We are all guilty of mispronouncing a word from time to time. I was telling my son about the shocking Subway find where a Newyork magazine designer bit into his sub and found a knife sticking out. The little girl I provide respite care overheard the conversation and instead of saying “He noticed the knife, she said “He nudist.” (I don’t know if John is a nudist, but thankfully he found that knife. What a a frightening discovery.)
The mispronunciation of the word ‘notice’ reminded me of some words my daughter use to mispronounce. My daughter had a speech impediment when she was a young child and instead of saying horse she use to say ho. I recall, one time we were riding in the car with the minster from church and his wife. My daughter noticed some horses in the field. She said “Look Mommy – Ho.”
Translation Tees is a local mom-owned business that offers one-of-a-kind shirts for your little ones who have their own unique takes on common words. I would of never bought my daughter a shirt that said ho with a picture of a horse on it. (Maybe they should sell adult tees too.)
What are some of the funny pronunciations that your children have said or even yourself?
I think we all have a word or phrase that we mispronounce. espresso = ex presso, card shark instead of cardsharp,
I use to say badly harm instead of bodily harm and upsot stomach instead of upset.
People always mispronounce my last name.
How many words on this list of 100 most often mispronounced words have you mispronounced? I notice a few that I’m guilty of mispronouncing. I’m not even going to tell you how many.
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12 responses so far ↓
Wrote: Jul 18, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I hope you don’t expect us to give you our personal score, lol.
We all have idiosyncrasies (bless spellcheckers) in our own speech but are quick to notice those in the speech of others. I always notice when someone mispronounces the word ‘often’. It’s such a simple word. Sometimes it seems they go out of their way to say it wrong.
That was a great list. I certainly learned quite a bit from it. Now can I put it into practice?
Wrote: Jul 18, 2008 at 12:47 pm
sometimes pronounciation is done in a collocquial way—-in the south, they say when waving good bye to friends and visitors—”you all come back now, you hear—-but it comes out as “yawl comeback now ya heah?”. I spent nine monthes stationed in Huntsville, Alabama, while in the Army. Went back up north to visit my parents, and they laughed themselves sick over all the “southern dialect ” I had unconscously had adapted to my manner of speech—-along with words, like —shucks, and Golllleeee!!
Wrote: Jul 18, 2008 at 3:14 pm
My favorite was a college freshman English paper I was grading:
“For all intensive purposes…..”
Wrote: Jul 18, 2008 at 5:09 pm
I used to work for a man who used to say mute point instead of moot point. It drove me nuts.
My niece used to say youse instead of you. It was cute until she got older.
Wrote: Jul 18, 2008 at 7:35 pm
What a laugh Rose – Kia ora!
Thanks for this post!
When they were all very young, my kids pronounced yellow as lallow – not an uncommon pronunciation of the word in children. My oldest also found milk hard to say and for almost a year called it moke.
Two common mispronounced words in New Zealand not listed on the 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words site is ‘drawer’ and ‘drawers’, pronounced as ‘draw’ and ‘draws’. I suspect that this (mis)pronunciation is used in other countries. There are many more.
I find pronunciation fascinating. The Fife dialect (Scottish) pronounces many English words the way they are spelt – and they are not considered mispronunciations. Examples are: bought, frought, enough, thought, sought, correctly pronounced in the dialect as: brocht, frocht, enoch, thocht, socht – the ‘ch’ being the hard-to-say throaty sound in the Scottish word ‘loch’, not ‘lock’ The Boys of the Lough one of the longest serving Celtic folk music groups pronounces ‘Lough’ as ‘loch’). This pronunciation of the ‘ough’ spills over to daughter, which is pronounced ‘dochter’, not ‘docter’.
There are many examples of this in British dialect. I wonder if these words weren’t pronounced that way a long time ago, and we hear the remnants of that ancient pronunciation among the local dialects. Studies done on the rhyming words used by such sticklers of correct rhyme as Pope, and in some of Shakespeare’s writing suggest a raft of pronunciation changes have happened overtime. Some of them perhaps occurred the same way as the present-day (mis)pronunciation of words occur.
So are they really mispronunciations? Or are they just part of the evolving pronunciation of words in our dialects?
ka kite (pronounced ‘ka kaetay’)
Catch ya later
Wrote: Jul 18, 2008 at 9:51 pm
My son always used to call his great Aunt Sis “Aunt Twiss.”
Wrote: Jul 19, 2008 at 4:10 am
The Hard Core Mainer will put “ah” where “er” should be “R” where “A” should be. Mispronunciation is a fact of life heah. But having grown up all ovah, I found that every air-ur has it’s own way of butcha-erun the King’s English.
Wrote: Jul 19, 2008 at 9:57 am
I had a few, but in my defense they were taught to me that way.
Wrote: Jul 19, 2008 at 7:15 pm
We still say “hangaburs” or hamburgers because my nephew said that when he was 3. He’s married now … LOL
Wrote: Jul 21, 2008 at 4:57 am
One of the flaws in English – and I’m thinking about Gary Jay’s example – is that there is no distinction between 2nd person singular (you) and 2nd person plural (you), as there is in most other languages (French -tu/vous). A linguist I heard explained that the you all (contraction: y’all) is an instinctive attempt to actually fixed the flawed language.
Wrote: Jul 21, 2008 at 11:21 am
Oh, I did find one word I can’t say or spell: remuneration, which I’m forever spelling renumeration
Wrote: Jul 22, 2008 at 8:19 am
Is it really a mispronunciation if it’s from a child just learning to speak? Not in my book.
When my cousin was little, after a trip to our local zoo, she talked about seeing the ‘brazeers’ (zebras) which I think is funny to this day and she’s now in her 20s. LOL
One that really irritates me that people mispronounce AND misspell is supposedly. They say/spell: supposably.