minutiae.
I heard Garak in Deep Space Nine pronounce it as min-you-sha and I thought, so that’s how you say it.
However, I just heard a character in another TV show pronounce it my-newt-ee-eye.
It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t know how “consortium” should be pronounced. Most words with “ti” in a position like that (like “ti” in “position”) have it pronounced like “sh”.
And yet, “con-SOR-shum” just seems wrong. I want to say it “con-SOR-tee-um”. I really don’t know for sure which is right.
(And since when should “su” ever be pronounced like “sh”, as in “sure” or “sugar”?)
ETA: I had a date or two, once upon a time, with a person of female characteristics, whose name was “Marcia”, which I had only previously seen in writing. I pronounced it Mar-see-ah, with the accent on either the first or second syllable. She corrected me: It’s pronounced like Marsha. I had always should that the name Marsha was spelled Marsha.
Never mind…
IMO you can’t make too much of a faux pas if you pronounce a Latin/Italian/French/Greek/Gaelic word or name as in the original language. At worst you will come off as educated in the classics.
I have seen the spelling “Marsha”. It’s out there. (Maybe a regional variant?) Marsha = Marcia.
I’ve known multiple people who pronounced their name " Mar-see-ah" - names often have no-standard pronunciations or spellings.
Descriptivism doesn’t mean “anything goes”, it means that rules are established by consensus usage in the community of speakers rather than by edict. It certainly does not mean that native speakers cannot make mistakes. This thread is about situations where we have never heard words spoken, so obviously mistakes are possible when we could not possibly know the correct pronunciation.
Pronunciations that originated as mistakes can become established as acceptable variants. But that’s a process across the entire community of speakers, not a unilateral one.
It’s a common reaction to “cringe” when you first encounter a variant that is common elsewhere, but is (or was) considered a mistake in your own dialect. Empirical data determine whether and where both are established variants.
As a kid I always thought chaos was pronounced “chay-ose.” And because I watched Get Smart I knew how to spell “KAOS.”
I remember reading an account by a noted British author (whose name I don’t recall) making this exact point. He described how, as a schoolboy, he had been mocked by a teacher for pronouncing “misled” as “mizzled.” He responded, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having read more words than one has heard spoken.” Which, whether he intended to or not, should certainly have put the teacher in his place.
I pronounce it as con-SOR-shee-um [kən 'sɒɹ ʃi əm]
Great response, but “mis-led” is not a word that is uncommonly spoken. Similar would be “awry.” It’s just not making the connection. But no teacher should be mocking their students, of course.
I think you may have been mizzled about how often “misled” is used in daily conversation.
My word was melancholy. I pronounced it with a hard “ch” (as in church). If I had ever heard it spoken I would have made the connection.
Daily? No? But it’s not an obscure word that is likely for someone not to have heard, and I didn’t grow up around SAT-power-vocab talking folk. The problem is simply that one had heard the word “misled” or “awry” many times in the past and just never made the connection that those words correspond to those spellings. That’s completely understandable. I’m sure it’s happened to me, but I can’t think specifically of what word surprised me when I made the connection.
ETA: Actually, “segue” would work for me. Took me years before I realized “segue” and what is spoken as “seg-way” are the same word, and I heard the latter many times. I just read it as “SEEG”.
Only within the last ten years have I known that chimera is ki-mer-ah and not chim-er-ah.
Though the first 40 were spent only thinking about the mythological Greek critter and I never had reason to hear it spoken otherwise until I started hearing it used in medical contexts, to refer to certain viruses and the like. So at least I wasn’t using the word at dinner parties or anything.
So your contention is that they heard the word said aloud and didn’t know what it meant (how could they) and never stopped to ask what it meant?
Hilaire Belloc, French by birth but John Bull British by inclination, went through life correcting clerks and messengers to pronounce “Bell-ock.”
If only the Czechs had conquered the world. They spell their words according to how they’re pronounced.
The brand of underwear and bras I wear is “Cacique”. Never once heard it pronounced and I’ve been wearing them 20+ years. In my head it’s “Ca-KEEK”. Am I anywhere close?
Yes - it’s a great point that having a reading vocabulary wider than your aural experience is a virtue. It’s just that “misled” is not a great example of that.
Assuming Spanish pronunciation, “ka-SEE-ke”.
I was finally motivated to actually find a commercial for these undies to see if it’s pronounced anywhere. Dug around and found the spot below, and it’s pronounced “ca-SEEK”. So you were close @mbh they just use two syllables, not three.
Will spoiler the link because it’s an underwear ad, and the pronunciation is at the end.