Stories of Mispronunciation – Misery love company

On my most recent episode of The Public Speaker, I discuss common mispronunciations.

For sure, it is quite embarrassing to make such a public mistake –especially since I am a communication professional. While wallowing in my embarrassment, I thought, “If I heard stories of mispronunciation from other people, maybe that would help me put things in perspective”.

So I reached out to my professional network and asked them to share with me their personal stories of mispronunciation. I would like to publicly thank all that submitted stories and gave me permission to post their stories here. I really enjoyed reading them. It made me feel better. Very sincerely, thank-you!

By publishing the stories here I am trying to accomplish a few things.

1. To help others who might have a similar misunderstanding
2. To help people recognize that this likely happens to all of us at one point or another in our lives (especially if we are speaking in a non-native language).
3. To encourage you to TELL other people if you hear an error. Just be sure to tell them privately and gently. They will thank you for it.
4. To help those who submitted a story to not feel alone!

I loved these stories. I hope you enjoy them a much a I did.

If you have a story you’d like to share, post it in the comments!

Here they are, enjoy!

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I’m not sure if multilingual mispronunciation counts but I once mispronounced the Swedish word for “relax” while praying in front of a group of middle schoolers at a Bible camp.

Instead of praying that the Holy Spirit would help us “relax” so he could take control of our live, I asked Him to teach us to “fart”!!

It wasn’t until days later that I realized my mistake–only when hanging out with some friends.

I still wonder if there’s a cult in Sweden that claims the American leader said it farting was a spiritual gift! *grin*

Marc
Marc A. Pitman, CFCC | FundraisingCoach.com
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I discovered my mistake one morning, when my wife and I were out to breakfast one morning with some friends a restaurant. There were quite a few of us, and I thought I’d be the big man at the table and order up juice for everyone. So, very loudly, I said, ‘yes, we’d like to get a CARE-A-FAY’ of orange juice’.

The entire table stopped. You could hear silverware hit plates, and conversations stop mid-sentence. The waitress just looked at me, a little stunned, not sure exactly what I was asking for.

My wife leaned over and said, ‘I think he means CA-RAFE’. At that point, everyone busted up laughing, including the waitress. What made it even worse – I then argued with my wife and friends for the next 5 minutes, confused that THEY were the ones that were wrong, and I was the one that was right.

Oops!

David Toney

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Awhile back I was volunteering at a high school Solo & Ensemble competition as a judges assistant. It was a simple job- making sure the kids were in the right place at the right time and announcing the group and song when it was their time to perform.

Before lunch, the last group to perform was set to go, and I stood up and announced the ensemble, and song, composed by Schubert…which came out “sherbert.”

It wasn’t until I returned to my seat that I realized that everyone was staring at me with quite puzzled expressions. Not only had I mispronounced the composer’s name in front of the band and audience, but I mispronounced the dessert as well.

Needless to say, I will never mispronounce either of those two words again!

Allison Brinkman

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I used to work for a boss in the book manufacturing industry who insisted in pronouncing the word “program” as “pogrom”. Over the 5 years I worked for him I dropped subtle hints by re-pronouncing the word to him but it never seemed to catch on. One day we conducted a tour of our manufacturing facility to a group of older executives & this guy dropped the word “pogrom” into his presentation. Several people in the group were deeply offended & at least two of the members of the group hotly informed my boss of the correct pronunciation of the word “program” & what a “pogrom” was. The group that he was touring through our facility was a group of Poles who had survived a Nazi concentration camp in World War II.

Human Resources Manager, VA, USA

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I happen to live in Missouri, and there are many place names here that are not pronounced the normal way. For example, we have a town called Nevada, which people call Ne-vay-da. We have a town New Madrid – in Spain the accent is on the second syllable of Madrid, while here it is on the first syllable. We have a Cairo here, which is pronounced like “Karo” syrup. We have a town called Noel, but it is pronounced like “nole” (to rhyme with mole). One of the worst mispronunciations is Bonne Femme Creek, named by the French a long time ago. Today, it is called the Bone Fam Creek. There’s also a Moniteau Creek, which people call Monitor Creek. I guess my point is that locally, people may all agree on a mispronunciation.

Sylvia Forbes
Forbes Freelance

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Bismarck, ND commonplace mispronunciation = “nip it in the butt” rather than “nip it in the bud”. The correction has become one of my life’s missions.

Marnie Piehl

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I used to give presentations at conferences about Alverno’s creative faculty initiatives.
Georgine Loacker, English Professor …pulled me aside one day and said (I paraphrase, as it’s been 20 years!) : If you’re going to represent Alverno at these nationwide conferences, you’d better pronounce your words correctly. We don’t want to embarrass the college.

What? Which word? (I had made great efforts to hear the correct pronunciation being deaf in one ear and learning English as a second language–Armenian was our first).

MISCHIEVOUS (Georgine pronounced it: MIS chuh vuhs)
NO WAY, I exclaimed. It’s mis CHEE vee us!
She looked at me as she did when she knew she was right and said: Look it up.

That night, I opened the dictionary. HOW EMBARRASSING!

Amazing, a person comes into our lives, teaches us something and we remember the lesson as well as the teacher. I have been conscientious of it ever since…

Brenda Avadian
www.TheCaregiversVoice.com
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Thought “wheelbarrow” was “wheelbarrel.”

Found out in my 30s at a playgroup meeting—people thought it was my Boston accent since I had just moved to the Philly area. Slightly embarrassing when we all discovered it wasn’t an accent but a completely wrong spelling of the word. 🙂

Sandy

P.S I still usually call it a wheelbarrel.

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In Ireland we pronounce “Film” with two syllables (Fill-um).
And of course there is the perennial cross Atlantic aluminum (UK: Al-u-mini-um US: A-loom-man-im) difference.

In those examples, what sounds incorrect to US ears is the correct pronunciation on this side of the pond.

Will Knott, Ireland

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My own classical mispronunciation story is that when I came to USA atage 14 (I am deaf and I am Israeli), and started saying “Thank you” to people, they didn’t understand me. Once I was taught to pronounce it as “Than qu”, people began to understand me.

Omer Zak

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When I was about 20 (a looooooong time ago), I was a radio disc jockey at a station in Gainesville, Florida. Back then, we didn’t have a separate news person, so the on-air jock would “rip and read” the news straight off the AP wire. I pronounced the word “communique” as COMM-UNIQUE because there was no accent over the e. It was most embarrassing later when everyone in town corrected me. I did go on to have a 30-year career in broadcasting and, in fact, I’m still a TV correspondent and a radio beauty editor.

Jackie Silver, Tampa, Florida
http://agingbackwards.com/

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My (future) husband and I moved to North Carolina in the 90s. We saw a really strange-named fast food restaurant everywhere, Chick-Fil-A. We naturally pronounced that “Chick-FILL-Uh” and thought it was the dumbest name for a restaurant ever. We figured it had some kind of southern significance that we just didn’t get.

After living in NC for about two years (and after having said the name of the restaurant countless times), we were asking for directions one day and the person said “Well, you make a right over there at the Chick-Fill-AY” and it was as if two big light bulbs went off over our heads. We felt so dumb! We don’t know why nobody ever corrected us, but maybe we were just friends with too many fellow Yankees and they didn’t know either!

Amy Oztan
FilmingInBrooklyn.com

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I was working as a radio DJ at an alternative rock station. Morning shift – so I had to cover the news and entertainment reports and weather updates – live, on air.
I had been out of town for a family emergency the day Versace was shot & killed in 1997, so I hadn’t a clue what had happened or how to pronounce his name. I went on air at 5am talking about the headlines, one of which was “Gianni Versace shot and killed” – only, I pronounced it like it looks – ver-say-ce. Boy did my phone board light up – I was reprimanded all across the spectrum about who he was and how to pronounce his name.

Heather Francell (aka, Miss Heather in the Mornings, circa 1997)

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In my thirties, I was mortified when I mentioned to my husband that something looked “chick,” and he cracked up. My whole life, I had been aware that there was a word that was pronounced “sheeek,” but I had no idea it was the same as the word “chic.”

Cheri Thurston

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My husband is originally from Spain and we met in the US. Although his English skills were always a work in progress, he recently discovered a misunderstanding.

The word which caused so much confusion was BIZARRE…People would say: ¨Oh, how bizarre!¨ my husband, with his Spanish background, thought they were referring to an open market…a BAZAR. All the while, he thought people were talking about a market, which seemed strange since in America, there are so many shopping malls. But, the context was never quite right. We are now living in Spain and ironically, he says ¨Spain is a bizarre place to live!¨

Ashleigh Russell

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Given my reputation as the Gammar Guru, it is especially embarrassing but cathartic to come clean here: I mispronounced the word “awry” until about 10 years ago. The problem was that I knew the correct pronunciation and meaning verbally but didn’t associate it with reading the word in books. So I thought there were two words: the word as it is correctly pronounced as well as a different word pronounced like OAR-ree, both with the same meaning.

I feel much better now.

Jane Straus
www.Grammarbook.com

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I’ve been a reader all my life, and my vocabulary has always been through the roof. However, I grew up in a very blue-collar, low middle class household, and there were a whole of slew of words that were
never used.

Hence, I knew what a lot of words meant and even how to use them correctly in a sentence, but I’d never heard them.

Fast forward many years later, and I’ve just graduated college. I use the word “misled” in a conversation with my fiancé. Of course,I pronounced it as MY-zuhled, you know, the verb “misle” with the past tense -ed. Oh, did my fiancé laugh. He asked me, “What does misle mean?” “Well, it means, it means… to mislead.”

Dawn M. Goldberg
Chief Writing Officer
Write Well University

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I was horrified to discover only last year (at age 39) that I was saying and spelling “conspicious” (like suspicious) instead of conspicuous. Ack!

Phil Marsosudiro

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As a true blood Texasn, I was disheartened to find that “fixin” was not a true word. Everyone seems to be “fixin to do it”
Cher Lon Malik

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For years I pronounced the Aaron Copeland ballet ro DAY o. I don’t go to the ballet much (one) but the one I know I’m going to be as correct as I can.

A year ago one of the DJ’s on beethoven.com burst my bubble when he said that prononciation is an artifice and Copeland just wanted it pronounced like the event you attend in Houston, RO de O.

A good reminder to not get too snooty.

Tim Mahon

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When I was a kid, around 12 years old the social studies teacher had students read passages out of the book. Being well read for a youngster, I spoke quite clearly, with accurate pronunciation, that is, until one day I had to say Yosemite. To the amusement of my class mates, I mis-pronounced it Yo-ssss-might. Boy, did I blush.

Jesse Kanclerz

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I still have this problem (and am no longer a spring chick!) – I have problems with puma and pumice.

Even now, I cannot tell you the correct way to pronounce it. Is it poo ma and poom iss – or is it pum a (as in bum) and pum iss?

And I am the one that loves words and grammer so much!

Jan “JD” Toomer

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I just recently discovered that “meritage” (wine term) is pronounced like “heritage,” not “meri-tahj.” It’s actually an invented word that combines “merit” and “heritage.” And here I thought it was French! Doh!
Lisa Braithwaite

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Lisa, as you read this, keep in mind that I am a southern African-American gentleman with a true southern accent and African American dialect.

I’m a public relations practitioner and … I was asked to do sit-down interviews with our local NBC-, ABC-, and CBS-affiliates.

Throughout an interview, I made it a point to stress that the organization would often conduct background checks on all personnel. Well, in my attempt to make the reporter understand that our vigilance was routine or consistent, I drew attention to how I misprounounced the word “often.”

After we finished the interview, the reporter …said in a very concerned way, “You know…that word is AH-FEN – not AWF-TEN.” Then he proceeded to give me a visual with his hands to show me HOW the sound was produced!

I was 23 years old at the time and was taken aback. Southerners don’t typically correct one another — it’s RUDE!

Eddie Brown, Jr
Director of Public Relations

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Note:This was my response to Eddie…

Eddie,

Actually he may have been wrong…

Often is on the list of disputed pronunciations.

Here’s the breakdown…

often (help·info) – (1)(a) /ˈɔːfən/ (b) /ˈɑːfən/ (c) /ˈɒfən/, (2)(a) /ˈɔːftən/ (b) /ˈɑːftən/ (c) /ˈɒf-/. Some dictionaries list (2) as the preferred British pronunciation, although according to LPD a poll among British speakers revealed 73% preferred (1) and only 27% (2). Most post-1990 American dictionaries list both pronunciations, but some pre-1990 dictionaries list only (1).

(this was from the disputed pronunciations page found here)

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If you submitted one of these stories and you would like to include your website, just shoot me an email and I’ll gladly update this page.

If you didn’t submit a story, but you have a story of how you discovered a mispronunciation, please I strongly encourage you to share your story in the comments. It will help us all feel better!

There is 1 comment .

Jeanine Scaccio —

I’m still trying to figure out how to pronounce the name of a town in Massachusetts – Athol. Furthermore, I wonder if the people who live there are called Atholians or Atholittes – or if they are simply known as Athols.

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