It's the same here, Sue. Beaulieu Farm at Baldslow (which gives its name to a local cricket club) is Bow Loo, and Beauchamp Road on the Hollington council estate is not Beecham but Bow Sham.

My daughter will be three in January, and she says all kinds of funny things, but the one that stands out most in my mind is the way she says animals. She says it aminals.

According to my daughter when she was a bit younger, those little red berries were called strawbaderries; those giant gray animals with trunks were abadants. She also still puts an o on the end of most words that end with wl for some reason--so we we dry with towelos and that hooting bird is an owlo.
And for the first 3 years Daddy was called Dabm.


In the spirit of Ren's original intent for the thread, I'll never forget the day my mother (a normally very intelligent, well read woman) saw the word ragout and pronounced it just as spelled. I pointed out to her that it was 'ragoo', and she said, You're kidding. You mean like the spaghetti sauce (brand Ragu)? She'd seen the word printed all her life, and heard it spoken but just never put two and two together to realize they were the same. That gave us laughs for a week or so. (ok, so she was easily amused. )

I have a few. Firstly, my family always pronounce 'dancing' with a nasally O, but everyone else I know says 'dahncing'
My boyfriend gets really annoyed at this, and tries to get me to change the way that I say it. He then went on to tell me that "Your family needs to learn better pronownciation..."

Boy did I tell him off for that.

Then there was the time when I was with my family in our car driving somewhere, and we came across a street sign with a place name on it that I had heard of, but had no idea where it was. I asked "where is goo-mer-ah-cha" much to everyone's amusement. Apparently it is pronounced 'gum-er-a-ka'

Has anyone ever pronounced 'discombobulated' right? It's my favorite word because it sounds like it shouldn't be a word.

One that gets to me is "expecially" for especially.
Other ones that my mom and i get annoyed at: "reelator" for realtor, "joolery" for "jewelry"

Ah yes, and the crazily pronounced small town names in this area:
Chili = Chai-lai
Castile = kass-tile
Nunda = nunday
Java = jayva
Etc, etc, etc.

Ok...I heard this one twice today. "accrost" instead of "across".
I could go on and on, but I have a family story like others. My father was from Czechoslovakia and lived here for over forty years and he still had trouble with some sayings. My favorite was when he was telling me about someone we knew became, "a newborn Christian". When I stopped laughing I told him it is "born again". We laughed together so much.

You really got that one right. It takes everything I can muster no to correct people. I can not allow myself to become one of those people. But, I sure do wish someone would.

There are numerous words that I hear get misspoken but the most memorable one was made by a man I used to work for many years ago in Saks Fifth Avenue. He was this cute little older gentleman from Italy and he just couldn't say 'probably', when he would say it it came out 'probobbily' - so cute. I still say it that way.

Edited to add:

One word that always gets my goat when I hear it is 'irregardless'. I shudder at that (non)word.

Whazt about "supposably" for "supposedly"?

Speaking of mispronounciations, how do pronouce the Rieu in Andre Rieu.

No matter how I pronounce it, someone says I am wrong.

Okay, I have a new word I hate, no matter if it is pronounced woot and in foot, or as in boot.

Woot!!!

I don't know who he is, but I'd go with Ree-uu, with the French R.

February. Until now, I am still not sure on how to pronounce it right.

Nor I, Peejee! It seems there is a different way of pronouncing that one for everyone in the world. I say 'Febrewry.' I am sure that is wrong, but it is where I come from that makes a difference I think.

I pronounce it 'feb-U-ary,' a teacher taught when i was in elementary and I got used to saying it that way, but I hear most people pronounce it 'febrary.'

Well I say all the letters. Feb-ru-ary. I think ren is right, probably depends what area of the country/world you live in, and how you were taught it when you were little.

My early attempts at "incunabula" were pretty dismal - which was a problem considering my thesis was on incunabula

Just heard again, and on our National Television News Show - ASTERISK * , pronounced as ASTERIX, or often, as ASTRIX ! Makes the smoke pour out of my ears!

The word that drives me bonkers when I hear mispronounced is "aunt".

According to the dictionary, and according to my teachers when I went to school, "ant" and "aunt" are homonyms...meaning that they are words that are spelled differently, but sound the same.

Yet, I always hear people pronounce "aunt" as "awnt".

When I say it the right way, I get told that I'm saying it wrong. Then when I zing them with the homonym and dictionary things, they say "well that's how I've always said it".

So they make fun of me for saying it right, but when the tables are turned, they use a cop out.

I pronounce it the same way you do, DakotaNorth, but pronouncing it the other way isn't really mispronouncing it, because according to just about any dictionary, either pronunciation is correct.
It's one of those words just like February (a few posts above these). There are several pronunciations that are correct.

Typing "pronunciation" made me think of another word to add to this thread. I hate it when people say "proNOUNCiation." No such word!

Thanks, Leau.

Very interesting link, by the way, but it's driving me crazy. I'm sitting here making vowel sounds and my kids are looking at me like I'm nuts. It's all complicated by the fact that I do not in fact pronounce my vowels the way someone in Southern England does, so half the time I'm making the wrong sound in the first place.

I am reminded of a conversation here once with an Australian quiz author about how to pronounce a certain word - we finally realized that our terms of reference were so far apart that the whole thing was impossible to write about.

I think I mispronounce a few words, mainly due to knowing them from reading, and not having heard it spoken. But when I see the correct pronunciation, it sticks in my memory!

A couple I've been wondering about are asphalt and vulnerable. I pronounce asphalt as ASH-phalt but I've read that it should be 'as-phalt'. Is it pronounced differently in British and American English? Or is one correct and the other not?

With vulnerable, I always sound out the 'L', but I hear so many people say VUN-erable in Australia. Which is correct?