You encounter a new word in print, learn its the meaning, become familiar with it, comfortable with it, at length add it to your vocabulary … and then found out you were badly mispronouncing it? Bonus points if, upon learning the correct pronunciation, you found it was a word you already knew but maybe never knew the meaning of.
My most embarrassing:
[ul]a priori, in which I used to pronounce the "i"s rhyming with “my” clitoris, which I won’t even try to explain … suffice it to say, I somehow came up with neither of the two common pronunciations[/ul]
This might seem strange, but when I was about 18, I stayed over at friends house. My friend wasn’t there, but his twin sisters (13) and his dog were there. I was told that the dog would hand you his paw if you said “paw”. I said “paw” to the dog, and the girls would just crack up. I just didn’t get it.
I then learned for the first time, that I have a disability. I can’t hear or pronounce differently, “pa” and “paw”. The girls thought I was saying “pa” to the dog.
Ten years later, and I’m still having trouble with it. A lot of trouble. Any words that have those sounds come up, and I have to ask my wife if I’m saying it right.
Not that it will help me much, except to commiserate, but does anyone else have this handicap?
Ogle. I thought it should rhyme with “goggle.” A friend and I got into a big argument over this, and we went to go settle it over the school’s unabridged dictionary. He still teases me about it.
“Draught”, I had read many times in books and in my head I pronounced it “Drawt”. I thought “draught” was spelled “draft”, which it could be spelled either way. I just didn’t realize it was the same thing. I even knew that you could get a “drawt” of beer. I just never put it together. Wow. I’m not that quick. Figured it out at a bar about three years ago, after squinting and thinking at a Guinness advert and then finally came the “Heeeeeyyyyy!”
I’ve often had trouble guessing where the accent should be in polysylabic words.
We use the words “revocable” and “irrevocable” (in relation to trusts) at work a lot, and I’m still not sure how they’re pronounced. I mean, I think the accent goes on the first (second) syllable so that it’s “REH-vah-kah-bull” and “IR-reh-vah-kah-bull”, but my semantic sense (i.e., I know what they mean) always wants to take over and and put the accent on the second (third) syllable and say “re-VOH-ka-bull”, etc. I’ll look it up, eventually, and try not to be embarrased in the meantime.
When I was younger, I thought the capital of Oregon was “sah-LEM”. My parents still tease me about this…
History class, 7th grade, I’m reading a passage aloud about the civil war.
Me: “When the confederates reached Antishem…”
My friend in the next desk: An-tee-tam (Antietam)
Me: (embarassed, I start to read faster) “…they found thattheFederalForceshadalready…”
Teacher: You’re reading to fast. Start over and go slower.
Me: (getting flustered)“When the confederates reached Antishem…”
MFIND: An-tee-tam
Me: (really embarassed)"…theyfoundthattheFederalForceshadalready…"
Teacher: Too fast! Start again and go slower.
Me: (now in full fluster) “When the confederates reached Antishem…”
MFIND: An-tee-HEY! (ducks hurled textbook)
I got in surprisingly little trouble over that one, now that I think of it.
Awry. I knew how to pronounce it, but every time I saw it in print, I would think “aw-ry”. I just never connected the print version with the pronounced word for some reason.
Don’t that just beat all? I have an extremely average (!) command of English, but corporate wisdom being what it is they’ve had me managing a documentation team for the past few years. All around me, very bright writers and editors blessed with a retentive passion for precision and proper pronunciation. Week after week, meeting after meeting, one gaffe after another until my mouth has finally been cleansed of most blunders, many of them described above.
But I’d never realized that Jethro had it right all along. I’ve been a vic-shoo-uls man all this time.
Of course, when I lived with the Brits they gave me a rough time about “buoy,” which I pronounced “boo-wee.” They thought that was hysterical.
chimera
I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, and always pronounced it shimmer-a, sounded fine. Then along comes Mission Impossible 2 and I hear them pronouncing it ki-mer-a, boy does that sound stupid, I’m thinking. Turns out I was wrong all those years…
I heard someone being interviewed on Morning Edition pronounce paradigm as “puh-RI-dig-gum” - that cracked me up for some reason.
My mispronounce was in junior high - I said PEE-c’n, and the rest of the class, as one, said pi-CAHN… so I switched to walnuts…
Oh yeah, and I pronounced indict phonetically also - but the first time I saw in it print, it wasn’t in context, or I’d have figured it out… really, I would!
