I take it you’re not a fan of The Bowery Boys? 
Chicago was always CHICK-ago until I learned better.
The one that most struck me was oui. When I was a kid reading sub-literary books, lazy authors would mark the Frenchness of a character by having the character gratuitously say it all the time in association with an otherwise English sentence.
I couldn’t understand why they were yelling Oy! at each other all the time like cockney barrow boys.
Back in high school, I once had a guy ask me if I ever read “Ooo-wee Magazine.” It took me a few seconds to figure out WTF he meant.
“It’s like, them ladies, they don’t care that they ain’t got no clothes on! Huhuhuhuhuh!”
Yeah, right! 
Possibly regional – though it’s just seemed random to me: some folk say it one way, some the other: I’ve heard “Granth-am” more often overall, than the alternative. Strikes me as relatively obscure, as large towns in Britain go – known chiefly as a one-time big railway centre; and as where Margaret Thatcher came from.
The “Granth-am” version would seem to me better for versification –
As the choir was singing the anthem –
Gushed the Bishop to me, “Ooh, you’re handthome !”
While Norman Lamont
Fell into the font:
He was pushed by an old bitch from Grantham.
Those Jocks, and the havoc that they wreak on the English tongue – they even claim that (as per yourself, above) it’s their own separate language, called Scots ;).
Being not American, and pretty “culturally deprived” as regards anything on the film scene, I had to Google the Bowery Boys – indeed, hitherto totally unknown to me. Actually, they sound like good fun.
An additional problem in figuring out correct pronunciation are jerks like me (and there are a lot of us) who know the correct pronunciation, but don’t use it just because.
I think we think it makes us sound swave and deboner.
In a high school knowledge bowl, a question was asked about location of the final battle of the end times. I knew the answer was “Armageddon” because I’d come across it in various reading materials, but I had no idea how to pronounce it. I buzzed in and fumbled with something like “ar MAJ uh dawn” (with a soft “g”).
It was not accepted as a correct response.
I thought Yosemite Sam was “Yose-mite” Sam.
Add me to those who said “chic” as “chick” until I heard the proper pronunciation on an 80’s Canadian TV show called “Airwaves”. I saw “sheik” in my head and was like “wtf?”
You mean I’ve been pronouncing it wrong this whole time?
I read numerous accounts of the Battle of Agincourt and I figured this was pronounced a-gin-kort. Then a few years ago, I was listening to an audiobook and they pronounced it ah-zhin-kor. ‘Okay,’ I thought, ‘good to know.’
Except that since then, I’ve heard it pronounced several different ways: a-gin-kort, ah-zhin-kor, ah-jin-kor, a-zhin-kort, and others.
Yep.
I’m a little surprised that the word *ennui *hadn’t shown-up in this thread. Yet.
I was more that thirty years old before I learned how to pronounce the word “debacle.”
I was reading a book to my blind friend to use in his upcoming class (he was a sociology professor at the local community college). When I came upon the word, I pronounced it “DEB-ickle,” and was immediately corrected.
I also had problems with misled (which I surmised to mean “confused and fuzzy-headed”), and awry.
I had a chemistry instructor in the Navy who, when talking about daughter products of nuclear fission reactions, spoke of Cesmium.
I think you mean “segue” (pronounced, as you note, SEG-way). For years, I thought this was pronounced this merely as SEG, but I never said it or heard it said. When I finally said it (incorrectly) about 10 years ago, I had a roomful of people look at me strangely before someone corrected me. I guess that’s the price of fighting my ignorance.
That reminds me, my high school chemistry teacher pronounced “stoichiometry” STOKE-ee-ah-metch-ry.
To add another medical one, for a long time I thought the skin condition Michael Jackson was suspected of having was called vih-TIG-lee-oh.
This was one for me too. When I saw it written down, I pronounced it in my head as seeg, rhyming with league. Then when I heard someone saying “segway” I didn’t understand what it meant.
If you tell a Torontonian you’re going shopping at “Ah-zhin-cor Mall,” he or she will immediately correct you with “A-gin-court.”
My brother (we’re British) insists on pronouncing the name concerned, as “Yoze-might”. He knows it’s wrong – he knows the proper pronunciation – he’s been on holiday to that very park; but he stubbornly says it his way. He’s just a contrary sod.
I used to do the same thing just to irritate one of my teachers (all in good fun, of course).
Well, I’ve just learned what a prothonotary is and how to pronounce it.
Just thought of another one from just a few years ago: I knew what “disheveled” meant, but I also thought that the “dis-” was a negative prefix; therefore, the word was pronounced “dis HEV uld.”
Never mind that I never saw the word “heveled” to describe someone who actually looked put together.
With a hard or soft “g”? I have a feeling (though I might be wrong) that Little Nemo is using “a-gin-cort” to represent a “hard g” sound as in “get,” but you are using it to refer to the “soft g” sound as in, well, “gin.” The reason I say that is because he lists an “a-gin” pronunciation along with an “a-jin” pronunciation.