How do you pronounce...

[deleted user] said:
Oh god I have so many.

Misuse of "his" instead of "he's"

"Pacific" instead of "specific"

"secutary" instead of "secretary"

"expresso" instead of "espresso"

I'm sure there are more!
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Loose instead of lose. Drives me batty. The number of people I've met trying to set their weight free...

The overuse of 'myself' and yourself is a great bugbear of mine. I have heard quite a few politicians talking about themselves in such a fashion. It makes me cringe.
 
alainax said:
Why do some people in England say "per- geot". Does my head in! Have seen it even written that way. The French pronounciation doesn't have an r. Also why do you put an R at the end of oregano?

Americans have funny ones like aloooominum, but that Peugeot would sound better for my ears than the extra r's :p
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Whereas it drives me nuts when someone I know pronounces it pew-geot! did she never learn French at school? I would have expected almost everyone to have learnt about 'un peu' (a little) in their first year of learning French.
 
Hate when people use 'of' instead of 'have'

My friend calls the manège a paddock, I want to kill her everytime!

Friends Nan says photo albun instead of album. Not sure why it annoys me so much, but it just sounds weird.
 
alainax said:
Why do some people in England say "per- geot". Does my head in! Have seen it even written that way. The French pronounciation doesn't have an r. Also why do you put an R at the end of oregano?
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English pronunciation of Renault "Ren-oh" is oddly halfway between what would be English "Ren-alt" and the French "Ruh-no".

Americans have funny ones like aloooominum, but that Peugeot would sound better for my ears than the extra r's :p
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But they spell it as "aluminum", so they have an excuse. And actually we used to spell it that way too originally, before standardizing it to other element names like calcium. (But what about platinum and molybdenum??)

(And sometimes I like to start sentences with conjunctions. But that's okay.)

Pearlsasinger said:
Not the wrong spelling but the wrong meaning! Nonplussed means taken aback/surprised/shocked even but I keep seeing used to mean exactly the opposite, drives me mad!
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Maybe they really mean nonminused? Or plussed?

joosie said:
The American pronunciation of parmesan (as in the cheese) is one of my big ones. "Par-meh-jan". There's no "j" in parmesan!
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That one really grates with me. As does the tendency to drawl certain vowels like "Neesaan" for "Nissan".

Last night I heard a Scot talking about Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, and he used the word "hybrid" several time but pronounced it "hibrid".

Then there's pronouncing "mischevous" as "mis-chev-Ious", saying "sherbert" for "sherbet", "tenent" for "tenet", "high-archy" for "hierarchy" - the list goes on and on.

One of my dear Mum's many mispronunciations was saying "horse-p*ss" for "hospice".

Finally - as I am already starting to get one - is it "mee-grain" or "my-grain", and when foreigners enter the country are they "mee-grants" or "my-grants"? (They are certainly a headache.)
 
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fburton said:
Finally - as I am already starting to get one - is it "mee-grain" or "my-grain", and when foreigners enter the country are they "mee-grants" or "my-grants"? (They are certainly a headache.)
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my-grain and my-grant IMO ;) reminds me of a related sounding one, try-arge or tree-arge for triage?

It's something we talk about a lot in my job and I remember having an increasingly comical conversation with someone once where we were on opposing sides, I'm a tree-arger and she was a try-arger :o :D both of us sticking to our guns :lol:
 
Pearlsasinger said:
Whereas it drives me nuts when someone I know pronounces it pew-geot! did she never learn French at school? I would have expected almost everyone to have learnt about 'un peu' (a little) in their first year of learning French.
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I say it like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrvIcYEhoAY

Not like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srsQx2Y90AQ

The english one has an r in it. Per-geot. Hurts my ears! I did do a bit of reading though which suggested that some English speakers put an R in when its an unusual sound. Whereas in scotland if we put the R in it would sound ridiculous. I guess that is why it sounds weird to me, I am hearing the R really strongly in the English version.
 
fburton said:
Finally - as I am already starting to get one - is it "mee-grain" or "my-grain", and when foreigners enter the country are they "mee-grants" or "my-grants"? (They are certainly a headache.)
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Hehe that is like Primark, I say it wrong, ( I think), like lots of people round here. Pronouncing it "pree-mark" insteak of "Pry-mark" :D I say My-grain, and my-grants :D

We also say lidl wrong according to my german hubby. It should be Leee-dl. not Li-del. Which is funny as they rhyme it with little in their adverts, so they obviously don't care how we pronounce it!
 
Peugeot did used to get pronounced as 'pew geot' when I was a kid (a very long time ago) Then tv adverts changed and it was then pronounced 'per -geot'.
 
see, if someone says pew-geot or per-geot then I don't consider either of them to be incorrect. just different pronunciations. we live in a country blessed by a myriad of accents!

christ, what with this and the grammar thing I am beginning to think I am actually really laid back lol.
 
Chaff is an odd one for me. As a horse food it is charf but as stuff slung out of an aircraft to fool radar it is chaf as in chafinch
 
Mike007 said:
Chaff is an odd one for me. As a horse food it is charf but as stuff slung out of an aircraft to fool radar it is chaf as in chafinch
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Visions of chaffinches being ejected from planes to fool radar. :D

My odd one is the pronunciation of grease. If it's "elbow grease", thin lubricant you don't get on your hands, or greaseproof paper I pronounce it greece (as in the country); if it's the thick stuff that's to pack car wheel bearings or the congealing stuff in a "poke" of fish and chips (even if its wrapped in greaseproof paper) I pronounce it greeze, i.e. the Scots way.

And if a horse has greasy heel, it's greecey, but the stuff you put on horses' legs - that's greeze. No rhyme or reason!

ycbm said:
And garaaje instead of garage!
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And Faraaje instead of Farage.

ycbm said:
How does everyone pronounce aspartame?

Is it asparta-me, aspar-tame, or what?
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For me it's ass-PAR-tame - but then I pronounce clopidogrel as cloppy-doggrell, so take what I say with a pinch of salt.
 
fburton said:
Visions of chaffinches being ejected from planes to fool radar. :D

My odd one is the pronunciation of grease. If it's "elbow grease", thin lubricant you don't get on your hands, or greaseproof paper I pronounce it greece (as in the country); if it's the thick stuff that's to pack car wheel bearings or the congealing stuff in a "poke" of fish and chips (even if its wrapped in greaseproof paper) I pronounce it greeze, i.e. the Scots way.

And if a horse has greasy heel, it's greecey, but the stuff you put on horses' legs - that's greeze. No rhyme or reason!




Do Scottish people say greeze for grease? I certainly don't.
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teddypops said:
fburton said:
Visions of chaffinches being ejected from planes to fool radar. :D

My odd one is the pronunciation of grease. If it's "elbow grease", thin lubricant you don't get on your hands, or greaseproof paper I pronounce it greece (as in the country); if it's the thick stuff that's to pack car wheel bearings or the congealing stuff in a "poke" of fish and chips (even if its wrapped in greaseproof paper) I pronounce it greeze, i.e. the Scots way.

And if a horse has greasy heel, it's greecey, but the stuff you put on horses' legs - that's greeze. No rhyme or reason!




Do Scottish people say greeze for grease? I certainly don't.
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fburton said:
Well thank goodness for that! Maybe it's just Glaswegians?
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( Lanarkshire originally)
I say Greece, " those chips were so greecey!". I wouldn't think any different of someone saying greeze though.

One that we get at work a lot is tragus. Tray-guss or Trah-guss
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