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[-] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 101 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Got called out once for pronouncing epitome as Epi-tome.

That one stung more than Camus as Cah-mus instead of Cah-moo. At least thats just the French fucking with us.

[-] nifty@lemmy.world 33 points 9 months ago

It can happen with common words too! Like I didn’t know I was pronouncing Thai food wrong till that John Oliver episode

[-] bus_factor@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago

How were you pronouncing it?

[-] nifty@lemmy.world 46 points 9 months ago
[-] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 14 points 9 months ago
[-] nifty@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago
[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

You never heard anyone say Thailand? Or you just never made the connection?

[-] nifty@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think it’s the former, I also think I maybe imagined the “Th” when someone else said it. I also may have been surrounded by others who mispronounced both.

So in short I blame society /s

[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So in short I blame society /s

Ha! Typical millennial

Edit: since it's not always clear on the internet, I too am being sarcastic.

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[-] minibyte@sh.itjust.works 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Uh, thanks for the heads up. I’ve been pronouncing epitome both correctly and incorrectly my entire adult life because for some reason I thought they were two different words.

[-] FreshLight@sh.itjust.works 15 points 9 months ago

If anyone's wondering and since it's not clarified here..

Epitome is pronounced like this: ||UK|US| |phonetic|/ɪˈpɪt.ə.mi/|/ɪˈpɪt̬.ə.mi/| |non-phonetic|epittomee|epiddomee|

[-] VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago

I've been an avid reader since I was 6/7 and I hate reading dictionary listings with phonetic spellings as ironically they only make it harder for me to know how to pronounce a word. I'm also a native speaker.

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[-] geissi@feddit.de 84 points 9 months ago

Reading a new English word as a foreigner is super frustrating because you never know how to pronounce that.

Yes sure unanimous is not 'un-animous', it's 'you-nanimous'. Makes total sense.
Don't even get me started on the dozen different ways to pronounce 'ough'.

[-] Myr@lemmy.world 55 points 9 months ago

English is tough, but it can be understood through thorough thought, though.

I'm learning Swedish slowly, and I was raised in the US south, so I am constantly corrected on pronunciation lol.

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[-] shasta@lemm.ee 18 points 9 months ago

With words starting with "un" you can figure out pronunciation by removing the "un" and see if the rest of the word is it's own word which means the opposite. "animous" is not a word so you would use the long "u" sound in "unanimous". Same for uniform or university. But not unironic or unintentional.

[-] LwL@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

Through that logic I'd always figured unanimous stems from "without animosity" and the word animous just got lost to time, which would make un-animous the more sensible pronunciation. But it seems that while they do share a common etymology, it's not "un" as in negation, but rather "un" from "unus" meaning one, with both sharing "animus" meaning mind.

I also found out that animous used to exist as a synonym for animus at one point.

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[-] Damage@slrpnk.net 73 points 9 months ago

Fucking English, dumb language held together by tape and desperation.

Most languages don't need spelling lessons.

[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 69 points 9 months ago

Some of them need extensive drawing lessons.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

+15 social credit and 1 catwife

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[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 44 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I pronounced hyperbole as it is spelled "hyper bowl" for decades and nobody corrected me! It wasn't until I finally saw someone say it in a TV show that I realized the error of my ways. Now I stumble over the word every time I try to say it because I have decades of habit to overcome. Sometimes when I think I might need to say it, I start mouthing it ahead of time so that I get it right on the first try. There are at least a dozen other words like this for me, and I'm sure dozens more that I'm not even aware of.

Edit: for those of you who have never heard it pronounced, hyperbole is pronounced "high-per-buh-lee".

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[-] FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world 40 points 9 months ago

I was 17 when my friend pointed out to me that epitome is pronounced epi-tome-ey

Rather than how I was saying it Epi-Tome.

[-] 6daemonbag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 9 months ago

Congrats, I was first corrected while meeting new people in college 😔

I even had it in a song I wrote and the whole thing was ruined because it didn't rhyme anymore. Also it was ruined by my songwriting skills.

[-] FilterItOut@thelemmy.club 17 points 9 months ago

Same here, but I knew the correct pronunciation of the word when spoken, I just didn't know they were the same damn word. When it finally clicked in my head, I about slapped myself.

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[-] doubletwist@lemmy.world 29 points 9 months ago

I'm almost 50 and recently learned I've been pronouncing two words wrong.

  • "Template" as 'tem' + 'plate' (like a dish) instead of 'tem' + 'plet' (like 'let')

  • "Opacity" saying the middle 'a' like 'hay' instead of like 'math'.

That one I was SURE I was right when my wife told me, so I asked my Google home mini: "Hey Google, how do you pronounce the word 'opacity'?" (Pronouncing it my way), and to prove that Google has a mean sense of humor, (and I swear this is true) responded with "Guacamole". My wife has not let me live that down.

[-] OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 32 points 9 months ago

At least for template I think both pronunciations are correct. Or at least I feel like I hear temPLATE as often as I hear tempLET.

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 19 points 9 months ago

Template is sometimes pronounced template.

[-] Vladkar@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

'Tem' + 'plate' is the British pronunciation.

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[-] geekworking@lemmy.world 27 points 9 months ago
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[-] OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 22 points 9 months ago

I thought 'segue' was pronounced 'seg' and 'Segway' was 'Segway'. I blame the mall cop transportation.

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[-] Apepollo11@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago

Segue - Seg? Segyoo? No, it's Segway.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago

Unless they have a father with a PhD in English who acts like an English teacher with them their whole childhood.

I loved my dad, but boy did it suck when I showed him some piece of creative writing I wrote and he got out the red pen.

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[-] Lileath@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 9 months ago

It is even more funny if the reading isn't in your native language. I can write in English at a C1-C2 level but I am at the B level when speaking as I have no clue how to pronounce most of my regular vocabulary that I use when writing.

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[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 17 points 9 months ago

My pet theory is that spoken English and written English are two different languages that kinda translate between them.

In spoken English, "I read books." doesn't have ambiguous tense.

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[-] Draegur@lemm.ee 16 points 9 months ago

i still can't pronounce thesaurus correctly

[-] Crashumbc@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

Hyperbole

"Hyper-bole"

So I thought :(

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[-] JehovasThickness@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

I somehow didn't realise that "retry" was literally "re-try" and not "ret-ree" until I was in my 20s

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[-] Treczoks@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago

I am so with you. I'm not a native speaker. I learned most of my English from reading books - thousands of books, actually. So written English is absolutely no problem.

My pronounciation sucks, and my listening comprehension is horrible, on the other hand.

[-] kometes@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago

Is not shibboleth just phonetic?

[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

Shibboleth is pronounced just like it is spelled, but some languages do not have an "sh" phoneme. In the story, soldiers used the word shibboleth to identify foreigners trying to sneak into their territory. If they pronounced it "sibboleth," then the person was exposed as a foreigner.

Modern Greek is one such language. I introduced my friend Sharon to some Greek relatives, and they called her "Saron" so we all started calling her "Sauron."

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[-] theodewere@kbin.social 13 points 9 months ago

if i see Irish or Welsh i'm basically not even trying, although they both sound great

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[-] ProstheticBrain@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago

I still can't get my head around the fact Hegemony isn't pronounced like Ceremony, "Hedge-eh-moany".

I was horrified to find out it's "heg" like "leg" and "emony" like "lemony". Such an uncomfortable word to say, it still trips me up every time I say it.

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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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