Words you've read and known but not hard

[nellgirl]

Oct 11, 2024 16:14:54 GMT -5 lust2hart said:

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. 

Me too!!

[heygrey]

I know I had some of these, but can’t remember off the top of my head.

DS has always been a strong reader, sometimes I still come across words that he mispronounces. Recently he had to spell “phenomenon” because his pronunciation was so far off I couldn’t figure it out. Earlier this week it was roe-tare-EE. It took a few tries before I realized he meant rotary.

[konapoppy]

Oct 11, 2024 16:50:35 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Ennui

In my head, this was always “eh noo ee”. But it is really “on wee”.

[sequins]

Cries in ESL

[konapoppy]

Apropos I finally have right. But I don’t like saying it.

Homogenous. I feel like it legit has two pronunciations.

I am terrible - in books, if I don’t know the name, I literally never absorb it or try to pronounce it. It is just random letters to me 🤣

[lust2hart]

Oct 11, 2024 21:16:47 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

Oct 11, 2024 16:50:35 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Ennui

In my head, this was always “eh noo ee”. But it is really “on wee”.

Ha, in MY head it was eh-noo-eye.

[sonrisa]

I love this quote: "Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means that they learned it by reading."

My kids are old enough this is true. Every time they get something wrong, I smile internally and think "there's my little reader."

[mcppalmbeach]

I am a nerd so if I am not sure I look up, but obviously sometimes I just assume I’m reading it right. La Jolla was one that threw me for a while. I know how to pronounce the last name Nguyen. I have a casual friend who has that last name and I see her all the time on Facebook. I was mentioning to someone I met that we have her as a friend in common and I blocked her last name. I kept seeing the spelling pop into my head from Facebook and omg I just couldn’t come up with how to say it. It was horribly embarrassing. I had another one recently that was a doozy and I was really glad I’d never let it slip, but I can’t remember what it was!

[mcppalmbeach]

Oct 11, 2024 18:49:47 GMT -5 jinkies said:

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.

I’ve heard it both “pie-thag-or-ian” or “pith-ag-or-Ian.”

[basilosaurus]

I've come across a few in the last couple years, and I'm in my 40s.

Cretin is not crete-in apparently.

Some of these may be regional differences. Like, someone mentioned plait above. I've always known that as plat, but I also only ever heard that word in a former British colony.

And Brits will say fillet and pronounce the t. As Americans we tend toward the french way. Same goes for the dutch sch. Is it sk? or sh? Probably depends on where you are and there's no one right answer. Schism and chasm come to mind, and I never know which to say.

[basilosaurus]

Oct 11, 2024 21:18:04 GMT -5 sequins said:

Cries in ESL

Teaching ESL is a wild ride. They don't have the skills to even understand any explanation why certain words follow different rules than others (usually having to do with origin language). Why some letters are pronounced and some are silent.

[jinkies]

Oh, I just thought of one for my kid. He is in civil air patrol which uses military ranks.

He did not connect the written word "Colonel" with the spoken word until sometime this year. He's been in since 2021.

To be fair, it is a stupid spelling.

[Poppy]

Literally yesterday I learned that detritus was de-try-tus instead of de-trih-tus.

I agree that I love my reader 9yo's pronunciations.

[acuore]

As a kid, the name Penelope (which I thought was “Penny-lope”). 

As an adolescent, paradigm. Boy, did I take some ribbing when I said “para-didg-em.” 

As an adult, I just recently learned that “contemplative” is pronounced with the emphasiso on the “tem”: Con TEM plah tive, not con tem PLAY tive. 

I still think “Pennylope” would be a great name for a cat, though. 

[cville]

Oct 11, 2024 21:18:04 GMT -5 sequins said:

Cries in ESL

English really is the worst.

Bear = "air"
Near = "eeer"

Why?!?!

[macmars45]

So many because I was an avid reader as a kid. The one I'll never forget is Corps as in Marine Corps when I was in 9th grade. I said it like dead body corpse. Nothing like being laughed at by a room full of fellow 9th graders to find out your mispronunciation.

[joy]

La Jolla.

I am east coast/northeast through and through. Sorry, I never heard it spoken and tried.

::whispers:: at 30.

[minzy]

@ My favorite when my younger daughter started to read was “someone.” She would say “sum-ay-won-ay.” We still use that around the house sometimes.

[ProfessorArtNerd]

Oct 11, 2024 17:48:58 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

Facade

When I taught architecture students, that one was hard for them to spell. Fascade was the most often seen

[basilosaurus]

I think many have experienced the disconnect with epitome. I knew it in writing and in speaking but it took awhile to realize they were the same.

In AP English, a girl read it aloud as epi tome (don't remember why we were reading aloud). I don't think she was mocked, and the teacher gently corrected her. I wonder if she's still embarrassed about that.

[brooklyn]

I just learned how to pronounce Diwali this year. Things we never learned in catholic school!

[konapoppy]

Oct 12, 2024 8:21:29 GMT -5 acuore said:

As a kid, the name Penelope (which I thought was “Penny-lope”). 

As an adolescent, paradigm. Boy, did I take some ribbing when I said “para-didg-em.” 

As an adult, I just recently learned that “contemplative” is pronounced with the emphasiso on the “tem”: Con TEM plah tive, not con tem PLAY tive. 

I still think “Pennylope” would be a great name for a cat, though. 

Contemplative seems so wrong. Is that really how people pronounce it??

[wildrice]

I always read segue as seeg, even though I know it's seg-way. Somehow I use the right pronunciation in conversation just fine but my reading brain just cannot.

I will never forget the time I said fruition as fruit-ition to a really smart friend. I realized that I had been adding letters to that word all along and was so embarrassed.

[Poppy]

Oct 12, 2024 10:19:51 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

Oct 12, 2024 8:21:29 GMT -5 acuore said:

As a kid, the name Penelope (which I thought was “Penny-lope”). 

As an adolescent, paradigm. Boy, did I take some ribbing when I said “para-didg-em.” 

As an adult, I just recently learned that “contemplative” is pronounced with the emphasiso on the “tem”: Con TEM plah tive, not con tem PLAY tive. 

I still think “Pennylope” would be a great name for a cat, though. 

Contemplative seems so wrong. Is that really how people pronounce it??

Yes. It is hard.

Similarly, our district just switched math curriculum to Illustrative Math. It's pronounced ill-LUST-trah-tive, not ill-us-TRAY-tive and it is really hard for me!

[fernweh]

Definitely facade.

[Jalapeñomel]

Egregious

[Jalapeñomel]

Oct 12, 2024 0:57:22 GMT -5 sonrisa said:

I love this quote: "Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means that they learned it by reading."

My kids are old enough this is true. Every time they get something wrong, I smile internally and think "there's my little reader."

Trump must live by this quote 🤣🤣

[RoxMonster]

I always pronounced “biopic” as bye-OP-ick but within the last few years, have heard “BIO-pick” so now I am second guessing that one lol.

[loira]

I think it took me a long time to realize "belies" is not pronounced the same as the country Belize.

I grew up speaking English and French and there are a lot of French words in English that I won't pronounce the way English speakers say them. I'm sure it makes me sound pretentious.

[fivechickens]

May not be what OP meant but I cannot say documentary smoothly. I say every syllable and comes out doc-u-men-terr(y)-ee. It’s embarrassing but my head can not process how to say it any other way. I usually end up saying doc ‘hey did you see that Scott Peterson doc?’