• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories
  • You may need to edit your signatures.

    When we moved to Xenfora some of the signature options didn't come over. In the old software signatures were limited by a character limit, on Xenfora there are more options and there is a character number and number of lines limit. I've set maximum number of lines to 4 and unlimited characters.

Simple words, difficult pronouncement?

My vector teacher told us he could not say the word "parallelepiped" (struggling mightily to do so while explaining this). He said whenever he said something close and pointed to a corner of the chalkboard, that's the word he meant.
 
Crayon, I pronounce as crown, which is apparently how they pronounce it only in the upper peninsula of Michigan. I have never been there, so I can't say for sure.

Also, measure, I pronounce as Maysher. Which my wife assures me is strange.

Some of my favorites.

Almost nobody pronounces "Err" as is technically correct. Even though I know how to pronounce that way, I won't because it sounds pretentious.

Ruse, on the television show Criminal Minds, multiple characters pronounce as Russ with a hard S, aside from that, I've only ever heard it pronounced with a z sound more like Ruze.
 
Last edited:
Crayon, I pronounce as crown, which is apparently how they pronounce it only in the upper peninsula of Michigan. I have never been there, so I can't say for sure.

Really? I've always wondered where I got crown/crayon. I did live in Michigan from ages 4 - 6, which would have been the time of my heaviest crayon use.
 
ETA: Dictionary.com gives [wenz-dey, -dee] as the pronunciation. I sometimes say [wendz-day].

Savages. As any fule kno, it's quite clearly pronounced weddensday.


The very best pronunciation of that word (nyoo not noo) is to be found in a song, specifically the theme tune to the 1981 Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only, sung by Sheena Easton. (10/10)
 
Last edited:
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.


I did a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof where every actor spoke with a southern accent, but no two spoke with the same southern accent.
 
Another one my mouth gets jumbled trying to say: ineffably

I tend to want to add another 'ably' to it. 'ineffablally'.
 
Certain dialects of American English pronounce "both" as "bolth". Keep an ear out - you'll start hearing it now that you know about it.

As I mentioned, I used to be a podcast host. I had the privilege once of interviewing Joe Nickell. In my introduction, I seemed incapable of saying the word "investigative". I just remembered that.
 
A dear darling friend of mine pronounces "ask" as "ak-sk" or "axe". As in "I'll axe him about his children." Suggests a level of response out of proportion to actual requirements... ;)
 
Really? I've always wondered where I got crown/crayon. I did live in Michigan from ages 4 - 6, which would have been the time of my heaviest crayon use.

Its hard to tell but according to this page, I think Michigan says cran but the upper peninsula says crown. So few people use either its hard to tell the exact extent. Still, I'm from CA with no connection to any part of Michigan, WTF to I say crown?

https://www.thejournal.ie/maps-americans-pronounce-different-words-938575-Jun2013/
 
Its hard to tell but according to this page, I think Michigan says cran but the upper peninsula says crown. So few people use either its hard to tell the exact extent. Still, I'm from CA with no connection to any part of Michigan, WTF to I say crown?

https://www.thejournal.ie/maps-americans-pronounce-different-words-938575-Jun2013/

Hmmm. I lived in Lansing which isn't Upper Peninsula, but before we moved there we lived in Sturgeon Bay, in Door County Wisconsin. That's closer to the Upper Peninsula than Lansing is. Maybe I got it there? But I wasn't even in nursery school yet so I'd have to have picked it up from neighbors.

I asked my sister, she's three years older and doesn't say it "crown". So wherever we were when I picked it up, she did not.
 
Though I moved from Texas when I was starting elementary school, and we moved to California following my dads death. I still at times, perhaps if I am stressed, pronounce certain words with an accent. So many years later, but I will find myself saying, "y'all', "cain't", and so on. Yet my sister, 3 years older, never has a hint of accent.
 
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.

There is an obvious reason for that. There are several words in the English language that end with the "cular" sound (spectacular, circular, secular), and no other words that end with the KLEE-ar sound. Another commonly mispronounced word is amateur. Most Americans pronounce it "amachure", with the last part sounding much like mature. but the teur should sound like tir in stir. Again, lots of "ture" ending words like picture, pasture, and not a lot of "teur" words.

Here in Phoenix, we have a hockey team called the Coyotes. Now of course the name of the animal is pronounced ki-ote, but they are known as the ki-o-tees, another common mispronunciation. I have speculated that this may actually be caused by the Cervantes novel, Don Quixote.
 
A dear darling friend of mine pronounces "ask" as "ak-sk" or "axe". As in "I'll axe him about his children." Suggests a level of response out of proportion to actual requirements... ;)
Apparently aks was the older pronunciation, at one point, your friend would have been the more correct speaker. That point point being generations ago.

Here in Phoenix, we have a hockey team called the Coyotes. Now of course the name of the animal is pronounced ki-ote, but they are known as the ki-o-tees, another common mispronunciation. I have speculated that this may actually be caused by the Cervantes novel, Don Quixote.
My understanding is that both pronunciations are correct.
 
Here in Phoenix, we have a hockey team called the Coyotes. Now of course the name of the animal is pronounced ki-ote, but they are known as the ki-o-tees, another common mispronunciation. I have speculated that this may actually be caused by the Cervantes novel, Don Quixote.

Isn't Wile E. from Phoenix? Or maybe it's Albuquerque...
Anyway, he's certainly referred to as a ki-o-tee.
 
A dear darling friend of mine pronounces "ask" as "ak-sk" or "axe". As in "I'll axe him about his children." Suggests a level of response out of proportion to actual requirements... ;)

Isn't that a Southern thing? It seems my Texan relatives are often using "axe" and "ak-sk".
 
Isn't Wile E. from Phoenix? Or maybe it's Albuquerque...
Anyway, he's certainly referred to as a ki-o-tee.

The cartoons are clearly set in Monument Valley, although of course both coyotes and roadrunners are native to Phoenix as well.

As for the pronunciation, this was one of my dad's pet peeves. I suspect somewhere along the line he got rapped on the knuckles by a nun for saying it the heathen way.:D
 
"Caulk", in the United States. You can look that one up, too.

This one time someone asked me what I did the previous weekend. I had spent a lot of time sealing my bathtub and shower surround. What I'd said was "Oh, I spent a lot of time in the bathroom playing with my caulk."
 
Isn't Wile E. from Phoenix? Or maybe it's Albuquerque...
Anyway, he's certainly referred to as a ki-o-tee.

I'm sure we had a thread on pronunciation of coyote somewhere, but I couldn't find it just now.

I never heard "COY-ote" as a kid in the plains decades ago, it was always "ki-OH-tee", or occasionally a shortened form as "KI-oat".
 
I'm sure we had a thread on pronunciation of coyote somewhere, but I couldn't find it just now.



I never heard "COY-ote" as a kid in the plains decades ago, it was always "ki-OH-tee", or occasionally a shortened form as "KI-oat".
I'm from Montana. Ther are only two syllables in "coyote"
 
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is one I stumble over now and then.
I can say that, my teacher once gave me a shilling because I could say it.

What I cannot say is "OK Google". Just doesn't come out.
 
Back
Top Bottom