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Mispronounced words that make me crazy

#82
As far as the term "ask", it's undergone methathesis from /aks/ to /ask/ before. The Old English word for "ask" was either ascian or acsian depending on where you were, and of course then, there was not the modern obsession with spelling being ultimate truth as it is now. Words like nuclear and asterisk have also metathesized. It's a pretty common linguistic phenomenon.

C'thulhu said:
I always wondered why in English Porsche is pronounced this way. :)
While in German it is just (foneticly) Porsch, one syllable.
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In German, Porsche is pronounced /pOr.S@/ (excuse the SAMPA). Final <e>s are always pronounced in German.
 
#91
I've heard some germans pronouncing "Engine" with the middle "i" as you say it in the word "site" instead of a short vowel like in "sit".

Another one that irritates me is when people say "shedule", not "skedule". However, both pronunciations are IIRC accepted.

A thing that Finns often do is to say words like "thin", "think", "the" and "thought" with a simple, thin "t" sound in the beginning. I tink it sounds stupid but the real sound is never used in the Finnish language so it's understandable.

I'm aware of the Aluminum vs Aluminium, so when I speak to Englishmen about it, I say Aluminium, and to Canadians/Americans I say Aluminum. I'm an engineer and need to use this word a lot actually...

Oh, then there is the word "sword", that is pronounced like "sord" and not "s-were-d". That's a common mistake among non-english speaking people. I made that mistake myself until a couple of years ago...
 
#96
manicbassman said:
1) using loose instead of lose...
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This one drives me to distraction. I never realized this one was hard for other people to remember until I started reading online message boards. I see "loose" used to mean "lose" so often that now I have to do a double-take to make sure I'm getting the right meaning.

And this is a little off-topic, but I *really* hate it when people don't put a space after a comma or period. Does this come from doing a lot of "texting" on mobile phones and trying to stay under the 160 character limit? In any case, it drives me crazy!
 
#99
I've got one Deacon_Blues can appreciate.

Most Americans I know pronounce the word "sauna" as "sana" (forgetting the U glide in there). I tell them that "sana" is actually a word in Finnish (meaning, ironically enough, "word"), but not the one people think they are saying when they attempt to pronounce "sauna."

In the local accent in western Louisiana, we get lots of "aks" instead of ask. Add to that, we get things like "dest" instead of desk. There are several others like this which sound strange to my ears, but I can't think of examples now.

One that I get is that the place where I work (a library) is renamed as a "lie-berry". Borrow becomes "borry". Oh, and the "pacific" instead of specific one... hear that a LOT! Irritating, too.

My dad last year got diagnosed with prostate cancer, but ever single time he talked about it it was "prostrate". That's a simple word mix-up, of course, but still... (And no, I didn't correct him. He wouldn't really appreciate it.)
 

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