Why Do These Words Get Mispronounced So Much? | Otherwords

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There are actually good reasons why people tend to mispronounce the same words... and why they ofTen end up being the new standard!
Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and finds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fields of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human.
Host: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Creator/Director: Andrew Matthews & Katie Graham
Writer: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Producer: Katie Graham
Editor/Animation: Andrew Matthews
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Fact Checker: Yvonne McGreevy
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell
Stock Images from Shutterstock
Music from APM Music
Otherwords is a production of Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios.
© 2024 PBS. All rights reserved.
sources:
www.npr.org/sections/codeswit...
theconversation.com/ask-or-ak...
theconversation.com/mispronun...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperco...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taa_lan....
www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/wo...
www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture...
www.grammarbook.com/blog/pron...
jadejoddle.com/often-posh-pro...
www.americannamesociety.org/a...
ahdictionary.com/word/search....

Опубликовано:

21 фев 2024

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Комментарии : 3 тыс.

@vale.antoni 4 месяца назад

When I was pointed out, that there is a "meow" in the word "homeowner" my pronunciation of that word was irreversibly corrupted

@GnomaPhobic 3 месяца назад

Damn you for pointing this out.

@captainfury497 3 месяца назад

Not a problem if you consider it to be two words

@Platypi007 3 месяца назад

@@captainfury497 Ho meowner

@Aarkwrite 3 месяца назад

Ho meow ner is an improvement

@NightsReign 3 месяца назад

@carolinebbuss 4 месяца назад

The first time I saw the word "manslaughter" I said "man's laughter". And it haunts me to this day

@STEAMerBear 4 месяца назад

Maybe it even stalks you. (In 2009 I managed a crew of night stockers at Walmart…CREEPY! [The company, not the crew.🤣])

@pearsonalized805 4 месяца назад

You’re Killin’ Me! 😂

@randomperson6433 4 месяца назад

You just aided and abetted woman’s laughter.

@-Subtle- 4 месяца назад

That gets dark really, really fast.

@bracket0398 4 месяца назад

Spell 'therapist' in your braincase, then say the first 3 letters independently. Tell me what the rest is.

@christopherwaldrop5293 4 месяца назад

My father has trouble with the word "frustrated" so he pronounces it "flustrated". I think this is a great portmanteau word since I often get flustered when frustrated.

@shaunasartoris3769 4 месяца назад

My family does this too!!

@errormachine5056 4 месяца назад

Haha, my wife gets angry and often says she's fustrated (no R after the F) it's hard to keep it in and not correct her since she is already frustrated. I have, on occasion, corrected her and it doesn't go well for me.

@bruceyanoshek626 2 месяца назад

That's pretty common here in Cincinnati. Fustrated is also somewhat common.

@gigiatlas2364 2 месяца назад

Portmanteau? Wow ok thank you for that 😊

@theimaginatrix7625 29 дней назад

I read a fanfic written from a kid's POV where the author wrote some words out the way the kid would have spelled them by ear. "Frustrated" turned into "flusterated", and it was honestly my favourite one of the intentionally misspelled words for the exact reason you stated! We often get flustered when we're frustrated! _I want this to become a thing now._

@drmilkweed 4 месяца назад

Now whenever someone says I'm mispronouncing someone I'll reply "No, you're watching language evolve in real time."

@PauloPereira-jj4jv 2 месяца назад

Nice excuse.

@MrOtistetrax 2 месяца назад

How do you say someone? Do you pronounce it “so-me-ownee”?

@shelbynamels7948 Месяц назад

I've taken to using a quote from "Psych": 'I heard it both ways'. Go ahead, fight me.

@canidcomrade 5 месяцев назад

I literally never knew that dower wasn't the only possible pronunciation of dour

@matthewjkhill6657 5 месяцев назад

Yeah, I heard "dure" and was like, "Nope, sorry, that's terrible."

@MatthewTheWanderer 5 месяцев назад

@@matthewjkhill6657 Yeah, I'm in my 40s and have never, not even once, in my entire life heard anyone pronounce "dour" any other way than rhyming with "sour"!

@CT-gl2zj 5 месяцев назад

Yeah, I'd rather avoid using the word than pronouncing it that way.

@janetmackinnon3411 5 месяцев назад

It's a Scots word, pronounced "doo-er" in Scotland. But your choice...

@MaxOakland 5 месяцев назад

Never heard anyone use the old pronunciation

@Mikeztarp 5 месяцев назад

The main problem in English is that the relationship between its spelling and its pronunciation is so quayotick.

@will5286 5 месяцев назад

That's why education exists-DUMMY

@DawnDavidson 5 месяцев назад

😂

@Codec264 5 месяцев назад

The fact I read this and kept scrolling at first without realising anything was wrong lmao

@mottahead6464 4 месяца назад

Dearest creature in creation Study English pronunciation

@acidset 4 месяца назад

It's ciaotik for sure

@DanielBeattyDefinition 4 месяца назад

My family and I would say "squoze" as the past tense of "squeeze" instead of "squeezed" because it sounded intuitive due to "freeze" and "froze."

@claret.8733 4 месяца назад

I like to pluralize Kleenex to Kleenices (like index/indices).

@DanielBeattyDefinition 4 месяца назад

@@claret.8733 lol. I love it!

@JennieKermode 4 месяца назад

That's an interesting one because different variants of English have gone down different paths where strong and weak verbs are concerned. For instance, North Americans generally render the past tense of 'dive' as 'dove', whereas in the UK we say 'dived'.

@Aarkwrite 3 месяца назад

Squozen

@DanielBeattyDefinition 3 месяца назад

@@Aarkwrite the toothpaste tube has been squozen 🤣

@mariateresamondragon5850 4 месяца назад

I was a middle-aged adult before I realized that "draught" was an alternate spelling of "draft". I knew that they meant the same thing, but I only encountered "draught" in literature and pronounced (in my head) as "drawt".

@mofolk8896 4 месяца назад

My mum learned English as a teenager and was a voracious reader; she read about the American Indian tribe called the See-ox (Sioux), but heard about a different tribe called the Soo. 😊

@trevorlambert4226 3 месяца назад

How do you know you didn't encounter "draught" in speech, given that it's pronounced the same as "draft"?

@mariateresamondragon5850 3 месяца назад

@@trevorlambert4226 Good point, but irrelevant.

@johnsober 3 месяца назад

I didn't even know draft was spelt this way in British English (the system I grew up with). I did know it under the context of drinks (water, beer) but I thought it was pronounced drawt. And Idunno, I think it sounds cooler 😅

@shawnwhite860 3 месяца назад

Me too! ... I learned it just now.

@chudez 5 месяцев назад

i deliberately pronounce worcestershire sauce as "whats-this-here" sauce to no one's amusement except mine

@allendracabal0819 5 месяцев назад

You are no longer alone. I am amused by that, as well.

@chargestone96 4 месяца назад

Unironically thats closer then war-sesster-shy-er that ive heard a bunch At least compared to the common pronunciation of the region (wuh-ster-sure)

@KasumiRINA 4 месяца назад

I add syllables. Wurst-curst-cher-ther-mer-shire-shmire.

@AmyKozerski 4 месяца назад

Dad??

@rp9674 4 месяца назад

I thought I cracked the code: war chester shure, nobody buys it

@seanworle 5 месяцев назад

I'm a 47 year old native English speaker, and while the word "dour" isn't the most common word, but I've still heard it plenty of times. I've never in my life heard anyone pronounce it any other way but "DOW-er." I was not even aware there were any other options.

@allendracabal0819 5 месяцев назад

Ditto.

@karlfimm 5 месяцев назад

I, a 64 year old, have certainly heard both, but I rather tended to assume that "dooor" was a Scottish pronunciation.

@MRL200 5 месяцев назад

I pronounce it in the proper way, but I attribute this to watching a great deal of British television while learning English as a youth. The "Dower" pronunciation is more of an Americanism, I think.

@will5286 5 месяцев назад

Probably due to your dour life.

@SnailLordNeon 4 месяца назад

I'm American and have only heard the "proper" pronunciation from British audiobook narrators, so I assumed it was the British English pronunciation.

@alanr4447a 4 месяца назад

Clint, flint, glint, hint, lint, mint, print, splint, stint, tint, Vint... Pint!

@newton21989 3 месяца назад

Pent

@sparkuuu 4 месяца назад

I remember saying “pre-face” in college having never heard someone say the word out loud before and everyone stared at me like I was crazy. Then someone said “do you mean the ‘preh-fuss’?” and I thought I was going to die.

@thevirtualtraveler 3 месяца назад

That's funny. I just this instant realized that when I think of it in terms of thing at beginning of book, I say/think pre-face, (undoubtedly b/c I encounter it while reading). But when I use it in speech, such as "I will preface this by saying", I say preh-fus. I only pronounce it 'correctly' when it is divorced from its spelling 😂😂😂

@chucklebutt4470 3 месяца назад

I think the most embarrassing ones to mispronounce are 'macabre' and 'epitome'. Never happened to me but it's a big OOF when it happens.

@MichaelMassie 5 месяцев назад

Never make fun of someone who phonetically mispronounces a word. Chances are good they learned it from a book without the benefit of a mentor to teach them the correct pronunciation.

@carmencorazonreyes7044 5 месяцев назад

I live in the Philippines where our national language is phonetic so some not so common English words are said phonetically. Like graham. People here say it as “gray ham” instead of “gram”. I tried talking to people, ordering at restaurants saying “gram” and nobody understood me and gave me weird looks. Even ads here say it as “gray ham”.

@ZnamTwojaMama101 5 месяцев назад

As a Filipino I never knew it was pronounced "Gram" and not "gray-ham"@@carmencorazonreyes7044

@JeighNeither 5 месяцев назад

I mean yeah, you should really never make fun of people in general right? It can be cruel to allow people to mispronounce words as well. Language is complicated. I speak multiple languages, & I never would have gotten as far as I have without good friends who could correct me along the way when they heard me repeatedly make the same mistake.

@Novarcharesk 5 месяцев назад

Nah, I'll mock them for saying something patently wrong. Like, every part of the spelling tells them no.

@creamwobbly 5 месяцев назад

Gray-am is the correct English pronunciation. Gram is American only.

@TheHornedKing 5 месяцев назад

I still remember a conversation from when I was young, were I explained to some friends that "infamous" wasn't pronounced "in-fay-muhs", but as "in-fuh-muhs". They refused to believe me.

@thenaiam 5 месяцев назад

Were your friends the Three Amigos? 😅

@TheHornedKing 5 месяцев назад

@@thenaiam Who?

@allocater2 5 месяцев назад

What your favorite hummus? inf-hummus.

@thenaiam 5 месяцев назад

@@TheHornedKing Ah, sorry, I'm showing my age. It's an 80s movie starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short that had this line: "Ah, Dusty! Infamous is when you're more than famous! This guy El Guapo is not just famous, he's IN-famous!”

@mattyt1961 5 месяцев назад

@@thenaiam you mean horrible evil murdering villainous monster not infamous :)

@JennRighter 4 месяца назад

My grandma always told me “pee cans are for truck drivers” so I will always pronounce pecan “peh cahn”. No one wants a pee can.

@PauloPereira-jj4jv 2 месяца назад

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

@pauljordan4452 2 месяца назад

Was your granny from Georgia?

@JennRighter 2 месяца назад

@@pauljordan4452 nope, Detroit lol.

@malaven11 4 месяца назад

In the famous words of Connor Oberst, "Language just happened, it was never planned."

@chucklebutt4470 3 месяца назад

Damn, haven't thought about Bright Eyes in ages!

@jampharos 4 месяца назад

every single day of my life i think about an old recipe that spelled it "spinnage"

@heidi_mcheidiface 3 месяца назад

I saw a review of a French bakery that praised their "cross songs".

@jr2904 3 месяца назад

Could be worse, when I was a kid I wanted to help my mom with the grocery list. She was telling me things we needed and I was trying to write all of it down, but I ran into trouble with trying to spell mayonnaise. I didn't know how to spell it so I tried to sound it out, and it came out manass...(In my head I was saying mayonnaise like "man A's") My mom died laughing when she read "man ass". I still hear about it sometimes 25+ years later lol.

@CathodeRayKobold 3 месяца назад

I hear it's more bearable with some Catsup

@jooshozzono7249 3 месяца назад

@@jr2904 I want that thick arse :3

@tornyu 3 месяца назад

Me too, but because of a sign at the grocer

@Myself-yf5do 5 месяцев назад

Deliberately mispronouncing words for comic relief like the watermelone thing...probably the best example of that is the Key and Peele substitute teacher sketch lol

@seattlecarpenter 4 месяца назад

A-A-Ron😅

@crafterrium8724 4 месяца назад

Jay kweline

@sazji 4 месяца назад

Also Dina Martina. 😅

@ahwhite1398 4 месяца назад

I've heard people all over the U.S. refer to Quesadillas as kwe-sah-DILL-ahs, it's a joke 95% of the time, making fun of how so many city names and such are pronounced in Texas and the Southwest. But, that others 5%. Often hard to tell.

@pearsonalized805 4 месяца назад

A A Ron 🤣🤣🤣

@samkelomambisa1897 4 месяца назад

It's crazy how many words you may have come across in written form repeatedly, but never heard spoken. Until one day you have to say it out loud, often in a public setting. And then the small panic just before saying word when you realize you've never actually heard it said before.

@jooshozzono7249 3 месяца назад

Just use a online dictionary v: I do it to learn new English words :3

@samkelomambisa1897 3 месяца назад

@@jooshozzono7249 The point is you don't realise you never heard the word said out loud before you have to use it in a public setting. You're so used to reading the word and your mind interpretation of it, you don't realise you never heard it spoken until you have to say it in public.

@MrOtistetrax 4 месяца назад

Further to the bit about “Jaguar”: Those of us raised in the U.K. will usually pronounce that word “jag-you-are” or “jag-yu-uh” (depending on how posh the local accent is). The same is true for “Nicaragua”, for some reason, despite the lack of the R at the end.

@JennieKermode 4 месяца назад

'Iguana', too. It took me years to learn to pronounce those words properly, simply because adults had told me the wrong thing when I asked about them as a child.

@ml.2770 2 месяца назад

Jaguars used to live in Florida.

@lesnyk255 2 месяца назад

I'd always pronounce the orange Malaysian ape as "o-RANG-uh-TANG", until I heard David Attenborough pronounce it "OR-riing, OOH-tan". I've since tried to pronounce it midway between the two - to avoid sounding pretentious, but jeez, David f***ing Attenborough....

@kimkimsan 21 день назад

As a Nicaraguan-American, the first time I heard the British pronunciation of Nicaragua messed me up! 😖😂 lmao! Also the British pronunciation of 'taco' is a doozy to my ears.

@sixft7in 5 месяцев назад

I'm 50 years old and I've never heard the "correct" pronunciation of "dour"...

@sheldonaubut 5 месяцев назад

I'm 73 and can count on one hand the times I've heard or read that word. In my world, it pretty much doesn't exist.

@antoniocasias5545 5 месяцев назад

I’ve only heard of the correct way😮

@brianarbenz1329 5 месяцев назад

That’s because you’re not a dower - I mean a _doer._ Ah, never mind.

@sixft7in 5 месяцев назад

@@brianarbenz1329I'm more of a "don'ter"... Seriously, though, "dour" is spelled like "our" and "hour", so I'm not surprised it's not pronounced correctly by most everyone.

@brianarbenz1329 5 месяцев назад

@@sixft7in I had always read the word dour as rhyming with "hour."

@Booksds 5 месяцев назад

I’ve never heard “dour” in any context as not rhyming with “sour”, so I was surprised to learn it’s not the original pronunciation!

@roecocoa 5 месяцев назад

Same! I started thinking, "If it's pronounced that way, why isn't it spelled D-O-O-R? Wait, why isn't 'door' spelled D-O-R?!"

@aryan_kumar 5 месяцев назад

@@roecocoaPour is spelled the same way

@roecocoa 5 месяцев назад

@@aryan_kumar Pour, poor, and pore are homophones in my accent but I understand it's different in other regions. Hour is also spelled the same way.

@ilaibavati6941 4 месяца назад

@@roecocoa In my accent, also paw

@xkot6431 4 месяца назад

I've always rhymed it with "sour." My wife corrected me a couple of years ago, and I was sure she was wrong until I looked it up. This was when I was about 57 or 58 years old. I had never heard it pronounced "DOO-er." Perhaps I had never heard it pronounced at all, and had only read it.

@cannibalbananas 4 месяца назад

My vote is "dower" = dour. I've never heard it any other way. And my favorite story is my mom asking me to get her some acetaminophen from the cabinet (she worked at a hospital so we didn't have Alleve/Excederin/Tylenol in the house growing up). I yelled back that all I could find were vitamins and ace-tam-o-fin. She still laughs about it.

@Fuzzybeanerizer 3 месяца назад

Once I accidentally said "ace-tone" to my friend on the phone, and he laughed his butt off.

@AdudenamedKemp 3 месяца назад

During dinner, my mom asked me to get the colander (straining bowl) from the kitchen. I was very young and confused, but fortunately we kept a calendar pinned over the sink. She had quite the laugh when I brought that to the dinner table.

@cannibalbananas 3 месяца назад

@@AdudenamedKemp Lol! Great story

@Richard_Ashton 4 месяца назад

Admittedly this was 60 years ago and in England but our English (Language and Literature) teacher was adamant that, amongst other things, words like 'fire' were one syllable only and that includes 'dour'. Even the music teacher didn't want the carol 'Good King Wenceslas' sung with 'fuel' and 'cruel' as two syllables. At school, we were led to believe that mispronunciation and misapplication of words would have your audience dismiss you as a 'thicky'. I recently saw a video about the close-sounding nature of 'cot' and 'caught'. This was from an American point of view as in standard English, they are totally different sounds. Accent plays a big part in how a word sounds and might be spelt.

@Pants4096 3 месяца назад

Aren't diphthongs often considered to be one syllable? It's variable... Are each of these words one, or two syllables: bite, house, coin, oil, vial, aisle, choir, lion, isn't? In poetry, many such words can be comfortably squeezed or stretched into one or two rhythmic syllables, so it feels like a distinction without a difference to try to say "officially" one way or the other. Ah, language!

@thevirtualtraveler 3 месяца назад

Having lived in the (US) South for a long time, I know exactly how fire might be pronounced as one syllable. But I am at a loss as to how fuel and cruel might be pronounced as two?

@Richard_Ashton 3 месяца назад

@@thevirtualtraveler In the Christmas Carol ‘Good King Wenceslas’ it’s usually sung with fuel and cruel as if ‘fu-el’ and ‘cru-el’ much to the despair of my teachers. If you don’t know the Carol, it’s meaningless

@tonywebert8326 3 месяца назад

The anecdote about 'Good King Wenceslas' is interesting, because the pitch is the same from one syllable to the next in each of those words. It's purely rhythmic. How would your music teacher react to the splitting of a one-syllable word for melody? Rewrites? "I can't get *ANY* satisfaction"

@Richard_Ashton 3 месяца назад

@@tonywebert8326 I’ll ask, next time I see him.

@ReallyBadJuJu 5 месяцев назад

Holy crap...I watched a kid lose a middle school spelling bee (in Maine) as he was asked to spell "idear". I looked on in horror as he tentatively added the final "r", and was told, "I'm sorry, that's incorrect. 'Idear.' - I-D-E-A, 'Idear.'" I was infuriated at the injustice.

@claret.8733 4 месяца назад

Way back in the mists of time (~1972), I won a spelling bee in second grade because the word-giver said spell “height” but pronounced it with a “TH” sound at the end of the word, analogously to “width” and “depth”. The little boy ahead of me spelled it “heighth”. Poor thing; he was led right into that trap. I recognized the word, height, and spelled it myself correctly after that to win. It was such a strange way to win that I still remember it! 😸

@williamhelms9942 4 месяца назад

He was screwed but what it is is what it is. I-D-E-A.

@Temulon 4 месяца назад

@@williamhelms9942 Reminds me of the one about the cop who pulled of a speeder. Cop.."Do you have any I.D.?" Speeder.."Any Idee bout what?"

@unknowndeoxys00 4 месяца назад

@@claret.8733Oh gosh, the first time I heard "th" at the end of height, my brain had a record-scratch moment. I was in high school and completely unaware of regional linguistic idiosyncrasies, that there were people that did grow up pronouncing it this way as a completely normal thing. But my poor friend, I kept trying to convince him "heighth" wasn't a real word, it's "heighT." Until I heard his mom say it too, and then saw videos of older people saying it 🫠

@Jabbersac 4 месяца назад

I remember seeing a kid losing a spelling bee when he was asked to spell "Onfarrell". Now, that's clearly not a word, but the kid was knocked out anyway because the next kid managed to figure out that this was just the way that the judge pronounced "Unfurl". I still have no idea why somebody with an accent that weird would be chosen for that role in a spelling bee...

@omiai 5 месяцев назад

I like the bit about dour and sour. Because in scots, they would both be door and soor (to rhyme with moor). So many scots would still say 'he's real dour faced/soor faced' (meaning dark, angrt faced or bitter/angry faced

@archie_deane 3 месяца назад

)

@Spiklething 2 месяца назад

And many other Scots, like my husband for example would use two syllables to pronounce each of those words. So moo-er (like something that moos), doo-er (like something that dos)and soo-er (like something that sues) There is a sweet you can buy in Scotland called sour plums and my husband uses 3 syllables to pronounce the name.

@What_Makes_Climate_Tick 4 месяца назад

My mom grew up in a very small town where almost everyone was of Norwegian descent, and some of the strongest specimens of the "Minnesota accent" are there to this day. One of the less stereotypical but very real aspects of that accent is the strongly hissed "s" sound. My mom hypercorrects the pronunciation of the noun usage of the words "use", "abuse", and "excuse". Standard pronunciation has these words with an unvoiced or hissing "s" when used as a noun, but a voiced "z" sound when used as a verb, but my mom uses the latter pronunciation for both noun and verb. In a different story, I didn't understand a word that a co-worker from Italy was saying, so I tried spelling it. "Did you say c-o-w-s or c-a-u-s-e?" He said, "No, c-h-a-o-s."

@tonywebert8326 3 месяца назад

There's a priceless video of an italian chef trying to pronounce Worcestershire. I think of it when I need to smile :)

@EvTheFlickFan Месяц назад

Very interesting!

@robertdavenport6705 4 месяца назад

My favourite : Years ago a Boston school board became concerned and , was preparing to do something about , the corruption of 'their' language by foreign influences. A Globe editor wrote that this was a bit odd coming from people who possibly served in 'career ' and wanted their children to go to Harvard to ensure a good 'korea' for them.

@blond-s7o 5 месяцев назад

Honestly, this just reminds me thinking Hermione was said Her-my-one for years

@Roguefem76 5 месяцев назад

Don't feel bad, I pronounced it "her-moyn" until I read book 4. I swear that scene of Hermione teaching Viktor how to pronounce her name was included just to stop readers from mangling it! xD

@blond-s7o 5 месяцев назад

@@Roguefem76 The funniest bit is I never read Harry Potter, or I may have learnt to pronounce it before the age of 18 when I met my Lecturer with the same name😅

@jspihlman 5 месяцев назад

My family pronounced it Her-me-oh-knee until we saw the first movie. 🙃

@blond-s7o 5 месяцев назад

@@jspihlman I feel so much better knowing it wasn't just me reading it wrong

@michaelpytel3280 5 месяцев назад

Now how do you say " Wingardium Leviosa " ?

@katherinelynch4193 5 месяцев назад

“Exasperate” and “exacerbate” are two that I’m always mixing up. “Exasperate” means “to annoy”, while “exacerbate” means “to make worse”. And since annoying things often get worse the longer they go on, their sounds and meanings have fused together in my brain.

@TechRyze 3 месяца назад

Administrate

@randomperson6433 4 месяца назад

I first learned the word “visage” in French class. It’s not used often in English but it’s pronounced a bit differently than I did while reading Shakespeare out loud in an English class. “I’m not being pretentious, it’s the only way I’ve heard it before I swear 😂”

@stephenspackman5573 29 дней назад

And then there's glacier…

@randomperson6433 28 дней назад

@@stephenspackman5573 I grew up near Seattle so I saw the glossy-ehs on Mount Rah-nee-eh.

@patlussenden4536 4 месяца назад

I learned to read when phonetics were the method used in school. I often deliberately mispronounce words to get the correct spelling when writing. I would say “embar-assed” or “sub-urban.”

@skyllalafey 4 месяца назад

100%; when I need to write February I absolutely say feh-brew-ary in my head (just to name one example)!

@jacoblandman1514 4 месяца назад

Indeed. Ar-Kansas

@sleepyheadsarah 4 месяца назад

I have quoted that line from Futurama that's like "I am the greetest! Now I will leave for no raisin" so many times that it is legitimately interfering with my ability to pronounce "greatest" and "reason" in regular life.

@J9H5 3 месяца назад

Would it be more true to say that it’s illegitimately interfering? 😂🤔

@zzausel 3 месяца назад

What is regular life for?

@uNiels_Heart 3 месяца назад

It's for hysterical raisins.

@RobertKonigsberg 5 месяцев назад

The time my friend ordered shitake mushrooms at the fanciest restaurant we could afford. 😂😂😂

@3-methylindole730 4 месяца назад

😭😭😭

@TekkamanBiker 4 месяца назад

🤣

@Aarkwrite 3 месяца назад

That’s the real shitake 😂

@-Subtle- 4 месяца назад

I asked to read the word "edible" aloud in class. I knew what it meant, I pronounced it, ee-dibble. The class thought I said "eatable," and laughed; the teacher was not happy.

@jooshozzono7249 3 месяца назад

Xdxxdd bro just use a online dictionary v; they come with the correct pronunciation.

@jessicastein5155 4 месяца назад

On the subject of that quote you ended on, "the only constant is change," can you please make an episode to help me feel better about how the meaning of "literally" is changing to mean "figuratively" and "emphatically" because I hate it so much and I need an explanation of where that started and why it's growing so that maybe I can learn to live with it...

@viddork 4 месяца назад

I'd like to know why, on the internet, at least, people constantly type "then" when they mean "than", and vice versa. WHY??

@chesspiece4257 4 месяца назад

basically: step 1: use “literally” to add emphasis and show that you mean something literally, not figuratively step 2: literally is used so much that it looses some of its oomph, so people start applying it to things that are *kinda* literal step 3: now it just adds emphasis, with no relation to actuality see also: “awesome” used to be used in things like “our god is an awesome god” because it meant to inspire awe. it got used so much that it mellowed out into just “very good”. fun fact, curse words can also lose their power this way

@chesspiece4257 4 месяца назад

@@viddorkin some accents both are pronounced the same. in mine (kentuckian) “i like this more than that” is pronounced more like “i like this more then that” or even “i like this more ‘n that.” so for us it’s a there/their/they’re situation (though i actually pronounce they’re as two syllables)

@chesspiece4257 4 месяца назад

⁠@@anahata2009it’s a joke on the internet to use words for types of speech they aren’t. so people use nouns as verbs, verbs as adjectives, adjectives as nouns, etc etc. “humbled” is a case of a passive verb form becoming an adjective. so “i’m humbled” means “i feel humble because you are praising me more than i deserve”. “you have humbled me with your excessive applause”. it just lost the negative connotation, and gained the positive one associated with being humble.

@johnsober 3 месяца назад

@@chesspiece4257 I honestly think it's more deadjectival verbalisation (adjectives being turned into verbs). I think so because it's the simpler process and humble already has a positive connotation. But I have no idea if deverbal adjectivalisation or deadjectival verbalisation is more common.

@robmann400 5 месяцев назад

My mother is French. English is her second language. She is pushing 90, and only went to grade eight in school, but she’s made English her own, much to the great humorous enrichment of the random people that have known her over the years, or sometimes, only had to interact with her for a minute or two. She’s amazing with mispronunciations even though she’s been working and living in English Canada since she was 15. Recently my Catholic mom told me about a friend she has who has problems with her eyes. My mom’s friend has, according to my mom, “immaculate degeneration.” ...Holy loss of vision Batman! My mom refers to global warming as, “global swarming” because, why not? She once had to navigate a long, and dark basement stairwell. The lightbulb had burned out. She was reminded of it later that day while at a lunch, and mention the burnt bulb, and her stairwell trip to her coworkers. “It was so dark I had to feel myself all the way down the stairs.” She mentions turds a lot, as in, “Two turds of a cup of flour.” or, “There was a sale! Everything was two turds off!” Pomeranian dogs? “Pomegranians.” Eavestroughing? “Earsdropping.” “Eavesdropping.” “Earstroughing.” Want some, “Camel Mile” tea? Go visit my mom. Want to watch, ‘Life of Brian’ or, ‘The Holy Grail?’ Well my mom won’t be joining you because she doesn’t like, “Monty Pylon.” And so it goes... Thanks for making videos eh.

@jannetteberends8730 5 месяцев назад

Thanks for posting, she is creative.

@spiralpython1989 5 месяцев назад

What is “eavestroughing”? Curious, as I (Australian) have never heard or seen the word.

@robmann400 5 месяцев назад

Always happy to help out an Australian! Eavestroughing is probably an Americanization of the English word gutter. They are the things that hangs off the edge of your house’s roof to catch the rain run off and drain it away from the house’s foundation. Eaves trough is nicer to the easily offended puritanical American consumer ear than gutters, although, now that I think of it, the Americans love to bowl and the lanes have gutters rather than troughs, so maybe once again, I have no idea what I’m talking about... I’m guessing they call eaves troughs ‘gutties’ in Australia?

@AmyKozerski 4 месяца назад

Eavesdropping is correct though. At least in the US. I've never heard or read "eavestroughing"

@AmyKozerski 4 месяца назад

And we call them gutters on our houses. Eaves are whatever part of the roof extends beyond the exterior walls, gutters catch and divert the rain into a downspout. Eavesdropping is overhearing a conversation that you're not invited to. I always imagined someone crouching on top of the eaves spying on people talking, dropping into their conversation.

@4Mr.Crowley2 4 месяца назад

The one that drives me insane, though it’s a mishearing rather than mispronunciation - and it’s become too common as it’s been proliferated online - is “I would of done” instead of the correct form of “I would have done” or “I would’ve done.” People misheard the contraction and invent a verb form that doesn’t exist in English, “of done” or “of been” etc.

@rp9674 4 месяца назад

Remokin troll

@Everest314 4 месяца назад

Wait till you hear someone say "I would of went" ...

@Tessa_Gr 4 месяца назад

English is my second language and that also drives me insane. Because just mispronouncing/miswriting a word is okay but "would of" totally destroys English grammar. I invested way too much time and energy into learning it to now have to see this. Sometimes I honestly almost resent native English speakers because so many make mistakes that learners would never make but they make comprehension so much harder. Mistakes with your/you're and they're/their/there is one of those examples I never saw even the worst English learners in my class make but native speakers make them constantly and they're way more annoying than if someone just writes one noun wrong that doesn't impact grammar

@EyeDee98 4 месяца назад

@@Tessa_Grit’s because when English is your native language, the understanding is intuitive, so little grammatical errors don’t trip you up at all and are easy to just gloss over. Not promoting poor grammar at all, I think it’s embarrassing when people are just cool with having poor spelling/grammar, but it makes sense why it happens. Non-native speakers have to think of the language in a more technical way and like “follow the steps and rules of the language” while native speakers can just do it without having to think about it technically like that 🤷‍♂️ I’m sure that there are little mistakes and idiosyncrasies in your speech in your native language that you and others make that you don’t even think about but would totally trip up someone not familiar and trying to learn. English just gets put under a microscope and endlessly discussed because people all over the world speak it.

@chasm6091 4 месяца назад

@@Tessa_GrA lot of native English speakers (like me here in Canada) are never formally taught the rules of English. I've been told this isn't common in other education systems around the world. It's hard to know what you're saying wrong if you don't have a conceptual understanding of your language's grammar.

@DarkLorkBalthazar 4 месяца назад

One of the best videos on RU-vid to date. I love learning how everyone uses different verbiage through time.

@athanasiuscontra000 4 месяца назад

A winter coat in Boston was advertised in print as a Parker.

@followingheartlines 5 месяцев назад

i had a friend who unironically called a car accelarator an 'exhilarator' so i would ironically interchange accelerate/accelerating with exhilarate/exhilarating to the point that i sometimes genuinely confuse them.

@mofolk8896 4 месяца назад

I love this so much😂😂😂

@danieldaniels7571 3 месяца назад

The US President always says “expodentially” when he means exponentially

@NormalGayBro 5 месяцев назад

My grandma often says "I can't find for my eyes" to mean she's lost her glasses

@DragonTheOneDZA 4 месяца назад

I always call my glasses my eyes. I find it funnier and more realistic because I'm basically blind without them

@bdoglance 4 месяца назад

@@DragonTheOneDZA I do too as well. they are either referred to as my eyes, or eyeballs. hahaha

@thevirtualtraveler 3 месяца назад

My mother wears hearing aids and I frequently ask her if she 'has her ears in?'

@qazwsx6340 4 месяца назад

@5:11 in australia, we only ever add the "R" where there isn't one if the next word starts with a vowel. so we would pronounce it like "that idear is good", but we would never say "that idear was good"

@dickbandanaken 4 месяца назад

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-IXSjCJvN5Zc.html

@thickquinkly1560 3 месяца назад

Absolutely, so much so that the 'r' doesn't end up hitching onto the end of the first word, but really attaches to the beginning of the second word - "that idea ris good". The best example of this is when it's time to head off home and instead farewelling everyone with a "see you later on", in addition to abbreviating the phrase as "later", or "see you", Aussies will often just say "ron", and wander off.

@cicalinarrot 4 месяца назад

As an Italian, I say "expresso" sometimes when speaking English. They're basically the same word, coming from the same latin root that did have the "x" and most people will always mispronounce it in informal contexts. So, unless you work for a coffee corporation, it's the least problematic mistake ever, except it'll trigger people who love to correct other people's mistakes which... may be a good thing, them people deserved to be pissed because their own pedantry.

@DavidBeddard 5 месяцев назад

I'm a native speaker of British English and a fan of the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, and yet, even though I've played Major General Stanley on stage in a production of "The Pirates of Penzance", that includes the exchange between Stanley and the Pirate King confusing the word _often_ with the word _orphan_, my mind is blown by the fact the t "should" be silent! Based on the usage I've experienced, I'd have expected the t to be the norm, and pronunciations without it to be either quirks of haste, dialect, or affectation. I always enjoy the Otherwords series but I found this episode especially fascinating. Thanks Dr B!

@Ray-tu4rw 5 месяцев назад

Thank you for the correct pronunciation of quay. I've read it in print for years but never heard it used in American speech.

@thirdbells 4 месяца назад

I also learned this today...but I imagine it's a pretty common mistake considering "the Florida Keys." ... Apparently that's actually based on "cay." Quay being a wharf or harbor, cay being a small island. ...I quit English (as a native speaker.)

@franjkav 4 месяца назад

At least some loan words will have a pronunciation different from the originating language

@wendyn9780 4 месяца назад

A great scramble word though

@-c3202 4 месяца назад

I learned that "cay" was pronounced "key" in fifth grade because our teacher read "The Cay" to us. I'm still waiting for a time that I can put that knowledge to use, but I'm ready!

@SmallBobby 3 месяца назад

That was the only mispronunciation that caught me off guard. Like whoa, learned something new today.

@-c3202 4 месяца назад

I say scissors "skizzers" and knife "kuhniffuh" because I started doing it for fun and then keep forgetting other people won't necessarily understand it

@missellyssa 3 месяца назад

My dad says "skizzers" and my husband says "kuh-niffee"... I'm pretty sure nobody that hears them say those words thinks that they REALLY pronounce it that way...

@-c3202 3 месяца назад

@@missellyssa true, but I *have* had people be like "???? What are you saying???" If they haven't been Initiated lol. Inconvenient in a hospital setting to ask a coworker if they need skizzers instead of scissors when the scissors in question are trauma shears lol (not ever an emergency situation, but still annoying if someone just needs to open a medication or something)

@kimkimsan 21 день назад

I took an Old English course in college and the 'kn' sound was once fully pronoucced, so kuhniffuh isn't incorrect. And knight was once pronounced kuh-nich-tuh.

@-c3202 19 дней назад

@@kimkimsan that explains why some names like "Murdaugh" or "Laughlin" can be pronounced with the hard c sound!

@tysonl.taylor-gerstner1558 3 месяца назад

I actually pronounce the t in often, and since I was a child, I thought it was odd in the dialect merger zone where I grew up. Presently, as a multilingual adult and linguist, I still pronounce it, I love it when people challenge me on the pronuciation because it gives me my nerdy moments of explanation, which they don't expect.

@pawned79 5 месяцев назад

I pronounce sandwich “sam’edge.” I am from Alabama, and my mother said “sam’edge” and I never pronounced it like that until I had kids. Something about asking my child, “Do you want a sam’edge?” just felt parental to me. 🥰

@quinnfarris 4 месяца назад

My family was always more of a sammich fam

@SeantheDracunyan76 4 месяца назад

Normally i say Sam-wedge without checking myself

@nick_john 4 месяца назад

Sammich is Western Pennsylvania

@AMcDub0708 3 месяца назад

Nebraska: sammy

@SuperXzm 3 месяца назад

Ah fellow butteMbrot appreciator

@davetutelman 5 месяцев назад

OK, a real life story about one of the examples, "pecan". It goes back to 1964, and confirms what was said about regional pronunciation. I was at a company training session in Boston, and one of the trainees was from South Carolina. (Let's call him Joe.) We all went out to eat at a local restaurant, and when it came time for dessert Joe asked for the pe-cahn pie. The waitress, a local, gave him a confused look. So he repeated, a little slower, "pe-cahn pie". Still a blank look. So Joe pointed at the menu and re-repeated, "pe-cahn pie". The waitress suddenly smiled and said, "Oh, you mean pee-can pie." Now it was Joe looking confused. His response: "I guess so. But where I come from, a pee can is something else."

@janetteperez6351 2 месяца назад

Knowing that language evolves has relaxed me so much. I don't correct people's pronunciation. As long as I understand their meaning, they have succeeded in my book.

@Bolsty7 3 месяца назад

PHD students out here really changing the world for the better.

@ywenp 5 месяцев назад

5:52 Little trick for people trying to get silent consonants right in French (because I know that's a hard part), just have in mind the STD rule (*): 's', 't', and 'd' are the major silent consonants. If a word ends with one of them (with no vowel after), it's very likely silent. Any other case, it's very likely pronounced (notably, any consonant followed by a vowel is always pronounced). If you don't know how to deal with a specific word, default to that rule, you'll be right the big majority of times. Except for a few very common words you will anyway encounter quickly if you learn French (like "fils" (son) or the few words ending with 'b', 'f', 'l', 'p' or 'x'), all the exceptions either trip up French natives themselves or aren't agreed upon, so don't stress too much about them. (*) Totally not an official name, though highly memorizable.

@WlatPziupp 2 месяца назад

I like to joke that the key to French pronunciation, I don't speak French, is to ignore half the letters

@thierrypauwels 8 дней назад

I am afraid it is a bit more complicated than such a simple rule. For example, in "mers", the s is silent if it means "seas", but it is pronounced in the name of the town "Mers-les-Bains". In "Villers", the name of a lot of villages, the s is pronounced if it is a Belgian village, but is silent if it is a French village. And I learned only recently that "Estaires-sur-la-Lys" has to be pronounced as "Étair", with both s'es silent, but in "Lys" the s is pronounced. To summarize, you have to learn it on a case by case basis.

@tracyjackson7419 5 месяцев назад

It took me a long time to get used to reading “albeit” and “hyperbole” correctly instead of thinking “al-bet” and “hyper-bowl”.

@Minpb-m2x 4 месяца назад

A friend of mine used to say “all-bite.”

@PeperonyChease 3 месяца назад

I was saying hyperbowl for way too long.

@danieldaniels7571 3 месяца назад

@@PeperonyCheaseI was saying “hyper-boil” although only while reading to myself

@hainish2381 4 месяца назад

Your videos are always so full of insights and examples. Keep them coming. They're entertaining and informative.

@mykel6268 3 месяца назад

UndoubtABLY drives me up the wall

@kidsdomath1330 3 месяца назад

Undoubtedly so.

@JimC 3 месяца назад

"We're knights of the round table We dance whene'er we're able We do routines and chorus scenes With footwork impeccable. We dine well here in Camelot We eat ham and jam and spam a lot. "We're knights of the Round Table Our shows are formidable But many times We're given rhymes That are quite unsingable"

@pjschmid2251 4 месяца назад

I think you missed a point on the intrusive R in non-rhotic accents. They aren’t added to the end of words that end in vowels all the time only when they’re followed by another word that begins with a vowel. So the R wouldn’t show up saying , I like pasta. But if saying, I like pasta on Fridays, then the R would show up because the word pasta is followed by the word on.

@joejoebeefcraft 4 месяца назад

Waiting for someone to comment on this. I was watching a Dr Geoff Lindsay video about that right before so I was pretty confused when I heard her theory

@dani3link 4 месяца назад

Yes! To my surprise, Danish people do exactly what you describe when speaking English, so much so I started growing self-conscious about my "standard" pronunciation.

@Everest314 4 месяца назад

Absolutely true, but some Americans do say "I have an ideeurrrrr". Don't think I've heard it with pasta and not any other word as often as with idea.

@pjschmid2251 4 месяца назад

@@Everest314 yeah, but the idear thing is kind of a hick accent idiom, not a non-rhotic accent feature like she was saying. That feature in non-rhotic accents is a connector between a word that ends with a vowel followed by another word that starts with a vowel. Speakers of rhotic accents, put a glottal stop between those words. So me with my Midwestern accent will not put in an R when saying, I like pasta on Tuesday I put a little stop between pasta and on. But someone who’s from Boston might say I like pastar on Tuesday. But both of us would just say I like pasta.

@Everest314 4 месяца назад

@@pjschmid2251 I wasn't disputing your initial point, I do the connector-R myself (non-native speaker trying to speak a hotchpotch-British-ish accent) so I also frowned over that bit in the video. ... I find it funny, that "connector-R" gets a connector-R (in non-rhotic) between the written Rs. :D Not sure if I agree with the "hick" lable for "idear" as I have also heard well-educated people do that. I have also observed it a lot when Germans, Dutch or Scandinavians speak American English.

@mstegosaurus 5 месяцев назад

You got me with "Beijing" and "coup de grâce". And, I'm embarrassed to admit, "quay". Also, only in the last year did I learn that the t in bergamot is not, as I had always believed, silent.

@JimCullen 4 месяца назад

tbh I'm not convinced Beijing is mispronounced for the reason she said here. I think it's more akin to "ask", where it's just done because some people find it easier. The "zh" sound is just easier for most English speakers to place between two vowels than "j" is.

@viddork 4 месяца назад

@mstegosaurus Same with Gal Gadot. (Clue: she's not French!)

@franjkav 4 месяца назад

@@JimCullenI agree with you

@autumnrain249 3 месяца назад

@@JimCullen As a Mandarin speaker I agree with this. "Beige-ing" is just more intuitive considering English morphology. Also, the standard Mandarin pronunciation of the j in Beijing doesn't exist in English, so zh and the English j sound are both approximations anyway. Neither is more correct than the other imo.

@rogermrogerm 3 месяца назад

I absolutely love this series. The narrator also has a very easy to understand accent which makes these videos even more enjoyable.

@NorbiWhitney 4 месяца назад

It's really common for French speakers to do the "H" thing when speaking English. In a company I worked with a few years ago, our line manager was Ellen, and our department head was Helene. A french colleague would mispronounce both all the time, but even when presented with the names in text he would say the wrong one.

@dickb2128 5 месяцев назад

Super video Erica ! You left out one that I hear a lot, etc. So many people say ek cetera instead of et cetera it drives me nuts. I am a senior citizen who wrote for a living for many many years and I always get annoyed when I hear mispronounciations. Thanks again for an informative and excellent video.

@siyabongamviko8872 5 месяцев назад

It is frustrating for me to accept that I struggle with the word when speaking and will often say "fustrating" but I'm afraid I say afraid just fine.

@HenryLeslieGraham 4 месяца назад

correction: ask comes from /āscian/, there's also the variant with metathesis /ācsian/, nevertheless the reconstructed ancestor of both is PG /*aiskōn/, which fits the pattern of other PIE present tense verbs which have /sk/ but not /ks/, in the present stem. the metathesised variant was current, and more or less popular than the non methathesised variant, but the methathesised variant lost eventually due to standardisation. it is very much an over-reach to state /ācsian/ was the "original form".

@shelbynamels7948 Месяц назад

"Thank you, Sir Bernard".

@pbasswil 4 месяца назад

Great stuff, Erica. A nice, measured perspective, balancing legacy 'correctness' and a recognition that language evolves, and emerging majority useage will eventually be considered the _new_ correct. (But god spare me from New-Kyuh-Ler becoming 'correct' in my lifetime...)

@gasparsigma 5 месяцев назад

I've learned English by reading texts in videogames growing up. When I left my country for the first time as an adult I had a perfect vocabulary but oh god so many mispronounced words 😂

@mofolk8896 4 месяца назад

Lol! I can relate… a native English speaker, I grew up overseas with little access to my country’s pop culture, and certainly no Saturday morning cartoons! For decades I thought Yosemite Sam or Park was pronounced Yo-zmight instead of YoSEMitty😂

@danieldaniels7571 3 месяца назад

All your base are belong to us

@kinghani 4 месяца назад

4:41 It should be Hertford, not Hartford. The pronunciation is the same, but she is likely saying the name of the town in England, not the city in Connecticut.

@MrOtistetrax 4 месяца назад

Allowances should like definitely be given to how place names are pronounced by the people that actually live in them. There’s a town outside of Austin, Texas called Manor, that for some reason they pronounce “May-nor”. The locals of Worcester, Mass. can be heard referring to it as “Wistah”. While the people of Birmingham, U.K. will call their home “Burming-gum”, the city in Alabama is most definitely “Burming-ham”.

@JennieKermode 4 месяца назад

@@MrOtistetrax I think I was in my forties before I realised that people pronounced the '-s' on the end of 'St Louis'.

@jimgore1278 3 месяца назад

There are 3 places in Canada with the name Dalhousie, all pronounced differently. A university (dal-how-zee), town no. 1 (dal-hoo-zee), town no. 2 (port duh-loo-zee).

@NickC84 4 месяца назад

I'm totally new to these videos but I've always had a fascination with linguistics. You explain it so well and make it cute and fun at the same time. Thank you so much Dr. Brozovsky!

@hypotheticaltapeworm 3 месяца назад

I once was selected to read in front of the class in 9th grade. I mispronounced the word "misled" like "my zuld", mai-z'ld. People giggled, my teacher said "*Misled!*" and I never forgave myself

@ELS-tone 5 месяцев назад

One note on 8:01, in Old English the word was fisċ, and sc or sċ was pronounced /shk/ so it is much less of a jump to modern /fish/. Also, the letter K was rarely used then, so perhaps the point about 'fish' is looking at an differernt Germanic language

@JennieKermode 4 месяца назад

Yes, I was thinking that. Thanks for picking up on it.

@silverharloe 5 месяцев назад

One of my childhood mispronunciations (akin to baby talk, but more like toddler talk, I guess?) was "ephalent" instead of "elephant" . Sometimes I do that as an adult as a joke or for nostalgia.

@krzysztofczarnecki8238 5 месяцев назад

I used to do that with "Levorvel" (revolver) and "gulons" (gluons), because it's still funny even when you know you're pronouncing it wrong. Also pronounced jalapeño as Jah-lapenough. And Jorge as Jürgen, but without 'n' at the end. But now I wil positively pronounce watermelon as watermalone on occasion.

@allocater2 5 месяцев назад

I still say Indiot instead of Idiot. I don't know where I got the extra "n" from!

@adrasteia3866 5 месяцев назад

I had a childhood friend who pronounced animal as aminal.

@jordanlewandowskii 5 месяцев назад

My daughter has a stuffed aminole that I named Oliphaunté (all a fawn tay) - elephant. She can't speak yet, but that won't stop me from intentionally mispronouncing things for her.

@avaggdu1 4 месяца назад

Heffalump is a common childhood mispronunciation. I don't know if that's a global thing.

@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug 4 месяца назад

I new "segue" from reading and /segwei/ from podcasts and I knew both words meant something similar or basically the same: smoothly transition from one topic to another; and it was _several_ years before I realised that it was the same word. English has one of the most insane spelling systems...

@ffrreeddyy123456 4 месяца назад

“Axe and it shall be given” classic

@princecalcium 4 месяца назад

I hate when the stress is shifted to a different syllable in derived words. I'll always pronounce the word "metathesis" with stress on the e: metatheesis.

@CapinWinky 4 месяца назад

My dad purposefully mispronounces chaos as cha-ose and pavilion as pav-i-lion. Pretty much just those two words as a running joke from 30 years ago. All because the font used by a local park on a reservation slip in the 90's was a bit over the top and he didn't recognize the word until sounding it out one letter at a time a few times.

@Smudge4C 4 месяца назад

My first time seeing a video from this channel. I love it! Such interesting subject matter presented by an incredible host.

@tangledandfar 3 месяца назад

As a child, my best friend was from Long Island, NY. I grew up being called Trisher (Trisha).

@dabeamer42 5 месяцев назад

I read of someone (who was well-read as a child) who independently figured out there must be a verb "to misle" (pronounced "MY-zuhl"? meaning "to lead astray"), because it had a past tense of "MY-zuhled" (spelled misled).

@DanceswithDustBunnies 4 месяца назад

to me it was mizzled. LOL

@JennieKermode 4 месяца назад

Heh. I don't recall a time when I didn't know what it was supposed to be, but I have a tendency to pronounced it as a derivative of 'misle' anyway, because it's such a cute word.

@dabeamer42 4 месяца назад

@@JennieKermode Indeed. Words are my favorite toys.

@JimCullen 4 месяца назад

A fun fact with "coup de grace" is that the _plural_ of it is "coups de graces", and the way the pronunciation changes as a result is it goes from "coo de grass" to "coop de grass". Adding the "s" means now you have to pronounce the "p"...but _not_ the s itself.

@halfsourlizard9319 3 месяца назад

'Coup' and 'coups' are pronounced identically in French.

@lapis_lazuli578 2 месяца назад

source? Because I don't think that's true

@JimCullen 2 месяца назад

@@lapis_lazuli578 yeah it's not true. I was repeating something that I had heard elsewhere that I have since learnt was incorrect

@gravityUTube 4 месяца назад

This video is great. Informative, fun and was explained incredibly well

@marct9942 3 месяца назад

The worst are the non-italian wait staff at italian restaurants. Not only do they butcher the words but mock you when you pronounce it correctly

@bltvd 4 месяца назад

I think people should speak however they want. That being said there is a special place in hell for people who call records “vinyls”.

@wingflanagan 4 месяца назад

My best friend and I grew up together mispronouncing things just to be funny. To this day I still say "pissed office" for "post office", "cat soup" for "ketchup", "moose turds" for "mustard", "chocolate mouse" for "chocolate mousse", on and on. I've also adopted a couple of words my wife coined or mangled when learning to speak English after coming to the U.S. as an adult. She called the clothes hamper the "clothes garbage" (I love that one and refuse to call it anything else, now), and she somehow mixed up "pants" and "buns", so now when there's a cookout I proudly announce that I need to go buy hamburger pants and hotdog pants.

@pixywings 3 месяца назад

And this is a huge part of why I have to watch everything with subtitles! not because I can't hear, but because people pronounce things differently and I have ADHD and it often takes my brain longer to process spoken words than written ones.

@filipepereira2688 4 месяца назад

First time I came across one of your videos! Very instructive and entertaining! You won a subscriber :)

@edriancontridas3.14 5 месяцев назад

Speaking of things I didn't know I was saying wrong... I was today years old when I realized that it's me-THA-the-sis (7:29) and not like 💥META-THESIS💥 😭

@therealelement75 4 месяца назад

You aren't the first If you gave me that word, I would've thought it was meta (beyond, for example metadata, data about data) + thesis, and would use it for a thesis about thesises

@TheOnyomiMaster 4 месяца назад

6:43 One example of this is that almost everyone pronounces Pokémon "wrong". I say "poke-UH-mon", many people say "poke-EE-mon", but according to official sources like the anime it's "poke-AY-mon". Likewise, names of individual Pokémon sometimes have many different pronunciations because the Pokémon Company doesn't put out an official pronunciation guide. Like Dialga - is it "dee-AHL-gah" or "DIE-uhl-gah"? The former is closer to the Japanese pronunciation, but many Pokéfans use the latter because it sounds like "dial" which is a word that has to do with clocks and Dialga is the master of time. Of course, the ambiguity is due to the inconsistent orthography of the English language itself - pitch accent aside, there's basically only one way to pronounce their Japanese names, because the katakana tells you exactly how they're supposed to sound (in this case, ディアルガ / Diaruga).

@adamsmith5860 4 месяца назад

I think I weirdly just met my best friend soulmate. You just taught me so much in this 1 video. Thank you, and I love the 90s background. Feel like I'm watching that old-school kids' science television show. I have a thing for last names due to mine being smith. Thanks for the awesome content. I'm gonna watch this probably like 4 more times because I couldn't take it all in fast enough.

@SambitBiswas 3 месяца назад

This is the most fun and informative video I've seen in a while. subbed :)

@dylanlivingston556 4 месяца назад

Just saw a show where a "professional" anthropologist said "Nucular technology." I instantly lost respect for her. That one is a pet peeve for me.😅

@dawgythegreat 4 месяца назад

1:12 The french word for "what" is not "que" but "quoi". The english equivalent of "que" would be something like "that". It's like "The cat that I was petting was very friendly" would be "Le chat que je flattais était très amical.

@aegrant100 4 месяца назад

No, there are no fewer than 5 ways to say WHAT in French. QUE veux-tu? = WHAT do you want? QUEL est ton nom? = WHAT is your name? QU’EST-CE QUE nous mangeons? = WHAT are we eating? QU’EST-CE QUI se passe? = WHAT’s happening? QUOI is usually more of an injection. Il a décidé de quitter sa femme. -QUOI?! = He decided to leave his wife. -WHAT?! QUE on the other hand can also be a relative pronoun which you illustrated in your cat example. QUE is also a conjunction. Je pense QUE le français est une langue difficile. 😊

@dawgythegreat 4 месяца назад

Ah oui c'est vrai ahah, Je suis Quebecois alors il est rare d'utilisé le QUE de cet manière meme si c'est grammaticalement acceptable. Par exemple, dans la langue courante, les gens vont plus dire «tu veux quoi?» au lieu de «que veux tu?»@@aegrant100

@karenryder6317 Месяц назад

All of this reminds me of how natives of Quebec say their city name. We always said "kwee-bec" but when I went there I discovered that they say "Ka-bec".

@MelissaThompson432 4 месяца назад

I saw somebody in a comments section the other day talking about a segue, knew how it was pronounced, but spelled it segway. Your intro obviously made the connection....

@007KrausBean 21 день назад

I was really hoping to see something mentioned about the word "FRUSTRATED" because that is one that really sets me off when it is sed wrong. People will say "FUSTRATED" or "FLUSTRATED" and both of those are so horrible to hear. I have worked very hard on trying to let it pass when people do it, but inside it is absolutely like nails on a chalkboard. Another one is SPECIFIC when people say PACIFIC.

@Respectable_Username 4 месяца назад

1:00 Me too! Well, cha-oose more like. But yeah, got super confused until I think it was in choir we were singing a song with the word "chaos" in it and I got really confused why everyone was saying the (as far as I was aware) different but similar word kaos (that turns out I'd only ever heard aloud before) instead 😅

@johnneiberger7311 3 месяца назад

The segue on the Segway killed me.

@pretendtobenormal8064 4 месяца назад

Love the Otherwords content! I wish there were Otherwords merch. I would totally buy some stickers and a shirt!

@B_Ruphe 4 месяца назад

One weird recent trend is the way many Americans have started pronouncing the plural of the word "process" as though that word is a Greek-form word like crisis, thesis, ellipsis, basis, diagnosis, oasis and axis, which take their plural in -es (crises, theses, axes, etc.) pronounced with a long e (EEZ like "ease"). These words have come directly into English from Greek via Latin and retain their Latin 3rd/5th declension plural forms, just as many technical terms do (mensis, menses, synapsis, synapses, etc.). Prcocess , in contrast, followed the commoner route of Latin-derived words, via Norman/Middle French in the 11th-13th centuries. Thus, for instance, successes, messes, distresses, tresses, dresses, countesses, duresses, confesses, stresses, processes, excesses, etc., with the short-I kit pronunciation. Many Americans do pronounce processes in this way, but the peculiar "processEEZ" pronounciation is spreading in the broadcast media.

@kidsdomath1330 3 месяца назад

Agh this is so true! Probably just because it’s marginally easier to pronounce, though.

@waltwestbrook6651 3 месяца назад

I thought "misled" was pronounced "missled" (like the past tense of missel) until I saw it split at the end of a sentence. I lived in NH in high school and the use of "r" delighted me along with new vocabulary such as dungarees and frappe, bubbler and tonic. I love your work and your style.

@jpalz 4 месяца назад

I expected to know most of these, but a lot of these terms were new information! I knew hypercorrection but having a word for hyper foreignism and metathesis is so cool.