How Much Of Your Reading Interrupted Your Speech?

It happens, not everyone is born William F. Buckley. I mispronounced “tinnitus” at the doctor today.

"Interrupted?"

Someone told me once you shouldn't judge someone for mispronouncing a word if they clearly know the meaning because that means they learned it through reading, which should be encouraged and celebrated.

You’re in good company. Harry Truman, as a child, famously read every book in the Independence, Missouri public library.

He said he mispronounced a lot of words he’d read but had never heard anyone speak.

There’s this other book to use when it happens….I think it’s called a dykeshunery.

I dont understand the original post title and I refuse to respond to it.

I used to pronounce “misled” as “mizled.”

I still think “mizled” sounds much more ominous (therefore oreferred!)

epitome

I pronounced "awry" as Arry, rhymes with quarry

When I was a kid I thought the name Penelope was pronounced "Pen-uh-lope"

I pronounced "vacation" as "daycation" well into my teens.

I used to pronounce “girl” as “guuuuuuurl”. That was interrupted.

façade

I once as a child pronounced the name of the overwhelming German composer Wagner as though he was married to Natalie Wood. My much more cultivated neighbour nicely corrected me, without fuss.

I dated and married a double-Ivy writer and smartypants. Love him but the corrections were a lot to take in, those first several years. “Potable water” was the first of so many.

I used to say “Wagner” is in wag the dog as a joke with a buddy. Also: choppin for Chopin. Batch. Etc.

Jack is worried. He cannot find the boat. There is water all around the is-land.

R16 = Bugs Bunny

Was that a Looney Tunes gag first?

I had a German postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard’s Dental School named Cosima Wagner (no relation) who told me I must have been the only Bostonian who spoke German because I was the only person at Harvard who pronounced her name correctly. Even the staff called her Dr “Wagner.”

Yes.

Yes yo R19.

Yes to R19.

I remember as a kid reading a book and had never seen the word tongue spelled out so I kept pronouncing it in my head as ton-goo

And now, R24, you’ve experienced tongue good many times over. You slut.

7th grade "health" (sex education) class, for whatever reason the teacher had us taking turns in class reading paragraphs from the text book (lazy ass teaching but it was 1982). I'll never forget the kid who kept pronouncing the male sex organ as "pen-es." "Pen" like the writing instrument and "es" like the letter. He turned beet red when the teacher corrected him.

I once pronounced misanthrope as "mis-AN-throw-pee" in junior high school.

Boys have a pen-eese, girls have a vaj-inna.

Vay - Jean - A

Which, R26, brings back the memory of a story about pronunciation (along with translation) that might have been disastrous but wasn’t.

At a state dinner not unlike the one held for the Macrons this week, Queen Elizabeth hosted President and Mme. de Gaulle at Buckingham Palace. During dinner, Mme. de Gaulle was asked in conversation if there were only one thing in life she wanted, what would it be? She promptly replied what sounded just like, “a penis”

Ever gracious and thankfully fluent in French, the Queen addressed the shocked silence at table, saying, “Yes, happiness. Something we all want.” And dinner went on smoothly.

My stupid co-worker used to mispronounce “often” often not realizing there’s a silent T.

R3 is me in a nutshell.

R31 = William Safire

Yep, R32, me too. If you had the privilege of a good education you shouldn't look down on those of us who had to teach ourselves everything to get ahead.

Liberry.

I thought it was pronounced gaze-bo. Fortunately, it wasn't a word that ever came up in conversation for my childhood self, and I must have heard someone on TV pronounce it correctly, saving me a modicum of shame.

I was in a production of The Winter's Tale in college and the director, a theater professor, did not pronounce Hermione correctly (he said, HER-me-own). This was ages before the Harry Potter books, of course.

I used to read "chaos" and pronounce it as "chah-ose."

Socraytes for Socrates.

Yose-might

Are there people here who say “datta” lounge?

I never got a handle on shushpishush.

R9: I'm an ancient geezer. On an episode of That Girl 50 years ago there was a discussion of the word 'awry'. Having very rarely encountered it since, I'd otherwise not be sure of how to pronounce it.

R1: I'd say tin-EYE-tuss automatically. TIN-eh-tuss sounds pompous from an American.

R3: You bring to mind Ken Jennings as a Jeopardy contestant, not host, answering an artist's name as TIT-ee-ann.

Titty-an, nice.

Epitome

I say Ear- Pee - tome

I say date- her-long

I love you, R40.

R39 = Kelly Bundy

Shitty Little Annie

Hyperbole is a doozy.

I pronounced it HYPER-bole.

In my 1L Contracts section someone was called on to discuss Hadley v Baxendale (a famous early case). He pronounced Greenwich as Green-witch.

I pronounced quinoa as quinn-oh-uh and was ashamed when I was corrected to keen-wah. How dumb is that? I also pronounced pho as foe, not fuh, and was shamed by a chorus of queens in a sauna one time.

A relative worked with a woman whose name was Penelope who pronounced her name as Penna-Lope. This was in Kentucky at the Old Grandad Distillery, so it kind of makes sense.

R52 I remember Bob Barker calling a contestant Penna-lope on The Price is Right once.

Ching ching chow chow, honey.

[quote]When I was a kid I thought the name Penelope was pronounced "Pen-uh-lope"

Me too, r10!

Mack-a-bree for macabre.

Try pronouncing Daphne without ever having heard it. Back in the 60s my parents forced me into a pen-pal relationship with a boy my age in New Zealand. His poor sister Daphne was going through a prolonged decline from an inoperable brain tumor and much of our correspondence was about his impressions of her condition and how he could be a good brother.

She died in 1971 and he called to let me know. The first time we'd ever spoken. It took me a few seconds to figure out what he meant when he told me Daphne had died. Thankfully the delay covered my mental scrambling to figure it out so I didn't say "who?"

No. I hadn't watched Scooby Doo until years later on video with my nephews.

How do you pronounce Siobhan?

I just don't r58. there's another one I don't even try, some actress.

Shivonne

Pronounced Saoirse.

that's the one r61

While we were in college, a friend was excitedly telling me about a character in a play she’d been reading who’d had a lobotomy. She said, “…And then, they gave her a LOO-BEE-TOO-MEE!

In-DUSS-try

Bona fide.

When I first saw it I thought Saoirse was an pronounced Swowreese.

Interrupted?

r3 is correct. There's nothing wrong with not knowing how to pronounce words that you know from reading.

R67 = R2

As a kid having classmates named Sean and thinking it was pronounced Seen or SEE-an

While playing Trivial Pursuit in the 80s my little brother pronounced Don Quixote Don Quicks-Oat. I still pronounce it that way when I come across it

omg, Trivial Pursuit. I thought enigma was pronounced enima. as in, wrapped in a riddle.

Since when are English speakers expected to innately know the pronunciation of Gaelic names? I don't think foreign language names are applicable to this discussion.

I'm talking specifically about Gaelic names like Siobhan and Saoirse, which are relatively rare among English speakers outside of Ireland. Sean is common across the English speaking world so most should understand how to pronounce it.

interrupted?

R74 see R67 and R2.

OP, when I was young, whenever I would read the word [italic]façade[/italic] in a book or magazine, my brain said, "FAY-kaid."

Separately, I knew there was a word that people said (aloud) that was probably spelled, "phasad?," and it meant a fake front.

Not until I was 17 and staring at the lyrics to "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel did it all click. lol

This thread has me checking Google for pronunciations anxiously. Foyer?? Argh!!

Buck would never have let his reading interrupt his speech.

Re tinnitus:

At my first ENT visit, I asked which pronunciation of tinnitus was correct. Dr said either was fine, which I took as doctor-speak for 'whatever, I’m too busy.'

Later, I asked the nurse, and she confirmed: either one really is correct.

It's SIR-Shuh (for Saoirse).

I remember reading vocabulary answers out loud to my 10th-grader Honors English class and repeating "omni-PO-tent" over and over until one guy blurted out, "It's omNIP-tent!" and I have never been the same.

^^ om-NIP-o-tent, I meant

Happy I have a one syllable name. But some really stupid people still try to pronounce the H. No, not people of other languages. It's probably the first name they learn in English.

Important

Button

I was reading a poem aloud and mispronounced "victuals."

[quote]How Much Of Your Reading Interrupted Your Speech?

What, and oh, dear.

R84 is from Lonk Guy-Land.

I remember in high school English lit class, we took turns reading aloud passages from some book, and when it was my turn, I came across the word "segue," and pronounced it with a silent "ue" (like league, tongue, catalogue, dialogue, etc.). Nobody corrected me so I went through life not realizing segue and /segway/ were one and the same.

R88 - "segue" is one of those words I figured out I was pronouncing wrong in my head before I ever had to fuck up and say it wrong aloud publicly. It's always been a secret flex (esp after "omnipotent"!).

[quote]It's SIR-Shuh (for Saoirse)

A simple song everyone can learn!

I once heard a hapless DJ needing to read out current arts news - including an exhibition by Edgar Degas. This surname he pronounced as Dee-gass. As though the great post-impressionist was best known for the release of stubborn flatulence.

R27 just blame it on the Greek word that has its accent on the "human" part, μισάνθρωπος.

DIOGENES a Greek restaurant pronounced on radio as DIE OH JEANS

Hughes pronounced as Hugg Hez

The connections between words I'd heard people use but (I thought) I never saw in print and words I'd seen in print but had never heard anyone use.

I'd heard the word 'HyPER-BUH-lee' and read the word hyperbole as 'Hyper-bowl'. Was in my 30s before I realized they were the same word.

Same with 'Ah-RYE' and 'AW-ree' (awry).

[quote]While playing Trivial Pursuit in the 80s my little brother pronounced Don Quixote Don Quicks-Oat. I still pronounce it that way when I come across it

I once heard an educated man pronounce Don Quixote as 'Don Quickshot', confidently, as though the routine Spanish inflection was pretentious for a non-Spaniard.

Similarly when Majorca became a populist holiday destination, the same sort of speaker would defiantly pronounce a hard J, perhaps keen to distance himself from populist tourism.

I thought "chic" written was pronounced "chick" and "chic" spoken was written "sheik" until I was around 24.

Faux pas = fox paws

[bold]Slough[/bold]

My friend was complaining about annoying clients and I chirped, “Well, sometimes you just hope it will sloww“ (rhymed with exclamation “Ow!”) “off!” / (pause) “What?” / “You have to sloww the feeling off. Like dead skin.” / (pause) “Do you mean SLUFF?” / “No. Sloww. S-L-O-U-G-H.” / “That is sluff.” / “But…. it’s spelled like plough. Plow.” / “So is rough.”

I said, “That’s one of those words I’ve only read!”

Primer = long I for paint prep. Short I otherwise.

R96 popular, not populist!

R60 brings up memories of watching [italic]Ryan's Hope[/italic] decades ago.

Well, R70, the adjectival form is pronounced quick-zotic.

I still don’t know EDipus v. EEdipus.

It’s not pronounced with a z sound—it’s an s sound.

I should be grateful I'd heard the word pizza before I learned to read.

I knew someone who worked at a movie theater in the 90s when the Les Miserables movie came out (the one with Liam Neeson and Uma Thurman). He said people would come in asking for a ticket to "Less Miserable"

Bry cheese

[Quote] You’re in good company. Harry Truman, as a child, famously read every book in the Independence, Missouri public library.

Books in the Indelendence, MO public library, circa 1905:

The Bible

The Farmer’s Almanac

^^^ Independence

An English woman endearingly confessed to me that, until corrected, she pronounced Arkansas as 'Are Kansas.'

R104, Panza - ['pan θa], pan-tha (Castilian)

Pseudo as sway-do

I was mortified when the office moron corrected me.

Now I have a pronunciation app on my phone.

I can't think of any off the top of my head (other than what I wrote at r97), but there are A LOT of words I run into when reading that I realize I have no idea how to pronounce. *grabs book* -- a single paragraph in, and I found one: "voluminous"

Palatable - my brain keeps wanting to put the stress on the 2nd syllable instead of the first.

(I looked it up and realized I already know how to pronounce "voluminous." But I couldn't have called it up without prompting.)

kwuhk · so · tuhk

R99, Merriam-Webster provides multiple pronunciations of "slough" depending on the meaning - slau, slew, sluff. This requires too much thought to even bother uttering.

After over 50 years of English language fluency, those -ough words still give me pause when I come across them in print, especially the ones I rarely use, like plough, bough, trough.

How do you pronounce Hojicha?

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now.

R118 those three are ridiculously easy to remember.

[quote]Hojicha

I pronounce it Ho-Yee-Cha, but I also heard it pronounced Hoo-Jee-Cha

Ho-hee-ha

"Fellate" instead of "fillet" hahahaha. Freudian slip, I guess?

My B best friend and the word "determined".

Correct pronunciation: de-term-end

Friend's pronunciation: deter-mined (as in ore is mined)

Once heard a girl say, 'He's a pretty swayve guy.' Her version of 'suave.'

I thought segue was pronounced like seeg (rhymes with league).

[quote]Bona fide

R64 I'm still challenged. Is it BONA FYDEE or BONA FIDE?

Definately, SUAVE. No idea how that was pronounced.

Also, NAIVE. The first time I heard the word spoken, it took me a minute to make the connection to the word I'd read.

Worcestershire Sauce

Is it 'wooster' sauce? I still don't know.

Stoneham, Dedham, Framingham, Needham.

One of these hams is pronounced differently from the others.

Woostersheer

The British pronounce filet as "FILLet"; Americans say "fillAY"

Worse Stir Sheer

When I was in a large archdiocesan seminary we had a first year guy in my Early Christian Theology class continually pronounce Didache as, di-dah-chi not did-a-kay as it is pronounced… The rector finally asked him to what he was referring, after much back and forth and tired of the time wasting, I finally chimed in and said, “I think he means did-a-kay Father.” It shut everyone up… I probably used a tone that wasn’t necessary.

I have a barely tolerable acquaintance who jumps at the chance to correct people's pronunciation of Hermés and Porsche.

I actually don't see what the big deal is - English is such a fucked up language in terms of pronounciation and it has borrowed so many words from other languages.

Other languages have standardized their spelling and pronunciation so mistakes like this are far less likely.

Arguably, English has the most words of any language. Mistakes are going to happen.

R51, the township in New Jersey is pronounced GREEN-witch.

Congregants in my church laughed when the Pastor said E-mouse for Emmaus.

R139 and that’s New Jersey for you…

[quote]Definately

Definitely not.

[quote]Is it 'wooster' sauce? I still don't know.

[quote]Woostersheer

The vital addition to a Bloody Mary, and the Oxford College, is indeed pronounced 'wooster.' The county, the cricket team, is as noted pronounced 'Woostersheer.' In fact any emphasis on the final syllable will still give away a well-meaning outsider. A Brit will say, 'Woostershur', emphasis on the first syllable.

Same here —America

Every fucking city in Massachusetts. Married a blue collar Bostonian, who was horrified when we'd drive around his home state while visiting from the West Coast: Pee-body, Swamp-SCOTT, Wor-see-sa-ster, Glow-sister, Haver-Hill, Skitu-ATE, Leo-minister, and so on. My in-laws simply did not understand where I was talking about. I wasn't embarrassed at all, even when he "corrected" me in front of them.

In the late 1970s, I lived in North Carolina while attending grad school, where there was a road named “Ephesus Church Road.” I had a classmate friend who was a born-again Christian, and when I pronounced it “Eh-FEE-sus Church Road,” she laughed at me and said it was pronounced EF-eh-sus. Then she told me about St. Paul’s letter to the “Eh-FEE-zhuns,” and I said that must be why I pronounced Ephesus wrong. That was complete bullshit, but I thought most of the stuff she told me from the Bible was, too, so I thought we were even.

She was correct on both.

When I first encountered Camembert cheese which I still love to this day I thought it was Cam and Bert cheese, so I pronounced it that way. That and Quinoa which I pronounced like what R52 did. Restaurants seemed to get what I was asking for anyways, just as well as its something else I like

As long as we're in this conversation, I always wonder why Martha Stewart uses the British pronunciation of "herb" wherein the h is sounded. Americans, by and large, pronounce it with a silent h, like the French, except that we pronounce the vowel :"urb' instead of "airb". Is it an affectation, or is she so intimidating a person that no one dare pronounce it another way in her presence?

Cume

Herb talk reminds me that Americans say 'Or-regga-no', Brits say 'Orry-garn-no.'

R112! The way you wrote that made me literally LOL!!

the "office moron" correcting you...🤣🤣

R118 - I used to teach ELL and to reassure my students that English breaks all the rules and that they shouldn't feel bad for not finding patterns where there [italic]should be[/italic] patterns, I did a little performance as an earnest EL and listed all those words (cough, through, though, bough, rough, thorough, etc) on the board and messing up all the pronunciations.

^^^ messed up

R149 she’s wrong on that word. It’s her way to be contrarian.😵‍💫

Try being an ugly American with absolutely no grasp of French who is obsessed with reading books about the French Revolution. I'm sure the French would string me up from a lamppost if they heard my mental "pronunciations" of their language.

Aux armes, citoyens!

I still don't understand the title of this thread.

I was surprised the first time I heard the word 'debris' aloud. I thought it was DEB-ris.

Mine is the name Phoebe. For years I though Phoebe Cates was pronounced "Phobe" Cates

I thought Phoebe was spelled Feebee.

I am 45 and learned this around the age of 25 or so?

Audio books will make most of these examples obsolete.

Is American English the hardest language to learn? I've heard Spanish is the easiest; is that true?

R158 Don't the English pronounce it that way?

R162 I've heard that but don't know if it's true. Also, that the English pronounce the T in 'filet'.

No they don’t. They say DEB-ree.

I never had the occasion to say hors d'oeuvres out loud but in my head when read it was whore-dee-overs.

R164 Oh, I get it. I was pronouncing "ris" as "ree"...but I guess the poster was saying "ris.

The British take French loan words and anglicize them to fit BrE stress & phonological patterns: DEBris, BALlet, DUvet, BERet, GARage, CHAUFfeur, etc.

The Americans tend to stick to the original French stress pattern, emphasizing the second or final syllable.

[quote]I still don't understand the title of this thread.

I'm shocked more isn't being made of it, especially in a thread about grammar.

[quote]Also, that the English pronounce the T in 'filet'.

Another Nancy Mitford-esque class giveaway is not pronouncing the T in 'valet' and 'Moet.' Be sure when talking about your valet pouring Moet to sound that final T!

Thanks to Edward Gorey's "The Gashleycrumb Tinies" I learned how to pronounce 'ennui' correctly. (I was in college at the time, and while I'd never had cause to say the word out loud I'd certainly read it.)

"...M is for Maud who was swept out to sea./ N is for Neville who died of ennui."

R170 I knew how to pronounce it from listening to my parents' records, as a kid. "I Get a Kick Out of You"--Frank Sinatra.

(Not that I knew what it meant.)

Reading old books, I thought Geoffrey was its own name. "Gee-off-ree"

When I heard about the Joffrey Ballet company I imagined that was how they spelled it.

I have more of the opposite problem - I'm a congenitally terrible speller - thus often tend to spell words as they sound. And once a misspelling gets lodged in my brain I make the mistake, (and mentally debate if it is indeed a mistake) over and over.

It happens while typing, but even more often while writing. I automatically scrawl "whife" for wife because my NYC accent has always stuck a breathy H sound in there. I know it is wrong, but it always trips me up, and always takes a moment to mentally clarify.

As Bugs would say, whatta MA-roon!

Is is Bay-zil, or Bah-sil, as in Rathbone? It's my favorite herb. This vexes me so.

I’ve often heard a Bronx accent and a Brooklyn accent (which also is a SI accent to some extent). I’ve even heard a Queens accent, sort of. But I’ve never heard a Manhattan accent or an “NYC accent.”

Mistrial as mistry-ul.

Biopic as bi-OP-ic.

I also thought La Hoya and La Jolla were two different places.

While Manhattanites might slide by in many words, not revealing their NYC origins, they will give themselves away the first time they order that black beverage made from beans grown in Colombia.

Cueoffee?

That giveaway means they’re not originally from Manhattan.

What special non-NYC accent do Manhattanites use?

They don’t have a particular accent.

Everyone has an accent, ignoramus.

…unless they came from somewhere else and retain that other accent.

So every single person living in Manhattan "came from somewhere else."

Sounds plausible.

Everyone? 🧐

Roue. I thought it was pronounced 'rue' until I heard Alfred Hitchcock say it! Roo-A.

[quote]I also thought La Hoya and La Jolla were two different places.

R177 Same here! I couldn't understand why I couldn't find LaHoya on a map.

[quote]I also thought La Hoya and La Jolla were two different places.

So did I, but I had the excuse of having gone to college in DC. I learned how to pronounce La Jolla when I met Spencer B., who grew up there.

I think we should attempt to turn the title for this thread into something that might resemble standard English.

I'll start.

"Did encountering some words through reading them first ever lead you to some embarrassing mispronunciations? "

or

"Have you ever discovered that you'd been long mispronouncing words you first encountered through your reading? "

Good suggestions, R190, but we've figured out OP's meaning.

r190 I'll play: How about, [italic]How Often Did the Printed Appearance of a Word Mislead Your Pronunciation?[/italic]

Discovering You’re a Stupid Bitch: Words You Mispronounced Because You Only Read Them

Comptroller is pronounced as controller.