Words you've read and known but not hard

[konapoppy]

The typo in this subject line also makes me giggle a bit. I am also a queen of typos 🤣

[Nonny]

This feels embarrassing, because I was probably too young to be reading whatever book I saw this word in, but orgy.
I thought it was org-ee (like org from organization).

@@
I remember many years ago my nephew was showing me a book called "Phone Home, Persephone" and of course he thought Persephone was pronounced purse-ah-phone, and was very skeptical when I said it was "Per-sef-o-nee." I mean, I can't blame him for that one, because if I'd never encountered the name before, I'd also think they'd rhyme based on the title.

[cinnamoncox0]

Oct 12, 2024 8:41:24 GMT -5 cville said:

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

Cries in ESL

English really is the worst.

Bear = "air"
Near = "eeer"

Why?!?!

Hm, bear and near are rhyming to be. I pronounce them the same way. Maybe due to Boston accent no r sound?

[bittybomb]

Ticonderoga.

When we went there for the first time 16 years ago, I called it tick-en-der- ahga.

My husband still shamelessly makes fun of me for it, and my kids call it that now, too. lol.

[mrsukyankee]

Imagine moving to the UK from the US and being mocked for how you pronounce things all the time because so much is pronounced differently. It amazes people that I have an American accent but now pronounce certain words in the British style, so I sound so weird at times. And sometimes I forget which is which and then my brain just gives up and I can't do either.

[notreal]

misled

It's not Myz-eld like I heard it in my head

[sonrisa]

Oct 12, 2024 11:06:34 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

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 🤣🤣

this made me literally laugh out loud.

Yes - Trump. Our little reader. Exploring all those new books and becoming literate.

[lust2hart]

Oct 12, 2024 6:27:03 GMT -5 jinkies said:

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.

Or is it a stupid pronunciation? Hmmmm.

[lust2hart]

Oct 12, 2024 9:55:48 GMT -5 minzy said:

@ 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.

I love this.

[sandandsea]

Oct 11, 2024 22:11:12 GMT -5 lust2hart said:

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

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

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

I figured this one out from Inside Out 2.

[lolalolalola]

Quay

Colonel

[jinkies]

Oct 12, 2024 13:32:18 GMT -5 lolalolalola said:

Quay

Colonel

I'm still not 100% sure of Quay.

I also know that Houston St in NYC is not pronounced like the city in Texas, but I can't wrap my brain around the right way to say it. I once took a cab there and listened to YouTube videos to pronounce it correctly, and I still felt goofy and like I did it wrong. I vowed to ask for an address on the nearest cross street if the situation ever arises again.

[mrsukyankee]

My biggest was buoy. In American English it's boo-ee. In British English it's boy. My H was fighting me over it. Thank goodness for the internet.

[basilosaurus]

Oct 12, 2024 11:59:57 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

The typo in this subject line also makes me giggle a bit. I am also a queen of typos 🤣

I did notice and didn't edit because it also made me giggle. Fucking new phone and its shit autocorrect. It's truly awful (but it's a temp replacement phone)

[joy]

Oct 12, 2024 12:51:56 GMT -5 mrsukyankee said:

Imagine moving to the UK from the US and being mocked for how you pronounce things all the time because so much is pronounced differently. It amazes people that I have an American accent but now pronounce certain words in the British style, so I sound so weird at times. And sometimes I forget which is which and then my brain just gives up and I can't do either.

This reminds me of the word Copley.

In Boston, it’s Cop-lee.

In my town, it’s cope-lee.

Those Bostonians laughed at me when I moved.

S’okay, I raise you Schuylkill. Which I cannot even spell because the letters don’t match the sounds anyway.

[heygrey]

Oct 12, 2024 11:18:34 GMT -5 loira said:

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.

Ds is in his 6th year of French immersion and he has a lot of English words that he gives a French pronunciation just because they are similar and he's used to saying them in French. 

When we lived in the maritimes I noticed people trying to sound out an unfamiliar word in French even if it was an English spelling. I think the Canadian brain is trained that way. Then throw in some indigenous names and words and it gets wild. 

I'm looking at you Apohaqui, NB. 

[sequins]

Oct 12, 2024 14:56:43 GMT -5 mrsukyankee said:

My biggest was buoy. In American English it's boo-ee. In British English it's boy. My H was fighting me over it. Thank goodness for the internet.

When I moved here I spelt everything with an s. Analyse. Recognise. That was a pain to relearn.

My english is a mix of british english I learnt as a child, the F.R.I.E.N.D.S reruns I watched as a teenager, textspeak in yahoo chatrooms, and my current diet of podcasts. I often speak and write english like how I speak my native language. Verb first, noun last etc. Everyday I hear something that should be said this way or written this way. I've mostly stopped caring lol. Just going to KOKO with my mosaic languange patters and I'm sure people understand me fine. 

I know this thread was supposed to be lighthearted haha but language comes with so much baggage for non-native speakers.

[oregonpachey]

Slough (the body of water) trips me up sometimes.

[sdlaura]

joy I only learned how to pronounce La Jolla because Catherine Zeta-Jones says it in the movie Traffic and there were captions And now I randomly live really close to there, after growing up on the east coast.

[sdlaura]

Dominatrix

I pronounced it dough-min-ah-trix. DH had a good laugh and said it sounded like some kind of dinosaur

[ellipses84]

Cays always throws me off. Pronounced Keys (similar to the Florida Keys, it would be the X Cays).

I’ve shared here before that I always want to say Biopic like Myopic, not like Bio-Picture although both make logical sense to me.

I share others experience of having been homeschooled for a time, reading a lot and seeing words but never hearing them, living internationally in places with multiple languages and living in places that use different types of English spellings. I’m sure I could think of tons of other examples.

[circa1978]

I still remember the ah ha moment I had with chaos as a kid.

I know this is not a shaming thread but the way a certain group of American fashion TikTok pronounces corset makes me twitch. It is not core-SET! (like being really excited at the end about a set of apple cores) in any accent (American, British or French) that I know of and I feel like they are just trying to be affected and "fancy?" I couldn't swear to how it is spoken in Australia or Canada or India or Spanish or other areas where it might have been absorbed into common language, so please put me out if my misery of I'm wrong, but these are all like, white Mormon girls or the like trying on wedding dresses or rediscovering 90s fashion and I have to swipe every time.

[4speedy]

Oct 12, 2024 14:06:10 GMT -5 jinkies said:

Oct 12, 2024 13:32:18 GMT -5 lolalolalola said:

Quay

Colonel

I'm still not 100% sure of Quay.

I also know that Houston St in NYC is not pronounced like the city in Texas, but I can't wrap my brain around the right way to say it. I once took a cab there and listened to YouTube videos to pronounce it correctly, and I still felt goofy and like I did it wrong. I vowed to ask for an address on the nearest cross street if the situation ever arises again.

I learned Quay by riding public transportation in New Zealand.  It took quite a few stops before I realized the announced stops actually DID match up with what was written on google maps.

Oh, and in NZ and Australia, Quay is pronounced like Key.  Assuming it’s the same here, but now that I mention it, maybe it’s not?

[4speedy]

Oct 13, 2024 0:04:04 GMT -5 ellipses84 said:

Cays always throws me off. Pronounced Keys (similar to the Florida Keys, it would be the X Cays).

I’ve shared here before that I always want to say Biopic like Myopic, not like Bio-Picture although both make logical sense to me.

I share others experience of having been homeschooled for a time, reading a lot and seeing words but never hearing them, living internationally in places with multiple languages and living in places that use different types of English spellings. I’m sure I could think of tons of other examples.

I say Bio-pic, like a biographical picture.  My 18yo insists it actuallly rhymes with Myopic and she has shown me several reels proving her point.  I think there might be a generational divide on this one.

[court26]

Niche and another word I can’t even spell to look up- ha!

[mrspez07]

In a book I'm reading right now:
The name Marjorie, when I read it I pronounce it Major-re.
I even have distant family with this name so I heard it as a kid.

Lingerie I always read as linger-ree. For a long time I didn't know it was Lon-ger-ray

[lust2hart]

Dachshund.