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Simple words, difficult pronouncement?

wasapi

Penultimate Amazing
Joined
May 27, 2008
Messages
16,463
I don't know how common it is, but there are a few words that I always have difficulty saying. "Aluminum" is one. It always came out 'alumumnun'. It is feels as if my mouth jumbles the word, not allowing me to say it correctly.

There are other words, but that is the primary, life long, frustrating one I deal with. Anyone else have a word/words?
 
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is one I stumble over now and then.
 
I, too, often catch myself before saying "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio" with a soft "ch".
 
Any word beginning with 'tr' is pronounced as 'chr'. Tree becomes chree. 'Three' is also pronounced 'chree' though. And 'water' is invariably 'wooder'

Upon more sober reflection, the actual problem may be that I am stupid. So off topic for thread. I'll...uh...just be over there...
 
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Any word beginning with 'tr' is pronounced as 'chr'. Tree becomes chree. 'Three' is also pronounced 'chree' though. And 'water' is invariably 'wooder'

Upon more sober reflection, the actual problem may be that I am stupid. So off topic for thread. I'll...uh...just be over there...

Al-You-Min-Eee-Umh.
 
I don't know how common it is, but there are a few words that I always have difficulty saying. "Aluminum" is one. It always came out 'alumumnun'. It is feels as if my mouth jumbles the word, not allowing me to say it correctly.

There are other words, but that is the primary, life long, frustrating one I deal with. Anyone else have a word/words?
Stick to "aluminium"
 
New as soon as I read the OP there would be some lame ass American VS British spelling & pronunciation jokes.
 
"Rural". The "rur" trips me up most of the time. It was a running joke in my college history classes that I'd substitute "non-urban" for "rural" whenever I needed to use the word, which comes up a lot in medieval history discussions.

I also have trouble with the penultimate syllable of "particularly", the R and L being so close together. I don't think I have a true speech impediment, I just tend to talk too fast and stumble when I hit certain combinations of sounds.
 
"Rural". The "rur" trips me up most of the time. It was a running joke in my college history classes that I'd substitute "non-urban" for "rural" whenever I needed to use the word, which comes up a lot in medieval history discussions.

I also have trouble with the penultimate syllable of "particularly", the R and L being so close together. I don't think I have a true speech impediment, I just tend to talk too fast and stumble when I hit certain combinations of sounds.

You just reminded me of "particularly". It is another one my mouth get tangled with.
 
I'm sure I have a few spoken words like that, but I just committed one of my most common typing errors. (Full keyboard).

I have the biggest trouble typing "quite" (always comes out "wuite"), "show" and "whose" (which I invariably interchange with each other). Any word that starts with a "z".
Oh, and "always".
 
Wednesday - It's actually fairly easy to pronounce, as long as you don't pronounce it the way it's spelled. At some point, it's fairly obvious that the entire English speaking world couldn't figure out how to pronounce Woden's Day, or spell it, but we kind of settled on how to spell it, and pretty much how to say it.

Although, when saying it, is there one d or two? I usually use one.


And then of course there is "nuclear". An awful lot of people apparently have a hard time with that one.


My wife, upon seeing somebody who didn't comb their hair or get their clothes on straight will declare that the person looks "disleveled". I'm pretty sure she would spell it out as "disheveled", but that's not how she says it.

ETA: Dictionary.com gives [wenz-dey, -dee] as the pronunciation. I sometimes say [wendz-day].
 
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Wednesday - It's actually fairly easy to pronounce, as long as you don't pronounce it the way it's spelled. At some point, it's fairly obvious that the entire English speaking world couldn't figure out how to pronounce Woden's Day, or spell it, but we kind of settled on how to spell it, and pretty much how to say it.

Although, when saying it, is there one d or two? I usually use one.


And then of course there is "nuclear". An awful lot of people apparently have a hard time with that one.


My wife, upon seeing somebody who didn't comb their hair or get their clothes on straight will declare that the person looks "disleveled". I'm pretty sure she would spell it out as "disheveled", but that's not how she says it.

ETA: Dictionary.com gives [wenz-dey, -dee] as the pronunciation. I sometimes say [wendz-day].



Yes. Wednesday and February are notorious for not sounding like they appear.

I remember way back in primary school being told to just say Winsday. As in "How many wins does the team have?"

If thought of as Wins Day, it is much easier to remember.

Though some people say Winds Day, as you say.
 
I know that two words news anchors hate to have to say are "statistics" and "quid pro quo".

Yes. Wednesday and February are notorious for not sounding like they appear.

I remember way back in primary school being told to just say Winsday. As in "How many wins does the team have?"

If thought of as Wins Day, it is much easier to remember.

Though some people say Winds Day, as you say.

If you're not saying "February", you're doing it wrong.
 
I get chided at work for using "specialty" and "speciality" interchangeably. It's not that one's correct and the other's not, it's that one is American and one is UK. Since I read so much British literature and watched so much British TV as a kid I've absorbed a lot of UK English usage without realizing it. I'm still mad at my high school English teacher who marked me down points for spelling it "focussed" instead of "focused". Jokes on him, though: he's now in his sixties and I like to imagine plagued with prostate issues causing impotence! (Sometimes you got to take the imaginary victories. Unlike my very real victory over Ms Magee, the third grade teacher who fussed so much about my handwriting: she died years ago! Ha ha ha! I WON! How's moldering in the grave, Ms M? Bet you'd prefer to be up here reading my "chickenscratch" handwriting!!! Wow, this really strayed from the point and went a teensy bit dark.)
 
What kills me is when a character on TV or movies mispronounces some specialized jargon. It becomes immediately clear that the actor had no idea how to say the word and nobody on set cared or knew enough to correct them.
 
What kills me is when a character on TV or movies mispronounces some specialized jargon. It becomes immediately clear that the actor had no idea how to say the word and nobody on set cared or knew enough to correct them.

I'm still miffed that Sheldon on TBBT misspelled "Galactica" (as in "Battlestar").
The whiteboard showed "Gallactica". :eek:
 
I very rarely stumble with my pronunciation. I'm not a trained voice actor, but I use my voice to make my living, have been a podcast host, and once was the MC of a major national skeptics convention. I always speak clearly and without error.

I do love the differences in pronunciation between various English accents though. Once you've heard "bolth" you can never unhear it :D
 
When Burger King came to Denmark in the late 1970s, my aunt (long deceased, otherwise she'd have been 103) found it extremely difficult to pronounce the vowel in the first syllable of the word burger. /ˈbɜː(r)ɡə(r)/
Nobody else did, since the pronunciation of the letter u in burger is almost identical to the pronunciation of the letter ø in the Danish name Børge but very different from any pronunciation of the letter u in Danish. In her mind, it went against the grain of how to pronounce a u to the extent that she had to distort her lips into almost Trumpian shapes in order to say the word.
She probably never ate at Burger King for this reason. (And wouldn't have liked it anyway.)
 
I very rarely stumble with my pronunciation. I'm not a trained voice actor, but I use my voice to make my living, have been a podcast host, and once was the MC of a major national skeptics convention. I always speak clearly and without error.

I do love the differences in pronunciation between various English accents though. Once you've heard "bolth" you can never unhear it :D

Bolth?
 
"Pronouncement" :confused: ;)

For me, the simple little word 'edited' often comes out wrong, like 'editit' or 'etidid'.
 
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What kills me is when a character on TV or movies mispronounces some specialized jargon. It becomes immediately clear that the actor had no idea how to say the word and nobody on set cared or knew enough to correct them.

The one that I notice often is in military shows when a character speaks about "ordinance disposal" or that the "ordinance" will explode. It happens in NCIS about once or twice a season.

But, that may be a case of using the wrong word instead of mispronouncing.
 
When visiting New York City, I discovered that I had a very hard time pronouncing "Little Italy.". It doesn't just roll off the tongue. And each time I messed it up seemed to make it harder to say the next time. Finally, I just gave up and headed to Chinatown instead.
 
I was rewatching Star Trek TNG and noticed that Worf pronounces the O in "sensors" where every other actor pronounces the word like "sensers". As it's a sci-fi word for things that don't yet exist I doubt either is the authoritatively correct way, but it is weird and now I can't un-notice it when it comes up. He says it so clearly it sounds like he's trying to correct the other characters!
 
comfortable

It's easy enough to say com-fort-a-ble but sounding out all four syllables that way sounds pretentious. Most people around here say "comf-tra-ble" as three syllables instead, but that's a bit of a tongue twister (blending four consonants all of which are pronounced, m-f-t-r) and it also seems wrong for an elision because it reverses the t and r.
 
The thread title is literally killing me. It's pronunciation. Pronouncement is something else entirely.

English is odd. "Pronunciation" should mean something to do with nuns. Nuns enunciating? "Sister Mary Margaret has such beautiful diction, she's a shining example of pronunciation." "....Sister Mary Margaret has a diction, and you've seen it?!" I guess "diction" should mean something rather different also.
 
comfortable

It's easy enough to say com-fort-a-ble but sounding out all four syllables that way sounds pretentious. Most people around here say "comf-tra-ble" as three syllables instead, but that's a bit of a tongue twister (blending four consonants all of which are pronounced, m-f-t-r) and it also seems wrong for an elision because it reverses the t and r.

I say it "comf ter bul". Thanks to a childhood of frequent relocation and a steady diet of television I have practically every pronunciation merger in American English. Most of my vowels sound the same, and anything that can be a homophone is. Caught, cot; merry, marry, Mary; even crayon, crown. I must sound like an ignorant peasant to RP English speakers.
 
I was rewatching Star Trek TNG and noticed that Worf pronounces the O in "sensors" where every other actor pronounces the word like "sensers". As it's a sci-fi word for things that don't yet exist I doubt either is the authoritatively correct way, but it is weird and now I can't un-notice it when it comes up. He says it so clearly it sounds like he's trying to correct the other characters!

Well, Worf did grow up in Russia, so there's bound to be a bit of an accent. But Star Trek doesn't even get "civilizations" consistent among their speakers.
 
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