March 31, 2005
Pronuncification
For my entire reading life until this very day, I thought that sylph was actually "slyph." I used to encounter it in fantasy novels, and I apparently got it mixed up in my head. I wonder how many times I've said it wrong and had someone think that I'm a moron. I'm glad I actually looked it up today and discovered my mistake before someone else pointed it out to me.
A few months back, I was reading a news article to someone, and I pronounced the word impugn incorrectly, as "im-punge" instead of "im-pyoon." That person pointed it out, and I felt like a big moron.
So here's the part where I solicit my dear readers to embarrass themselves by sharing amusing anecdotes of their own mispronunciations. I promise not to laugh at you, because my glass house is surrounded by plenty of loose stones.
Posted by mike, March 31, 2005 3:44 PMI could share my stories of the times you corrected MY pronunciation & made ME feel like a big moron...
Posted by: Jennifer at April 4, 2005 1:47 PMI've noticed in both words you have transposed two letters in the pronunciation. Maybe you're dyselctic.
Posted by: Shawn at April 4, 2005 4:29 PMOh, and I pronounced the word "eschew" wrong for quite sometime. Luckily, I heard someone use it in a sentence before I had to be "corrected." Interestingly enough I was talking to Ebru not too long ago and told her that one of my least attractive qualities (besides my face, heehee) is always having to be right. I vowed to stop correcting people. Seriously, why should I care? It's hard going, particularly when someone has movie info wrong. It happened a couple of weeks ago at school and my head nearly exploded. I was a good boy, though. :)
Posted by: Shawn at April 4, 2005 4:35 PMI always thought "dour" was pronounced like "dower," not "dewar" (as in Dewar's--or perhaps it's "sour," not "sewer"). Until recently, when I learned it is pronounced dewar. Except that I don't know who actually pronounces it like that. Almost everyone I know always thought it was dower. Does that make it right?
Posted by: rebecca at April 4, 2005 8:28 PMI could have said "doer."
Posted by: rebecca at April 4, 2005 8:29 PMAlso, I always thought "erstwhile" meant something that was still going on, not something that was of the past. As in "his erstwhile wife." I thought that meant "his ever-present wife" not "his wife at the time but no longer."
That's not about pronunciation, though.
Posted by: rebecca at April 4, 2005 8:31 PMI always thought Dewar's was "de-wars," not "doo-ers". And I too thought dour was "dower." And I didn't know how to pronounce "eschew" for a long time, too. I thought it was something like "es-kew" or "es-chew".
Posted by: mike at April 4, 2005 8:31 PMYou can tell all my many mispronuciation stories for me, being that you're the one that pointed them all out for me. ;-)
Posted by: shane at April 5, 2005 8:19 AMYou can also point out my misspelling of "pronunciation."
Posted by: shane at April 5, 2005 8:21 AMI once made a comment about oblesse noblige in an American history course......hopefully no one heard the mistake!
Posted by: anonymous at April 5, 2005 8:25 AMDour isn't pronounced "dower"? Oops.
For awhile I thought brusque was pronounced "broosk," and that banal rhymed with "anal." Oops again.
Posted by: Amy at April 5, 2005 11:45 AMI just stumbled across a neat Simpsons reference. In "Treehouse of Horror XIV," Death shows up at the door for Bart. Marge says, "Run like the wind (pronouncing it like 'kind')!" Then when everybody looks at her, she says, "I only ever saw it written!"
Posted by: mike at April 5, 2005 2:37 PMFor the longest time, until my mid-20's actually, I thought that Tucson was "Tuckson," and that the city pronounced "Toosahn" was a completely different city.
Posted by: Brian at April 6, 2005 12:20 PMOh, and indictment--I think I learned, like, six months ago that it's pronounced "in-dite-ment."
Posted by: Amy at April 6, 2005 4:46 PM