Words I Cannot Say Properly

As a person who majored in the biological sciences many years, I would say there is a wide range of normal variation in any population.

If your students can understand you and are not distracted by your linguistic variation, is it really a problem?

I say lenkth. (shrug)

I say pik-tchur or pik-chur, fig-yur, and lenkth.

But being from NY, I mispronounce caw-fee and other words with similar vowels.

Where are you from and where do you teach? My husband says sill instead of seal (seel) … I say lenth! We’re from the Midwest and now live out east. I’ve heard some doozies here in Virginia. Such as “aboot” instead of about and “oovah” instead of over. No, I’m not in Canada! I love accents.

You do say cath-o-lick rather than cath-lick, which is actually correct, but unique.

As a kid I had a huge vocabulary, much of which I got from reading. Since I learned these words by reading, I came up with my own pronunciations:

pronunciations: “pronounce-eeashuns”
calligraphy: “kah-lee-graph-ee”
photography: “photo-graph-ee”
nudist: “noo-die-st”
spanish: “spain-ish”

I’d keep going but it’s just embarassing…I still pronounce them this way all the time despite my knowing the real pronounce-eeashun.

🙁

I’ve heard some doozies here in Virginia. Such as “aboot” instead of about and “oovah” instead of over.

Amanda – you must be in Richmond or Tidewater. That’s a distinctive and very old, regional accent there. My mother’s family (from Richmond) all spoke that way. My uncle, who hasn’t lived in Richmond since his childhood, still talks like that.

At least you don’t have foreign accent. One of the reasons why I’m currently struggling with college Trig is that my current teacher and my last teacher had accents. It’s hard enough as it is for me to follow a line of thought that includes math vocabulary. Add a foreign accent and I’m lost. My current teacher told me I need to come to him more if I’m struggling. I finally took his advice and almost ended up in tears because I was so frustrated with trying to understand him. I decided to find tutoring elsewhere.

Although some of your students may just be poking fun or being anal, some may stop paying attention to your lecture if they have to stop and think about a word you used. From your speeches I’ve seen on youtube, though, it doesn’t seem like it would be that much of an issue.

Some of my pet peeves include people who say:

supposably (instead of supposedly)

whole ‘nuther

irregardless – it’s not a word. It’s a bastardization of regardless and irrespective. This one drives me bonkers. It’s usually said by fairly well educated people who are trying to let other people know they are educated. The irony is delicious.

aks, instead of ask

expecially, instead of especially.

But my favorite of all time was from my college physics professor (he was a Chinese national) who pronounced “omega,” like
oh-mi-gah’.
The first time he said it, I was like, “oh my god, what? What’s wrong?”

college. good times.

edited to add college prof story.

I can totally relate to that. My maternal language (German) is largely phonetic, i.e. for most words, the pronunciation follows directly from the spelling. Thus, when I see an unknown foreign word, I automatically try to determine its pronunciation by drawing analogies to known words with similar spelling. In English, where some combinations of letters can be pronounced in several different ways and there is apparently no rule for it; this has led me to wrong conclusions several times. There are likely still words I pronounce wrong without knowing.

My partner and his sister work at the local public radio station. In fact, she’s an anchor. I love listening to her and calling her on her mispronunciations. The interesting thing is that she’s knows she mispronouncing the word even as it leaves her mouth.

Myself, I’ve been told I don’t have any identifiable accent even tho I grew up in burbs of Chicago and my entire family has that accent.

Hemant, just so long as you don’t say NOO-kyoo-lur…

If you do, I’ll lose all respect for you.

But how do you pronounce “height”? I’ve heard so many people put a “th” at the end like it’s part of the dimensional “th” series: width depth heightth. It makes me cringe.

I used to make fun of people who pronounced Illinois like it begins with an E but I find that as I get older, I get lazier, and now I say it that way, too. I need a diction refresher course.

I can’t say the combination “tr”. Truck for me becomes “chruck”, trim becomes “chrim”, trace becomes “chrase”, etc.

I grew up in Evanston and Wilmette, and I say length with the velar n, like in -ing endings.

Sociolinguistics is fun.

It was pointed out to me in high school, though, that I say “chews-day” instead of “twos-day”

English person here, “chews-day” is how we’d say Tuesday!

My theory is that you can often identify readers by gross mispronounciations combined with a large vocabulary.

This is my problem, there are several words I mispronounce because I’ve only ever read them, and sometimes I find it difficult to remember the correct pronunciation.

It was pointed out to me recently that I mispronounce flauccinauccinihilipilification.

I say flox`-ee-nox`-ee-nee`-hee-lee-pih`-lih-fih-cay-shun apparently it’s flox`-ee-nox`-ee-nee-hee`-lee-pih`-lih-fih-cay-shun. I put the third emphasis in the wrong place.

Nobody’s perfect.

I’m fine with dialectical variation. But words clearly abused drive me nuts. The three that make me want to beat someone about the head with an Oxford’s unabridged are:

li-berry
nuk-u-lar
warsh

As in; “I’m going to the liberry to study nukular science and Warshington DC history.”

It’s as if people never actually bothered to look at the poor little letters lined up to form the word.

What really bugs me is folks that put an “R” where it has no right being.

McCain: Warshington!
Me: GAAAAAAH!

See, to me the notion that certain common pronunciations – and even whole dialects – are just categorically wrong is exactly the sort of myth that those of us who pride ourselves on our reason ought to approach skeptically. There’s a distinction to be made between words you pronounce differently from some other group of speakers because you’ve only ever read them without hearing anyone else say them, and words that you pronounce differently because you’ve heard the group of speakers you grew up with saying them that way all the time. I’m pretty sure the “mispronunciations” you mention are in the latter category.

If you were teaching, say, statistics, instead of geometry, I would suggest that you assign your students to go home and ask their parents and friends how they pronounce those words. Record the responses, along with the responder’s ages, and where they grew up. Have them come back to class and compile the data. I guarantee that you would find a lot of variation, and the variation would likely divide fairly neatly along the lines of age and geography. And I bet most of the responders would think their own version was the right one. It would be a nice way to get them and yourself started on thinking critically about the largely unquestioned faith that most people seem to have that there is only one right way to speak and write.

As long as you don’t say “hi-th” (height).

I say lenk-th or leng-th.

Chewsday is Brittish sounding to me.

I’ve had teachers that say “supposebly” (instead of supposedly) and “irregardless” (instead of regardless). Those two drove me up a wall.

I kept reading “assuage” and pronouncing it “uh-sewage”… it’s supposed to be pronounced “uh-swage” or “uh-swaj” (with a soft “j”).

Yeah, it has nothing to do with sewage, obviously, but when my dad heard me say it the way I’d sounded it out from text, he had a good laugh.

As a Linguistics major, all I can say is “wow”! You guys sure are judgmental. As you may know, people talking differently is an index of geographic or social variation. There has always been this variation, and there is nothing wrong with it.

Some speech – i.e., standard, is prestigious. That’s it. And as a school-teacher, your students will demand that you speak the most prestigious register. That just makes sense, as a consequence of the fact that you are an authority figure.

My husband and I disagree on Umbrella, Insurance and Thanksgiving. He puts the stress on the 2nd syllables; I put it on the first.

aaahh…I thought my father was the only one who did that!

Stop doing it Cindy. Immediately! 🙂

UM-brella??

rural and February

I gave up trying to pronounce them properly in regular conversation, and now embrace my inner Iowan.

Thats OK. I frequently pronounce “christianity” as “bronze-age superstition”. 🙂

Don’t feel badly about mispronouncing.

Aunt. You say: “ahnt” or “awnt.” I say “ant.”

As an Englishman from the South of my fair nation, currently living in the North (Manchester) I try to maintain a fair semblance of the queens english. According to my family though i am picking up northern ways, such as saying “Aye” instead of yes every now and then. The diversity of dialects in the north of england is fascinating with cities only an hour apart having very different sounding accents. Scousers sound nothing like Mancs, who sound nothing like folk from Leeds or Bradford (the pakistani/yorkshire hybrid accent is particularly unusual). And no one understands a damn word the Geordies say.

I’m from rural eastern kentucky, and thus have a dialect that is truely my own. I’m guilty of “warsh” and “fixin'”, and even pronounce the days of the week without the “a” (i.e. Sunday becomes “SUN-dee”, Monday is “MUN-dee”, etc.). And I do put emphasis on the first part of a word – like UMbrella. Oh, say hello to the triphthong – flowers is pronounced “flah-irz”. I even live in a “holler”. My husband, who is from Ohio, likes to rag on my pronunciations of words, everything from “boot” to “exponential”.

My dad can’t say “wrench.” He says “ranch”, except for that time we all tried to get him to say it correctly, so he started saying “runch.”

It is Q-pon. 😛 And length is leng-th (but one syllable).

Over here in the western US, we have a lot of pronunciations that migrated in from the south. Really aggravating ones:

Treasure becomes TRAY-zhur and pleasure becomes PLAY-zhur. Since these words appear a lot in the Bible, I hear them pronounced that way a *lot*.

“This year” gets blurred into “thishyeer”.

Across becomes acrossed (pronounced uh-KROST).

My dad doesn’t pronounce “wash” as “warsh” – he just says “wush”, rhyming with “whoosh”.

They also do SUN-dee, MUN-dee, etc. Drives me bonkers.

And some non-regional ones:

Question = KWESH-chun instead of KWES-chun

Mayonnaise = MAY-nays instead of MAY-o-nays

Exactly = Exackly

And anyone who cannot pronounce a T as a T drives me up the wall. It’s “tree”, not “chree”. It’s “try”, not “chry”. Etc.

There seems to be this idea that somewhere there’s a big stone tablet with a list of how to pronounce words in English; deviating from the pronunciations on this tablet is wrong.

Actually, it’s not a stone tablet, it’s a dictionary.

There is a difference between regional accents and poor diction. It is not fair, but you are judged much more quickly by how you speak than by what you say. It takes at least a brief conversation to leave the impression that you are intelligent and sophisticated. It takes only one sentence to give the impression that you are a hick. Poor enunciation or mispronunciations that are associated with ignorant, backward stereotypes can seriously harm your credibility, and you have to work harder to compensate for that. It is like a handicap. George Bernard Shaw’s Professor Henry Higgens had a point: “It’s ‘aoww’ and ‘gaww’ that keep her in her place, not her wretched clothes and dirty face.”

I had a colleague who was a bright and knowledgeable man with a PhD in Psychology. He pronounced his words in the manner of the inner city ghettos, from which he had heroically emancipated himself. He said things like “ax” for “ask,” and “def” for “death,” and in general he mumbled. It was an impediment, a constant distraction that immediately produced a subtle negative reaction in people whom he was just meeting. He then had to get past that setback that he otherwise would not have faced.

It should not be enough to just be understood. Your speech has potential power. More than just apes grunting at each other to get a point across, speech, conversation and communication is an art. In any art there is an aspect called craftsmanship. Poor craftsmanship can cancel out the beauty and impact that the art could otherwise have. You don’t have to put on airs and have contrived speech affectations as if you’re an Oxford upper cruster. Just a little practice can remove a handicap to the power of your speech.

Just go to http://www.answers.com/ They give you the option of hearing the word pronounced.

There’s something to be said for Richard Wade’s comment. I said:

But that’s all there is: variation and other people who you can speak more or less like

Actually there is something else: there are the assumptions people make about you based on how you speak. The reason I didn’t mention this is that it’s implied by the “people who you can speak more or less like”. If you talk like someone from Boston, people will assume you’re from Boston. And it is true that people associate certain pronunciations (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) with individuals who have less education. The reason is that educational establishments promote certain pronunciation variants over others, so people who don’t use these variants are assumed to be less educated.

So when you pays your money, you makes a choice with consequences about what people associate you with. But that’s not the same as mispronunciations. There’s the rub.

Mumbling and diction are rather different matters, however, and really fall into a quite different category.

Richard Wade is right that the way we use words influences what they achieve, but this is not a matter of there being a right and a wrong prounciation. It’s a matter of pronouncing things in the most effective way for the context, and the social forces influencing this are subtle.