioned in the PA announcements every so often. It’s always amusing, the various ways the student readers mispronounce it.
Here’s a nerdy one: Up until maybe ten years ago, I thought that the big D&D monster was named “TARE-ass-kay”. I didn’t realize that he was French, and that it’s therefore “tar-RASK” (tarrasque).
I can say it, but I can’t spell it!
There’s a number of words I first saw in print and for years wrongly assumed they were pronounced as per what the spelling indicated.
The example that always comes to mind is “segue”. I used to think it was “SEAG”, until I heard that it was “SEG-way” like the vehicle.
There are a few names that I terribly mispronounced a kid because prior to learning to read English, I had learned to read Serbian (mother tongue) and I applied Serbian orthography to my pronunciation:
I pronounced “Clyde” as “Slide”
I pronounced “Isaac” as “Eeesatch”
And
I pronounced “Clifford” as “TSEAR-fold” (as in Clifford the Big Red Dog)