Words you've read and known but not hard

[basilosaurus]

This is to be light hearted and not shaming anyone.

I think we all have read words, understood by context, never heard, and were so far off in pronunciation.

[mccallister84]

I think I’ve shared this here before but for the longest time I thought mature was pronounced as nature with a n. I had heard it spoken aloud but just thought they were two different words with the same meaning.

[lolalolalola]

The name Hermione. Not a clue.

[sandandsea]

Oct 11, 2024 15:29:03 GMT -5 lolalolalola said:

The name Hermione. Not a clue.

I was going to write this exact thing. I didn’t know until I saw the first movie and I was a freshman in college when I read the first book.

[cville]

The chignon

Obviously this French hairstyle is a chig-non.

[minzy]

Açaí

[estrellita]

Wyvern. For the longest time, I thought it was wyrven (like wer-vinn). I finally noticed the spelling and had to look it up to find out I had been wrong for so long 😅

I'm sure there are others but that's the first one I thought of!

[lust2hart]

Oct 11, 2024 15:29:03 GMT -5 lolalolalola said:

The name Hermione. Not a clue.

Oh yes. I definitely pronounced this as "her me own" in my head. 

[livinitup]

Oct 11, 2024 15:29:03 GMT -5 lolalolalola said:

The name Hermione. Not a clue.

The summer before senior year in high school, I read Catcher in the Rye for our summer reading. We discussed it & got tested when we were back in English class. So, everyone was talking about Phoebe (Fee-bee) and I was all, ‘who’s that?’ I read it as Pheobe (Pho-b). When Harry Potter was all the rage my BFF called me on the phone and left a single voicemail message “It’s pronounced Her-my-on-ee.”

[heyyounotyouyou]

Rural. My mouth just doesn’t want to say that word in anyway that isn’t awkward.

[tacokick]

My husband (who grew up in NYC) thought the Flatiron Building was pronounced “Flah-churn” with sort of a French flair and not Flat-Iron.

I didn’t know how peony was pronounced until I was teaching. I think I thought it had more of an AH sound?

[hazelden]

I remember reading Babysitters Club books that used voila quite a bit, and I had no idea how to pronounce that. There was another book we read in 6th grade where a colonel was a main character, I was so confused when we started reading parts of that aloud.

[RockNVoll]

Ennui

[aprilsails]

When I was a kid, I famously ran into the kitchen to tell my Mom that a big parade of cars and a Hear - se had driven by. I had read it before but didn't know how to pronounce it. I kept repeating it too because my Mom didn't understand what I was saying.

[gretchenindisguise]

Just today watching GBBO I learned that "plait" is pronounced "plat" and not "plate." At least by the British.

[Wallflower]

Let's just say you can embarrass yourself if you mix never hearing "bordello" with your Spanish class, where "e" means the "a" sound and "ll" means a "y" sound. "bore-day-yo" got me some very weird looks.

[IndiaInk]

I had a lot of these when I was younger, because I was homeschooled and an avid reader so a lot of vocabulary was acquired without ever hearing it pronounced aloud.
For instance, it wasn't until my Trig class freshman year of college that I learned the Pythagorean Theorem wasn't pronounced "PIE-tha-gorean".

"Voila" was another, as was "hyperbole", which I pronounced in my head as hyper-bowl. And I truly had NO idea where to even start with "segue".

[mcsangel2]

Facade

[noodleoo]

Subtle. That one still trips me up sometimes.

[jinkies]

Don't mind me, I'm just over here pronouncing Pythagorean over and over trying to figure out if I'm doing it wrong.

I was a big reader as a kid so I had a lot of these.

But the more recent one is meme, which I pronounced "maim" in my head for so long that I still can't always remember which way is the right way.

[underwaterrhymes]

Not a word, but I had NO IDEA that Jos. A Bank was pronounced Joseph A Bank for a very long time.

[underwaterrhymes]

I also didn’t know how to pronounce wizened until like last year. 🤪

[momin2013]

Awry, as in the plan went awry.

[expectantsteelerfan]

I just experienced this last week when I was reading out loud to ds. I said a word, and he was like, wait what? and looked at it and was like, it's pronounced x. And I realized I had somehow never heard that word spoken out loud before. But for the life of me I can't remember what it is...I even looked back a few chapters and can't find it.

[sadlebred]

Oct 11, 2024 17:26:08 GMT -5 gretchenindisguise said:

Just today watching GBBO I learned that "plait" is pronounced "plat" and not "plate." At least by the British.

The only way I can remember it is that a horse's mane has "plats."

tophorsebackriding.com/blog/how-to-plait-a-horses-tail-and-mane/

[scout8]

It would be helpful if people would put the pronunciation with their words. I still don't know how some of them are pronounced.

[gummybear]

In high school we were reading The Importance of Being Earnest out loud and I forget who I was playing but I was being very dramatic and I was calling out to Miss Prism “My Letitia!!” and I pronounced it Le-TEET-Tia and everyone laughed until they cried, including the teacher 😂

[felicity]

For a while it was charcuterie. I know how to say it now but only because I looked up the pronunciation eventually, and I had to keep looking it up because it wouldn’t stick. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say it IRL.

The name Saoirse got me for a while too, and I actually know someone who named their daughter that, but it was years before I put it together that what she was calling her daughter was this name spelled like that. I’ve still never said it out loud because I think I’ll get it wrong.

[nospaekae]

Oct 11, 2024 20:19:09 GMT -5 felicity said:

For a while it was charcuterie. I know how to say it now but only because I looked up the pronunciation eventually, and I had to keep looking it up because it wouldn’t stick. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say it IRL

I was out to eat once and the waitress kept pronouncing it char-coo-torie and I could not figure out what she was talking about. It was the app special for the night and I thought it was some kind of Japanese dish. Half-way through the meal it hit me what she was trying to say.

[nospaekae]

I once had a guy decline a second date because I mispronounced Macon, the city in GA. It makes sense that it rhymes with bacon, but for some reason I thought it was macoun like the apple. I grew up in VT apple country so what do I know.

His loss, I'm awesome.