I had the “mawv” vs. “mohv” discussion with a friend not too very long ago. She said “mawv” and I snickered. I asked her how she pronounced t-a-u-p-e and she said that wrong too. When I told her the ‘au’ sounds like ‘oh’ because its origin is French, she said “Yeah, well I speak American.” So I asked her if she orders fi-LETT MIG-non in restaurants.
And speaking of restaurants, I once had a customer who ordered TUR-boh and his date asked for a glass of mer-LOTT. I’m still not sure if they were doing that deliberately.
As for me, it took me forever to realize that the word I read as ep-i-tohm was the word I KNEW as e-PIT-oh-mee.
I can remember having a drama teacher correct me when I made a reference to “Waiting for Godot,” a play I had read about but apparantly never discussed before.
I believe Fresnel is fre-NELL. Named after a French guy.
Mine is deus ex machina. OK, I just looked up in the dictionary and listened to the audio clip so I know now but I’m still not sure if I’d be understood if I tried to say it… Nor am I confident about being able to say albeit.
Seems to me there’s a Yosemite Sam bit about this. “War-ches-ter-sheer-shire-sheer-shire…”
LifeOnWry: Isn’t “turbot” pronounced TUR-boh? I’ve never actually ordered it in a restaurant (I live in Montana; give me a break!), but that’s always how I’ve pronounced it in my head. :o
trishdish: It isn’t just the Midwest; I’ve got a friend who grew up in Idaho who still says “EYE-talian”. And he’s got a Ph.D. in microbiology and he’s a lawyer.
“Second” (V.R.)
I say it the American way as both an adjective and verb. My educated British friends pronounce the verb say-GOND. When around British folks I need to make a serious effort not to talk like them.
say-GOND? really? That sounds really odd, no offense to all you brits
Mine was the word fetid. Reading fantasy books, this word was often in there, but nobody ever says it any more. At one point I said it “fet-EED”, just because that sounds better to my French-educated ears, but was told it was pronounced “FET-ihd”
Also, apparently in the south they say “frap-PAY” instead of “frap” for a milkshake. Just sounds odd to me.
racer…it sounds like an o but starts with an e cuz it’s french They’re just weird like that.
I once took an order from someone for “ques-a-dil-las”…I repeated their order, pronouncing it correctly, and they actually corrected my correct pronunciation of the spanish!
I am going to tell on my mother-in-law (since she will never read this anyway–I’m such a coward!). Some years back she was helping me sew some maternity dresses. (By “helping” I mean she was doing the sewing and I was reading the directions–I stink at sewing!) Whenever she would read the instructions, she invariably pronounced the word bodice as “BOW-dyce” instead of “BAH-diss.” Nearly drove me nuts, but I managed to not say a word!! My sister and I had a giggle fit over it later in the car going home, though!
BTW, I do love my MIL–she’s a terrific lady and I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for the world!
Don’t bother, they taste like nothing much anyhow. And I kinda goofed the pronunciation, too - it’s more like TUR-butt, than TUR-bott. This is where that stupid schwa thing we learned about in sixth grade comes into play, I think. I have no idea where the name comes from.
Incidentally, I once had a customer ask for a “keh-sa-dilda” (quesadilla), and another one request “Rice pee-FALL” (rice pilaf <PEE-lahf>)
Ok, so i feel I must explain the joke. There’s a TV commercial, American, where a guy is on a job interview talking overenthusiastically about how he wants for work for “Dumbass and Dumbass” and how he’s real “Dumbass material”. Mr. Dumas, the interviewer, sets him straight. The commercial was a failure, because I don’t remember the product.
I always pronounce it ‘kleek’ although I’ve heard it pronounced ‘klick’ countless times. I think this could be similar to niche, depends on where you’re from.
There are countless words that I avoid because I don’t know how to say them. I read too darn much, and I’ve developed entire systems to get around saying words that I don’t know how to say. I’ll even go to the length of pretending that I have the word on the tip of my tongue even though I know perfectly well what the word is, just not how to spell it
I always have trouble with “kitchy”. Is it “kitch-ee” or “keetch-ee”? And how do you say “peony”? There are countless more.
