25 Words You've Probably Been Mispronouncing Your Entire Life

[mfcorey1]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/smart-living/25-words-you%e2%80%99ve-probably-been-mispronouncing-your-entire-life/ss-AAAgzvN?li=BBnb7Kz

[d_r]

1. forte

[Drahthaardogs]

10. Is an Italian word, meaning strong

Fort e. Not for Tay

Also it's Ri-coat-ah. NOT Ri-cah-ta, no such word.

Also bis-coat-e not Bis-cah-tee

Buh ce not BAH CHEE

[ProfessorGAC]

15. How About This One?

"Would you like a cannoli?"
Just one is a cannolo!

[Drahthaardogs]

25. Raviolis...LOL

Pizzelles

[ProfessorGAC]

45. I Should Thought Of That!

Nice catch!

[grantcart]

64. Leave the gun, take the cannoli

Best ad lib line in movie history

[cyclonefence]

27. You're wrong about forte

When you're talking about something that's your strength, it's forte French pronounced fort (strong). It comes from Fencing. The strong part of the epee blade is the forte; the part that bends easily is the faible (weak) pronounced feh' bleh.

Forte in Italian is pronounced for'-tay and is a musical term for loud.

[Drahthaardogs]

33. I think it's

From the Latin Fortis or Fortim

[cyclonefence]

34. Yes--French (Italian, too, of course) is a Romance language

but the specific usage in English to mean strength comes directly from the French fencing term, forte. I'm a fencer. I know.

En garde!

[Dr Hobbitstein]

49. Correct. nt

[GulfCoast66]

68. Hardly a French speaker, but play one when I travel. Isn't is a little more subtle?

While I learned that the ‘e’ is not really pronounced it is not said exactly like Americans would pronounce Fort. Where the ‘t’ is the final sound and often pronounced in a minimal manner. In my mind the French would use a little trick of the tongue to produce a slight sound after the ‘t’? When I pronounce French words ending with a hard ending followed by an e I was taught to add something extra. I am doing a bad job here trying to explain what I mean, but my French got better once I tried to pay attention to the nuances that are not found in English.

That said, I totally agree it would not be pronounced as ‘For-tay’.

I am sincerely asking. I will never be fluent in French because I started too late and my ear cannot pick it up quickly. But I am often complemented on my pronunciation. If I am wrong please let me know.

[cyclonefence]

83. You have a point

I am pretty fluent in French, or used to be, and that final "e" in forte means the "t" is pronounced. When you make the "tuh" sound, there is that breathy little end to the letter, which would be discernible. So I guess a *really* precise pronunciation would be "for-t<uh>."

And your pronunciation must be pretty good if you pick up on something like this.

[fishwax]

70. You're right about the origin, but either pronunciation is fine these days

I don't think there's a dictionary that doesn't list both as acceptable, and that's been a shift that has been underway for four or five decades now.

[cyclonefence]

82. I know

Some dictionaries recognize "irregardless," too.

[fishwax]

91. they might acknowledge irregardless, but they identify it as non-standard

I could be wrong, but I don't know of a dictionary that (yet) treats irregardless as standard.

[d_r]

50. I just posted one word

and got 8 thought out responses. That's like a record for me, generating conversation has not been my forte.

[kcr]

2. Number 3 is wrong. The word graphic is not pronounced Jraffic.

So pronouncing it that way would make no sense. It's stupid. Plus it looks like it should be pronounced with a hard G, so that's why most people pronounce it that way, so it's wrong for two reasons. I don't care what the guy who invented it says.

[unc70]

9. No, it is like someone's name

The one who coined the acronym gets to have the final say, and that is a soft G, therefore "jif". The oral tradition has always been with a soft G. People who just read it as a word make the assumption you did.

Most people do not pronounce with the hard G.

[kcr]

19. That's not how acronyms work.

Anyone can decide anything they want. And most people do indeed pronounce it with a hard G in these modern times. There is no oral tradition, here. The reason people shifted to a hard G after the internet took off in the 90s is because it's more common for monosyllabic words that start with a g in the English language to be pronounced with a hard g. And the fact that the word graphics isn't pronounced that way.

This is probably one of the oldest and stupidest internet debate topics, but I don't care

[Takket]

37. you are correct

i've never heard anyone refer to it as a "jif". nor would doing so make any sense.

[LakeSuperiorView]

53. Younger people who were in diapers or not born yet tend to use the hard G.

Those of us who used computers back when the format was invented tend to use the "jif" pronunciation. I only hear the hard G from relative kids who have never used a computer without a mouse.

[hfojvt]

84. it might

if you were talking about dancing peanut butter or something or taking your car to giffy lube.

In the movie Back to the Future I always though they pronounced gigawatt wrong, but my 1962 dictionary says it is supposed to be jiga.

[unc70]

43. I believe you are mistaken on all counts

There is an oral tradition in the computer industry and that pronunciation is like jif peanut butter. You do not have to follow that tradition, can pronounce it anyway you like, maybe as "hit".

It is not true that English monosyllabic words beginning with G are pronounced with a hard G. All the truly monosyllabic ones beginning with "gi" are pronounced with soft Gs. For example: gib, gip, gin.

BTW the GIF format was compact enough the images would load in a jiffy.

[wonkwest]

54. I work in tech

We all say gif instead of jif. When someone says jif, there's mild snickering.

This may be generational, however.

But I have seen some epic debates over that pronunciation. It's quietly amusing.

[unc70]

55. Might be generational

I am certainly of the older generation. I have about 55 years in the industry, still active. Everyone I know, young and old, looks askance at those who say gif. Maybe it is regional. It is the case that the inventor and creator of the acronym is adamant that it is pronounced jif.

Most of the people I encounter who say gif are not native speakers of English.

[wonkwest]

60. It may be lack of aural contact

For a lot of people, they grew up only reading that word, so the gif pronunciation seemed natural. Most of my cohorts are 20s and 30s - the Reddit generation.

Now we must throw down on this and post a dozen times each, lol.

As long as everyone knows what the other means, it's all gravy.

[Lucky Luciano]

90. I think "git" settles this.

[hfojvt]

86. what about gill or gig?

a person is giddy, not jiddy, unless maybe they are a guy-ant. But when it comes to pronunciation you cannot let logic be your juide, unless one is a silly git.

The dictionary lists other monosyllabic words with hard Gs.
girl
gird
gink (slang)
girth
give
and most importantly
gift

it also pronounces gib as gib as distinguished from the jib on a sailing ship.

[USALiberal]

20. LOL, ok. nt

[nini]

92. I always heard and used it as a hard 'g'

jif reminds me of peanut butter.

I've been in the tech field for over 25 years and have always heard it the same.

[NightWatcher]

3. 24 separate slides. I hate clickbait so much

Not knocking you mfcorey1, just the page.

My local paper does a weekly restaurant report and you have to click through 60 slides and every 4th one is an ad.

I'm in my early 40's but quickly turning into an old man who yells at cloud.

[Ohiogal]

4. The two that really grate on my nerves

are "sherbert" and either variation of "nuclear.".

Neither is terribly hard to pronounce correctly!

[USALiberal]

21. If that really bothers you I think the problem is you IMO. nt

[lunasun]

26. UGH remember Bush and his "nucular."

[Achilleaze]

5. republican traitors is correctly pronounced as...

KGOP repube crony greedhead scumbag TRAY-TORS.

[Lucky Luciano]

6. Primer threw me off big time once.

Last edited Wed Aug 1, 2018, 08:40 PM - Edit history (1)

I say pr-eye-mer in all cases, but apparently most people use that only for paint primer and they say “primmer” for being introduced to a subject. I refuse to pronounce it primmer as I can swear it is pronounced the way I expect it. I’m from NYC if that makes a difference regionally.

[kcr]

8. That might be NYC thing.

I live nearby, but not in the city and I don't think I've heard it pronounced that way.

[Lucky Luciano]

24. Apparently the pronunciation is not settled and both are ok.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/10036/why-is-primer-pronounced-with-a-short-i-sound

[Ron Obvious]

46. I refuse to say "primmer" also

Way to confuse budding young readers right from the get-to with this ugly, non-phonetic pronunciation.

[Codeine]

57. I refuse for the much simpler reason

that “primmer” just sounds utterly fucking stupid.

[sakabatou]

7. It's "HUUT-spah."

No, it's ḥutz-pah or khutz-pah.

[ProudLib72]

65. Exactly. Now go tell the gantze mishpocha

It's a chet, not a hay!

[LuckyCharms]

11. Covfefe is pronounced duh DUR duh.

[AwakeAtLast]

74. DUzy!

[oberliner]

12. Literally the definition of clickbait

[WillowTree]

17. Correctly pronounced "klik-bāt".

[mulsh]

13. "erudite" many pronounce it "air E you dite" but folks there's one "e" on each end and the "i" comes

near the last "e". It's pronounce "air oo dite. I've even heard erudite autodidactic folk mangle that word.

That said a very smart person once pointed out to me "When people mispronounce words it tends to indicate they have read but not heard them used conversation. If I correct them I do so gently so as to not discourage reading."

[ProfessorGAC]

14. Guilty On 2

I thought gif had a hard g and I'm guilty on sherbet. I know better, just lazy.

[greyl]

59. It does. nt

[ProfessorGAC]

80. Yeah, I Read That On This Thread

And, i don't recall anyone ever saying "jif" instead of "Gif". But, i figured i was wrong about that.

On the sherbet thing, i've got no excuses. I know there's no second R, but i say it wrong anyway.

[Mrs. Overall]

16. I've been pronouncing "gala" wrong my entire life and "gif", too.

And, I'm not sure I agree with them on the pronunciation of "acai."

[cyclonefence]

28. Acai is supposed to have a cedilla on the c

which makes it pronounced like an s. Without the cedilla, all hell breaks loose.

[Mrs. Overall]

40. Exactly! The cedilla does make all the difference.

[BumRushDaShow]

44. Ahhhh!!!

That makes more sense!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

61. Bingo.

If the word is printed with the cedilla, I know how to pronounce it. Otherwise, all bets are off.

I took four years of French in high school and still remember an astonishing amount.

[smirkymonkey]

32. Gala was the one word I have been pronouncing wrong as well.

I used to pronounce GIF wrong, but was corrected on that a while ago so have been saying it correctly ever since. The rest of the words I pronounce correctly.

[Mrs. Overall]

41. Yep--now I know to say "gay la" and I have two software engineers in the household who,

are at this moment, raging and debating the pronunciation of "gif" as "jif."

According to them, both pronunciations of "gif" are valid, with hard "g" being the most predominate.

[StarryNite]

18. Where are the 't's going?

Since when did "button" become buh-Inn? And "mountain" mou-Inn?

[WillowTree]

29. They're getting very annoyingly pronounced in the word "often".

[Doreen]

77. If I heard them pronounced like that I would just chalk it up to being trump supporters

from the deep south. No offense to our intelligent democrat deep south friends.

[lpbk2713]

22. One of twenty-four.

Homie don't do clickbait.

[aidbo]

23. Another word many mispronounce, flaccid. Should sound like flack-sid.

https://www.businessinsider.com/11-words-youre-mispronouncing-2014-4

[cyclonefence]

30. I want to bear your children

Impossible, of course, if you are flaccid.

[Takket]

31. fidgerater

instead of refrigerator

[Mrs. Overall]

42. I can't stand "pitcher" as a pronunciation for "picture."

[smirkymonkey]

35. People who say "Lie-berry"

instead of "Library".

[mfcorey1]

36. One of the worse mispronunciations!

[FSogol]

38. "Wersh" as in "wersh the dishes" or "Wershington, DC" is the absolute worst.

[peekaloo]

56. My fifth grade teacher used that pronunciation.

She did not find it funny when we asked if that was near "Washington DC" .

Bill Moyers says Wershington DC and he worked, er, werked there!

[ProudLib72]

66. NY accent is "Warsh" as in "Warsh the dishes"

And they substitute "er" for "a" at the ends of words, like "ideer" instead of "idea".

[haele]

89. Oddly enough, there were areas in Seattle where they pronounced "Washington", "Warshington.

I grew up in one; most of the students and teachers in my high school said "Warsh". And I still find myself occasionally add the "r".

Apparently that's a throwback accent in areas where many of the original PNW residents ended up settling - that story of Asa Mercer and the various lumber companies putting out ads for "suitable, marriageable" young ladies in the North East to provide for some gender equality and civilization in the Puget Sound area during the mid-late 1860's was actually true, and the accent took hold in quite a few of the older neighborhoods (along with the large wave of Scandinavian immigration in the early 1900's, which also brought a very scandhoovian way of speaking in some communities, especially where the fishermen settled).

There were also areas where most of the residents sound like they came from southern Georgia.

Though from what my mom tells me, most of those accents began dying out around the late 1980's/early 1990's, when the California "real estate invaders" (which is odd, as we moved to Seattle from California in 1968...) and tech wave started booming in the area, and the older communities started fracturing and "gentrifying".

Haele

[Doreen]

78. My grandmother said "warsh the clothes or Warshington." It drove me nuts.

[Ron Obvious]

47. That's how they say it in England

Also Med-cine for Medicine. It's a funny old language.

[Glorfindel]

52. My mother and her family pronounced it "lib'ry," so I do, too, half the time.

n/t

[tymorial]

39. I am kind of perplexed

Some of these are really surprising, not because I pronounce them incorrectly, because I thought they were obvious. I have never heard someone say ren day vou instead of rahn day vou for rendezvous. Salmon is another one. I sort of understand Worcestershire even though I am from Rhode Island and Massachusetts. My guess is that people from New England pronounce that correctly (because of Worcester) but some of the others... Sal-mun really?

I liked the list in general even though I really hate webpage lists that are designed like this... slides are typically used to generate advertising revenue. Each page launches their own ads, trackers etc. You usually see this on list websites and crap sites like buzzfeed. I was kind of surprised to see this on msn.com

[Spider Jerusalem]

48. They are wrong

"Mauve" rhymes with "stove", and it's "neesh", not "nitch". They should possibly retitle it to "Words Americans Can't Pronounce".

[Leith]

71. You Are Correct

The article is wrong on mauve.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/mauve?s=t

However, niche is correctly pronounced like "nitch."
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/niche?s=t
On the rare occasions I say the word, I still pronounce it "neesh."


The word that people pronounce incorrectly (and it drives me nuts) is realtor. There is no vowel between the "L" and the "T."

[Spider Jerusalem]

75. Nope.

"Niche" is correctly pronounced "neesh", because it's a French word. English speakers outside of North America don't say "nitch".

[Throck]

51. I have Canadian in laws

They think all Yankees talk funny.

[Codeine]

58. Another; people who pronounce "pin" and "pen"

identically drive me up the wall.

[Retrograde]

72. It's a regional thing

my husband - raised in Mississippi and Alabama - can't hear the difference between the two words, and protests when he asks for a pen and I hand him a pin, and vice versa.

My own peeve is people who can not distinguish between the names Don and Dawn, something very common in California but not in New York where I grew up.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

62. Bruschetta is one that makes me crazy.

I am often quite rude to servers about it. Which isn't very nice, but still, they of all people should be pronouncing it correctly.

[benld74]

63. Caramel

Sticky pronunciation in my family

Intended pun

I caught all saying

Carmel

I correct by stating

Car-a-mel

I get chastised!

Being only male in the family unit
I get it
But
I know I’m right

[mr_lebowski]

67. Not going to the click-bait but please tell me that 'Realtor' is on the list ...

If I had a dime for everytime I've heard this word mispronounced as 'ree-lit-err' ... I've have at least $20.00 by now. Even heard it done in friggin' advertisements for Real Estate Co's ffs.


Drives me up the friggin' wall. Look at the damn word ... how do you get 'ree-lit-err' from that?

[VOX]

73. "Artic" for ArCtic, "Anartica" for AntarCtica.

I’m afraid even good old Al Gore is guilty of this one.

[Midnight Writer]

76. Cthulu. K-thoo-loo. Also Trump. Doosh-bag.

[Doreen]

79. My friend pronounces Thyme as thime and not time.

She says that an H should never be silent. OK, whatever. drives me nuts.

[namahage]

81. Karaoke

If we assume that words in English should be pronounced as they would in their origin languages, then "carry-okie" for "kah-rah-oh-keh" is a pretty grating one.

[moriah]

85. I get irritated often when people pronounce the T in that word.

But that's because of someone else who that irritated pointing out the dishwashing liquid commercial and saying "Do you sofTen your hands as you do dishes?"

Childhood lessons are hard to beat. Hence why I'm guilty of saying "my Ant Crissy" instead of "Aunt", to refer to an ink "pin" (probably why there's a number of types of "pens/pins" we'll use to refer to which we need -- "ink pen", "safety pin", "sewing pin", "pushpin"... in speech "pen/pin" usually has a prefix where we merge/don't shift the vowels correctly), etc.

[tblue37]

87. Here is another--"patina. " it is PAT-in-uh, not puh-TEE-nuh. nt

[tblue37]

88. Oh, and "li-berry" drives me around the bend. nt