Cache
I pronounced it as “cay-sh” for years, until someone finally corrected me. But I had been pronouncing it wrong for so long, the incorrect pronunciation is ingrained in me. Unless I think about what I’m saying and concentrate, I still say it wrong.
I always prided myself on reading skills and spelling ability until, in Jr High, I was faced with the word “chaos” whilst reading aloud.
'cha-ose?
'kay-os… was the response from my teacher.
from then on, I read AHEAD the night before class!
But, I tend to use the less-preferred pronunciations of some words.
Protein… I pronounce 'pro-te-in, not 'pro-teen
Karaoke… I pronounce ka-'ro-ke, not 'ka-re-o-ke
Carribbean… I pronounce ka-ri-'be-en, not ka-'rib-e-en.
People sometimes correct me when I pronounce words this way, but I show them that we both can be right. I learned how to pronounce words this way, and see no need to change.
GrizzWife says I do it to call attention to myself.
*When I was a young kid (age 6 or 7) reading about astronomy, the word sidereal always gave me an eerie, Twilight Zone feeling. I would literally feel a sensation of weirdness descend around me like a halo, making my flesh creep.
That’s because I was reading it as a compound of side + real, as though it meant another reality alongside the real one. Similar to surreal. It wasn’t till I was in college that I found out it was really si-DEE-ri-al, from the Latin word for star.
I still get an eerie feeling from it, though.
LoverBoy, as a kid I also misread infrared as in-FRAIRD. Glad to see I wasn’t the only one.
sunacres, I think buoy really is boo-ee. Don’t feel bad, you didn’t make a boo-boo.
Cheesesteak, I have to work with people who named one of their servers “Chimera” and they always mispronounce it with the ch- sound of “cheesesteak.” If I said it correctly, no one would know what I was talking about. <sigh> Techie types, hopeless when it comes to literary matters. I say Curaçao as koo-ra-SOW. It’s Portuguese for ‘heart’.
GrizzRich, AFAIC Caribbean should always be ka-ri-BEE-an. ka-RIB-e-an sounds strange. William Safire once wrote a piece on how in polysyllables the stress used to be toward the front of the word—in the early 20th century—and now only really old people still keep it there; now, the stress tends to move toward the back of the word.
But I hate it when anyone pronounces “Augustine” as uh-GUS-t’n; the only allowable pronunciation should be AUG-us-teen. I must have been influenced by Bob Dylan singing “I dreamed I saw Saint AUG-us-teen.”
I, too, pronounce “cache” wrong, and was guilty of the “draught”/“draft” confusion.
I’m still not sure how to pronounce “paradigm” or “schizm”.
In 6th or 7th grade I was reading a word problem out loud for math class, and I pronounced the name Sean as “seen”. I’d never realized that Shawn could also be spelled Sean.
I thought the flowers were called “ruh-DODD-en-drawns” rather than roe-doe-DEN-druns. Go figure.
A mother of a friend of mine described a view once as “picture-skwee.” Much hilarity ensued.
I spent most of my life thinking that that city in AZ was pronounced the way it is spelled, namely “TUCK-son”. I had surely heard Tucson pronounced before, but never made the connection.
Flash to a meeting a few years ago in which I’m supposed to be some sort of authority.
Middle Management Marketing Dude: “Where is the supplier’s conference this year?”
Me: (confidently)“I believe it’s in Tucson.”
MMMD: Where?
Me: “Tucson. You know, Tucson, Arizona.”
MMMD: “Hoo boy.”
I’m still cringing.
Notes: count me in for in-FRARED and I just now learned what sidereal means. I do much more reading than I do talking so this problem crops up from time to time.
According to Merriam-Webster’s both “boo-ee” and “boy” are acceptable pronounciations of bouy.
I’ve done ep-i-TOME. I have thought that a draught of beer and draught horses must be really cold. The worst was when I was in high school and asked for a pint (short “i”) of vallina ice cream.
I still have to think about vanilla before I say it.
One that I notice many people say is comparable.
They pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable. com-PAR-a-ble - Like compare with an able on the end.
According to dictionaries I’ve looked in in the past, the correct pronunciation is with the accent on the first syllable. COM-par-a-ble
Maybe someone will prove me wrong…
One that annoys me is “impious” – a word hardly anyone uses, anyway. The “Correct” pronunciation is “IM-pee-uss”, which I hold to be an abomination before God (appropriately). By all rights the word should be pronounced “im-PIE-uss”, since it is the opposite of “pious” (pronounced “PIE-uss”). This is one case where I rebel against the “correct” pronunciation in the service of reforming the language.
I also think we should say “a historic occasion” instead of “an historic occasion”, and I applauded when Time magazine followed that usage. But that’s another thread.
I always pronounce “caterpillar” as “calla-pitter” only because it’s easier for me to say. I have to think to say “catter-pillar.”
Oh, yeah… the first time I read it, I pronounced it as “whores dee-aw-vrey”. I never even connected it to the word “ordervs” that I had heard but not read. 
Paradigm: like you have 20 cents (pair-uh-DYME).
Schizm: skizz’m (short “i” sound).
grin I still pronounce it capper-tiller–started as a goof and now it’s stuck in my head.
For years I thought “hors d’oeuvre” was pronounce “whores de overs” . . . read it a lot, heard people talking about them, never connected the two. I forget now when the penny finally dropped.
Highschool, we’re reading “Antigone” out loud in English. The friend reading the part of the chorus declaims:
Can it be?
Yes!
It’s Aunty gone!
Ethilrist - Soul Brother/Sister!!!
My mom still laughs at the time we took a road trip up the coast of CA into Oregon & Washington. I told them that we were X number of miles away from the city of ro-dod-en-dron. She made me repeat it a few times and actually had to look at the map with her own eyes before she understood what I meant. I opened this thread specifically to list that one, but dang it, you beat me to it!!!
I read this book when I was littler wherein two youths were purchasing hors d’oeuvre. I thought “Eww, what do they need horse ovaries for?”
When I was in HS, one of my teachers made us write precis papers (pronounced pray-see). I thought there were two different papers, one ‘pray-see’ my teacher kept talking about and one ‘pre-sis’ that kept showing up on the board.
Some of my mispronunciations that were dispelled (publicly, and with much ridicule) in high school:
sidereal - I pronounced it sid-ree-al.
endowed - en-doe-d.
Betelguese - buh-tel-geeze.
Still, there was my classmate who read aloud “after walking all day Mary was very fat-ih-gyu-d.”
And sunacres, you’re right about ‘buoy’. Those Brits just have an inferiority complex.
–sublight.
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Oh, yeah… the first time I read it, I pronounced it as “whores dee-aw-vrey”. I never even connected it to the word “ordervs” that I had heard but not read. **
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Ha! I used to say it that way too. Curious though, did you ever say it wrong in a restaurant in front of the waiter and your friends? I DID!!!:o
When I was younger I used to pronounce aisle as ‘a-sul’, and vinyl as ‘ven-nul’ and my family would laugh at me so hard whenever I called the A-1 steak sauce 'AL sauce :eek:
Just to be a snip about it…
The area was named for the Carib Indians (Themselves named for chocolate’s ugly cousin. No that’s carob…) So it should be Carib-ean.
Caribbean = ka-RIB-e-an
-Rue.
Annihilate. I had heard the word long before I ever saw it in writing. It just didn’t seem to be the same word.