I can think of no possible way ‘Wednesday’ can be pronounced “Wendsday” without transposing letters.
And yet, it does happen.
I hear that more as a dropping of a “d” than a transposition. It’s more like “wen’s day” to me, but the difference between “wen’s” and “wend’s” is pretty much imperceptible to me. In my dialect, they would sound identical or almost so unless someone really enunciates the “d.”
I do also say “feb-you-ary,” but I do put both r’s in “library.”
The word that is a tongue twister for me is “rural.” I hate saying that word.
There is a street here called Wilmot. Everyone calls it Wilmont.
“Draught”.
I know it’s pronounced the same as “draft”, but I can’t help but read/pronounce it as “drawt”.
The grocery store I work at (let’s call it StoreCo) is frequently referred to by some of our customers as “StoreCo’s”, as if it was founded by a guy named James StoreCo or something.
I’d throw in with your coworker. The way you’d break the syllables doesn’t sound alien to me so I’ve obviously heard people stick the n in the first syllable before, but it still feels unusual.
Interesting that you associate “sherbert” with New York. I think of it is as a Southernism, one of those words that the Yankees would tell us were wrong.
I do use a lot of the pronunciations you guys mention, but I wouldn’t consider most of them wrong, just dialectical variation. The words I do say incorrectly tend to be words I learned written down.
To this day, I will sometimes catch myself saying or-ree for awry, or nye-ee-VET for naivete. There are others, but maybe I’ll remember them later. There are also some I mispronounce to remember how to spell them, like wor-SESS-stuhr-shire or WED-ness-day
Wenzday
My pronunciation of iron has somewhere between one and two syllables, and is sort of like “Ahrn”
NOO Clee er (Never NU Cu Ler)
FEB you ary
I find it difficult to pronounce the plural of words like Ghost, Host, Trust. It comes out like Ghoss, Hoess, Truss. Or if I try really hard, Ghost-sss etc. with almost an extra syllable made out of the sss part.
It is just a New York thing to add Rs where there aren’t any and to drop Rs from words.
Many pronounced Oil like Earl
Many have an Idear instead of an Idea.
Etc.
Funny thing is that the etymology of “nuclear” tracks back to the Latin word “nucula”. I’ve always pronounced it as “new-clear”, but apparently people who pronounce it “new-kyu-lar” are actually closer to the root.
I used to pronounce the t in often, until I learned it’s supposed to be silent. Now I don’t pronounce it but then I started to pronounce the t in words like listen and soften. But, only around people who understand me.
This post displays a common misunderstanding, especially in America with its spelling-bee culture. We often think of words as a sequence of letters. But they’re not. Words are a sequence of spoken sounds. That is, how we spell them is secondary. (Which, if you think about it, is how it must be, given that humans instinctively speak words, but must be taught to spell.)*
When there is a mismatch between a pronunciation and a spelling, it’s the spelling that is divergent, not the pronunciation. That doesn’t mean the spelling is wrong, only that it does not well reflect a common pronunciation. A pronunciation can only be wrong in the sense that it doesn’t match the expectations of the speech community it is used in.
*I’m skipping over a lot of detail extraneous to my point. If you feel the to expand, please do; I’m always happy to discuss this stuff.
I would agree with the regarding newly formed words, but that misses an entire category of words whose spelling stays the same but pronunciation changes, or whose pronunciation stays the same but the spelling changes. In both cases, old-fashioned prescriptivist purists will insist that the new way is flat-out wrong, and the younger whippersnappers will ascribe it to normal language development.
I just saw another one that I pronounce incorrectly (posted somewhere above): I would never say CARE A MEL. I always say CAR MUL.
I can’t say “specific” to save my life. It always comes out “Pacific”. I’ve sat around trying to repeat the word over and over to make it flow but it doesn’t happen. I usually lamely sub in “particular” or some other good enough synonym rather than trip over trying to make that first syllable work.
Salt water taffy on the Atlantic coast, Carmel on the Pacific
I was brought up to say reSEARCH.
But more and more I hear people say REsearch.
Not so much pronunciation, but an idiosyncrasy. I call any alcoholic drink (vodka, scotch, bourbon, gin, beer, etc) “whiskey”. If my gf asks what I’m drinking and I answer “whiskey” it narrows things down as much as I care to.
I grew up pronouncing “Jaguar” as jag-wire. Around high school when I developed an interest in cars, it evolved into jag-wahr and eventually jag-you-are. I pronounced it that way for 30 years or so until the a-holes on Top Gear started making fun of the way Americans pronounced the word. For the last ten years, I have reverted back to jag-wire out of pure obstinance.
Mischievous is pronounced miss chuh vuss. The letters following the V are O-U-S. So say all the dictionaries (and the teachers in my day were all high priestesses of the Funk and Wagnalls). I am not one of those who pretentiously adds a vowel after the V.
I’m in California and those are two entirely different things, both sold in the same stores under each name.