Yes, I was a little confused because you wouldn't pronounce it as an f if it's a p with no h.🤯 ....Hm, looks like they did the same thing with Diphtheria. Very sloppy, Mental Floss. Also, feverier? It's Février.
So you hit my PhD committees' pet peeve... "et al. " is short for "et alii" which means and others, hence requires a period if abbreviated to et al. As an added fun fact, if a list of authors on a paper is only two, you can not use "et al." as it is plural. authors: Smith and Jones cannot be shortened to Smith et al. As Jones is only one person.
Probably the correction was originally the mispronunciation in these cases, shortening words and slurring letters together. Then that becomes the standard pronunciation and the spelling doesn't change to reflect it.
Victuals gets me because I think I've only ever Heard it pronounced by the Clampetts on Beverly Hillbillies... and I assumed that 'Vittels" was the Hillbiily-ization of "Vict-uals" a la being a modification of 'Critter' for 'Creature' or Creek being pronounced 'Crick"
While "renumeration" may be a common misspelling of "remuneration" in terms of to compensate with monies, the word "renumeration" is in and unto itself a proper word. Constructed of the prefix re- meaning to do over, the root word numerate meaning to count, and the suffix -ation meaning to act. The proper use for the word is the same as "to be in the act of recounting". Example: "The store team did their annual renumeration of the goods in the store."
@@callabeth258 No, it's a fancy way to say "recount" "retabulate", or "tally". One might "Renumerate the math problems on a quiz to make sure they got the answers correct." or "The votes were renumerated to validate the result." Renumeration has simply fallen out of common use in favor of synonyms which are easier and likely to avoid, albeit a failed effort, confusion with remuneration.
As a Brit we pronounce some of those words differently. For solder we pronounce the L so for us it's sol-der. For primer we pronounce it the same way whatever it's meaning, pri-mer. And finally we don't pronounce it real-tor, we pronounce it estate agent. I was surprised at the word victuals having only ever heard it spoken. Over here we don't use victuals. We have words like grub, scran, nosh, snap, scoff, tuck and more recently noms.
Yes I'd always heard the difference between "pri-mer" and "prime-er" as a British vs American pronunciation difference, not a difference between two uses of the same word on either side.
"Estate agent" is _not_ the British equivalent of Realtor®, but of "real-estate agent." While the uneducated use the two terms interchangeably, the video is correct to note that the first is a registered term for people with a specific credential from a specific organization.
I will literally go to war with anyone that tries to remotely imply that "primmer" is a tolerable pronunciation of "primer". If it's some weird British thing, then doubly so. They have lost all say in matters of linguistics because they have consistently mangled their own language to the point of absurdity. Even their daily speaking voice is made up. They actually did that on purpose.
Language is like its own beast. We can set as many “rules” for it as we want, but in the end, it really just depends on what sticks with the everyday speakers. I feel like this is becoming more and more prevalent as a the internet continues to grow and we’re exposed to others who speak variations of our own language. Think of American English versus British English versus Australian and New Zealand English. Before the internet, we were more insular, so even though we all spoke the same base language, accents and slang developed differently in our own smaller communities. Now we have much more exposure to variations like slang and accents, and some internet-based ones are starting to develop as well. And it’s not necessarily just fleeting online slang either; think about the infamous UA-cam and TikTok “accents,” although a lot of people just consider them to be intonations rather than full-on accents.
The mispronounciation of processes is helpful, just as a way of distinguishing pluralizing the noun vs conjugation the verb. Ie, people seem to use "processEEZ" as plural processes (n), and use "processES" as like the 3rd person tense of to process (v)
There were 4. I'd seen "vittles" and "victuals" and just figured "vittles" must have been a corruption of the word. Antennae, diptheria and primer, I had all wrong. Well, I had primer right half the time.
That doesn't really clear up anything about "err." It just raises the question of how you pronounce "erst." Personally, I go with "air" for the er in it, but I've heard some say it "ur."
As a native English speaker for over 40 years, I find the sentiment that “this adjustment to a word shouldn’t be because it doesn’t fit the rule,” to be laughable. Rules in English are barely guidelines.
I have never heard anyone say primmer before. While archaic and not normally used today, another word that is pronounced wrong all the time when it is used, is Ye as in "Ye Old". The Y in ye was originally pronounced the same as th is today so it was meant to be pronounced more like "thee" not yee.
Everyone pronounced the book a "primmer" when I was growing up. And yes, "ye" originally started with a thorn, but early printers didn't have the letter and substituted a "y."
@@WoefulMinion I've read that in recent years, that "ye" was supposed to be "the." But in the poem, "gather the rosebuds while the may"? I think if it's the wrong interpretation, it must go back hundreds of years. I think even in the King James Bible it's used as "you."
Intriguing, really, how (almost) nobody notices the common pronunciation is basically "I yearn" (or "eye-urn"). The same happens with "irony" but not "ironic".
When I was a kid, we had a record of children's song that included "London Bridge Is Falling Down" that included the line "I-ron bars will bend and break". But I say "I-urn".
I hate the word "remuneration"! It sounds weird and awkward and is never necessary. It can always been replaced by better words like "payment". I've also only ever seen it written and never heard it spoken before.
3:21 The National Association of REALTORS®(they really do like to capitalise that word) wrote the pronunciation "(rē´al-tôr´)". _That's three syllables!_ What they REALLY don't like is when you put the L before the A -- "reel-a-tors". 4:29 Mike-in-San-Pedro wrote, "They said I was being pedantic, that lead to a vote of no confidence...." He misspelt "led". "Lead" is the present tense, but "led" is the past tense, and if you pronounce it "led", then "lead" is an element, heavy metal. Now do "experiment" (not "ikspeermint") and "sixth" (not "sikth")! 😎
I understand that frustration intimately: my name has 3 too and people reduce it to 2 so I changed the pronunciation (for N. Americans) to force the 3 syllables!
I remember when my wife and I were taking child birth classes the instructor kept saying, "contimeter" instead of "centimeter." I've heard people say, "heigth" instead of "height," as wel..
@@rickseiden1 The pronunciation I heard was "SAHN uh meeter" where the docs are going for "SAHNT uh meeter" and the first 't' gets swallowed up in the speech. I heard back in the '80s that many docs still pronounced it this way, but I'm not sure if they did it for all measurements, or only for cervical dilatation. That was so many years ago, not sure if there are still docs out there saying it that way.
The emphasis on the ending of processes is due to its Latin root; procedere, processus, processis, Specifically the Medieval Latin processis was common and the word entered Old English about this time with this spelling. While spelling conventions obviously changed, the emphasis shared with other -is ending words remained. (In this case Processis is an accusatorial conjugation which usurped earlier, more "proper" spellings from Classical Latin). Since the English plural -es is from the Latinate accusative ending -es, and processus and processis would have used this ending, much like analysis, the same ending and thus emphasis would apply.
Astonished to find "forte" was not one of the examples, as in "that's not my forte." This word is mispronounced so consistently that if you pronounce it correctly, people will "correct" you to the mispronunciation or assume _you_ are the uneducated one. Turns out, it's actually meant to be pronounced the same way as "fort."
It's an Italian word and the "e" is pronounced but the accent is on the first syllable, not on the second as it is commonly said. I may be wrong but being Italian this is the choice I make. I also refuse to pronounce niche as "nich."
@@2lipToo If it soothes your Italian soul, I've never heard anyone pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable. They either pronounce the second syllable or they don't, but the accent is always on the first syllable. (I, too, always pronounce the second syllable. I learned the word in music as an Italian loan word. I'm not gonna suddenly pronounce it Frenchly just because I'm using it to mean the same thing outside of music)
Well you shouldn't be. She said precisely that. Latin scholars pronounce AE as the letter I. The letter C is pronounced as K. So your pronunciation of Caesar is entirely correct in Latin class. Depending how much you let Latin pronunciation enter the rest of your life will determine how you pronounce words like antennae. Up to you.
I lived the first 34 years of my life in the northeastern US before I moved to southern Appalachia where I got a job working in the seafood department of a grocery store. I was quite surprised at how many people pronounce the L in salmon here. I heard it so much that I began to doubt myself. But the dictionaries tell me I've been saying it right all along. It's "samon". They also pronounce the T in the fillet, instead of saying "fillay". Not everyone here pronounces those words wrong, but quite a few do.
Fillet is the Anglicised word and is always pronounced with the t. Filet (fi-lay) is the French spelling and pronunciation. Quite a few American words/pronunciations came to them via French, not English (or in some cases, that is how the English word was popularly pronounced in the 18th century)
As a knitter and crocheter who has been a part of several fiber groups, I have never heard "skein" pronounced as "skine" or "skeene". I've only heard it pronounced as "skane". I wonder if I might be more insulated from mispronunciations of this word because I live in Maryland and we have the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which is a HUGE yarn festival so people are more likely to know how to say it right. But also "grocery". I pronounce it like "gro-shry". The "c" becomes an "sh" for me. I think it is regional diction though.
I am a wordsmith and some of these were news to me. There are so many lame videos on UA-cam that are clickbait with titles like, “If you use these words, you are a genius” and then the words turn out to be common. So, I thought these would be commonly known mispronunciations, like the included “etcetera,” but I learned quite a few like “skein.” Some others that can get you laughed at when you are correct are hanged, octopuses, and mauve.
‘Longevity’ reminded me of common mispronunciations of French words and phrases. One example is ‘Chaise longue’ - where, in French spelling, the ‘u’ prevents the ‘g’ from being pronounced like ‘j’. In my country (Australia), it is often misread and mispronounced “chayz lounge”. For many English speakers, it seems that all French vowels must be pronounced either ‘on’ or ‘ay’). ‘Lingerie’ (which should be pronounced something like “la(ng)-zh(e)ree”, is commonly mispronounced: “Lonjeray”. And “Moulin Rouge” (which should be pronounced “moola(ng)”) is mispronounced like “moolon”.
Along with boatswain and coxswain, you should have also covered forecastle, pronounced folk-sul, which is the upper deck forward of the foremast of a ship.
@@MatthewTheWanderer Just my gut talking, but I'd guess it's a result of centuries of sailors with bad diction having to repeat specialized terms over and over (possibly while drunk) - over time the syllables degrade into simpler forms and then those simpler pronunciations become tradition. And since written language changes more slowly than spoken, the old spellings turn into a trap for us landlubbers.
My pet peeve is when something has a long or short life, people say it was long or short lîved instead of short līved. I prefer to keep the vowel long, but that is an unpopular opinion where I live.
Foreigners are everyone who aren't Nihongo. To be honest, Japanese words written in English are very easy. The vowel sounds are just like Spanish: ah, eh, ih, oh, and oo. Most Japanese words that start with Su are pronounced with the U slurred, like s'kiaki instead of sookiaki, and s'doku instead of soodoku. We won't mention Subaru...
I suppose it’s because people hear the words and don’t know how they’re spelled. Or a writer like Mark Twain might use “vittles” to emphasize the southern-ness of a speaker’s manner of talking.
Upon learning English as a kid, I refused to correctly say “tomb” as “toom”. It sounded si silly, and Tomb Raider sounded better to me as “Tom-b raider” instead of this gloomy doomy boomy version.
Very interesting. My only miss was "longevity" (but then I'm pedantic), and thank you for including "fentanyl". My local TV station has a long running series on the dangers of fentanyl and all the reporters pronounce it "fentenal".
My dad was an electronics engineer and he pronounced "solder" as "sorder". I have heard people from Tennessee say it this way, and my grandpaw was from there and taught electronics to my dad and his brothers.
In British, Indian, Australian, New Zealand and South African English, ‘solder’ is always pronounced with the ‘L’, and ‘primer’ is always pronounced with a long ‘i’.
I clicked on this video and was immediately rewarded with a memory from 7th grade Reading class in 1970. Every student was to read a paragraph and I cringed when Denise Golombieski said mischeevious. You hit several of my pet peeves. Realtors who say real-eh-tor. TV News anchors reporting on the Fentyn-all crisis. But I have to admit that you caught me with a handful of your examples. I learned that I'm not very nautically minded.
I found I pronounced about half correctly, but I missed boatswain and coxswain. That's really embarrassing, because I've read about 200 naval books on WWII in the Pacific Theater.
The fentanyl one drives me crazy. Everyone says it wrong, so much that I thought that might be the right pronuncation. I'm glad this video cleared it up. On the other hand, I was irritated for years that people pronounced Gorbachev as "Gorbachov," before I learned that the "e" is actually a Russian letter that is pronounced like an "o."
The swapping of the m and n in remuneration is an example of metathesis. It's a common thing, though more so in some dialects of English than others...
I like the way the realtors have incorrectly transcribed their correct pronunciation when described the common incorrect pronunciation. "rē'al-tōr". The common understanding of how to pronounce 'ō' is not what they want, but those symbols aren't particularly well defined. But they definitely don't want you to use three vowels, and what they have shown is surely three vowels. (3:29)
Okay, so this is a video for Americans. Gotcha. I mean come one, you guys seriously don't pronounce both r's in February? Never heard a non-American drop that r is all I'm saying.
Love this list, but you missed one of the biggest annoyances to music fans: REPRISE, meaning to repeat a phrase or section. It's not ree-prize or reh-prize, it's reh-preez.
mourning the loss of "reprise" as in "do again," which is properly (or used to be) pronounced "rePREEze" but now people who think they're fancy say "rePREYEze,," which is a different word ("a deduction or charge made yearly out of a manor or estate")
I would’ve included “beloved,” which is often pronounced in its adjective form as if it were the word heard in wedding ceremonies, which isn’t an adjective at all.
The "ae" diphthong in Antennae. in Classical and Vulgar Latin the diphthong "ae" was a glide diphthong that transited from an "a" sound like that found in "father", to an "e" sound similar to that found in "bed" or "met". This is a morphological transition due to the physiological restraints of pronouncing the two vowels sequentially. So Caesar wouldn't have been "k-I-ser" or "K-eye-ser" but "K-aeh-ser". Thus it it's not "antennee" but "antenn-aeh".
I never heard of anyone regarding the pronunciation of both r's in "February" as incorrect. I always heard that "Febuary" was the incorrect pronunciation. I don't object to either.
As well as "ath-er-lete", you often get "tri-atha-lon" (it's pronounced as it is spelt: "tri-athlon", no extra A or Schwa sound between the TH and the L) and "Ordinance": there is no I after the D so it is "Ord-nance", which is a term related to artillery ammunition and forms part of the name of the UK's official mapping service, Ordnance Survey.
Your pronunciation of "solder" might be the primary *American* pronunciation. It certainly isn't the primary pronunciation in general. It's pronounced like it's spelled outside the US (which incidentally is not how it's pronounced "as it looks like" in this video; it's not spelled like soldier so I have no idea why anyone would think it "looks like" soldier).
I don't think people pronounce it 'exetera". They misread "etc" for *ect" (I have often seen it misspelled that way) and hypercorrect to 'ectsetera'. Another Latin pet peeve of mine is enuciating other Latin abbreviations like e.g. and i.e. While "ee gee" at least is shorter than "for example", there is NO reason to prefer "eye ee" (id est) over "that is". (That would also get rid of the abomination "ectsetera": "and so on" is even a syllable shorter...) As for boatswain and coxwain: Naval terminology for whatever reason tends to truncate many pronunciations. e.g "foresail".
I’ve always written it as “et cetera” in writing anyhow, and “et al”. Two years of Latin at school does that to a person! And I was taught in Latin and biology class it was an-ten-aye, but maybe that’s a British way too? It’s definitely sol-der here in the UK not sodder, but sure not soldier heh
Oh man I can’t wait to get back to the office and correct everyone on “processes.” As soon as I get a job
For the interview, just follow the manager's lead on how to say words. In fact, keep doing that until after you're fully orientated😏
I hadn’t ever heard the long e pronunciation until I started into the sciences. EVERY scientist I know pronounces it that way, though…. 😳
Apply to be an English teacher! 😁 😊
Lol
About a third of these words I never pronounced wrong cuz I never knew them in the first place.
3:48 - They spelled it DIPTHONG instead of DIPHTHONG.
I saw the same thing, then I thought it was to show the mispronunciation.
I looked immediately for this comment.
I had to rewind, I was certain I must have missed the h the first time.
Yes, I was a little confused because you wouldn't pronounce it as an f if it's a p with no h.🤯
....Hm, looks like they did the same thing with Diphtheria. Very sloppy, Mental Floss. Also, feverier? It's Février.
It is dipthong as in a dullard's sandal.
So you hit my PhD committees' pet peeve... "et al. " is short for "et alii" which means and others, hence requires a period if abbreviated to et al.
As an added fun fact, if a list of authors on a paper is only two, you can not use "et al." as it is plural. authors: Smith and Jones cannot be shortened to Smith et al. As Jones is only one person.
I don't see why "at al." couldn't stand for the singular "et alius" or "at alia" just as easily as "et alii" or "et aliae."
@@magister343I agree with you. I always like to think of et al. to mean "and other(s)".
Et alius = and one more, and another.
But with only two authors, it makes sense to name them both.
Boatswain, coxswain, forecastle--you could do a long list of just nautical terms which are pronounced differently than spelled.
Probably the correction was originally the mispronunciation in these cases, shortening words and slurring letters together. Then that becomes the standard pronunciation and the spelling doesn't change to reflect it.
As the saying goes: Never judge somebody over the wrong pronunciation of a word. It means, they learned it from reading.
I’ve never heard that saying, but based on how many of these words I guessed wrong, I like that. 😂
Or, maybe as likely, they heard it from someone else! …who heard it from someone else!😅
Whenever I heard someone say "bourgeoise" I never realized that very word I was reading at another time was the same until I was in college.
Amberlynn Reid has entered the chat
I’ve never heard this, but have needed to explain my pronunciation paraphrasing this many times!
It’s Stephen with a ph.
Thanks Phteven.
Top notch 👍
Now to smack Steph Curry for not being able to pronounce his own name
That would be No. 16 on the lisp.
I once asked a Stephen if he pronounced it with an F or a V, and he said he didn't know.
@@JamieDenAdel I pronounce it with a t. Radical I know, but that's the way it is spelt
Oh you rebel, you.
Victuals gets me because I think I've only ever Heard it pronounced by the Clampetts on Beverly Hillbillies...
and I assumed that 'Vittels" was the Hillbiily-ization of "Vict-uals" a la being a modification of 'Critter' for 'Creature' or Creek being pronounced 'Crick"
That's the Truth of it. Ppl have Victuals in Churches. You have vittles at the family picnic...so weird...
i literally thought that was a fake word hillbillies use not a real word.
Crick makes no damn sense
The only reason I knew how it was pronounced is because my great-grandmother used it frequently and my grandmother explained to me what it meant.
I thought of "The Beverly Hillbillies", too. "Crick" is a popular pronunciation of "creek" in Philadelphia.
While "renumeration" may be a common misspelling of "remuneration" in terms of to compensate with monies, the word "renumeration" is in and unto itself a proper word. Constructed of the prefix re- meaning to do over, the root word numerate meaning to count, and the suffix -ation meaning to act. The proper use for the word is the same as "to be in the act of recounting". Example: "The store team did their annual renumeration of the goods in the store."
So it’s a fancy way of saying stocktake?
@@callabeth258 No, it's a fancy way to say "recount" "retabulate", or "tally". One might "Renumerate the math problems on a quiz to make sure they got the answers correct." or "The votes were renumerated to validate the result." Renumeration has simply fallen out of common use in favor of synonyms which are easier and likely to avoid, albeit a failed effort, confusion with remuneration.
I can thank The Beverly Hillbillies for knowing how to pronounce victuals.
as the only 'auditory' source of the word'; I assumed their version was a corruption/error
Wow. Glad it wasn’t just me who thought immediately of that show.
But I pictured it as being spelled "vittles".
@@rslitman That could be because Purina had that brand of semi-moist food called, "Tender Vittles."
@@craigcarter3449 True. I think we fed them to our cat.
As a Brit we pronounce some of those words differently. For solder we pronounce the L so for us it's sol-der. For primer we pronounce it the same way whatever it's meaning, pri-mer. And finally we don't pronounce it real-tor, we pronounce it estate agent.
I was surprised at the word victuals having only ever heard it spoken. Over here we don't use victuals. We have words like grub, scran, nosh, snap, scoff, tuck and more recently noms.
We do have router (Internet device) and router (woodworking tool) as a primer/primer variant though
Yes I'd always heard the difference between "pri-mer" and "prime-er" as a British vs American pronunciation difference, not a difference between two uses of the same word on either side.
Say aluminum. It has four syllables. Four.
@aquachonk Ah, but that one is actually spelled differently on either side of the Atlantic: 'aluminium' versus 'aluminum'...
"Estate agent" is _not_ the British equivalent of Realtor®, but of "real-estate agent." While the uneducated use the two terms interchangeably, the video is correct to note that the first is a registered term for people with a specific credential from a specific organization.
I've literally never heard anyone ever say "primmer" before.
That's because we've never met.
Then you've never listened to the audio book version of "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson
brits
It is definitely occasionally pronounced as the host described.
I will literally go to war with anyone that tries to remotely imply that "primmer" is a tolerable pronunciation of "primer". If it's some weird British thing, then doubly so. They have lost all say in matters of linguistics because they have consistently mangled their own language to the point of absurdity. Even their daily speaking voice is made up. They actually did that on purpose.
"They said I was being pedantic. (Period. No comma.) That led (not lead) to a vote of no confidence . . ."
Thank you!
5:06 In Australia that word is pronounced as sol-der. The first syllable is said with the LOT vowel.
I loved this episode. Please do more.
Language is like its own beast. We can set as many “rules” for it as we want, but in the end, it really just depends on what sticks with the everyday speakers. I feel like this is becoming more and more prevalent as a the internet continues to grow and we’re exposed to others who speak variations of our own language. Think of American English versus British English versus Australian and New Zealand English. Before the internet, we were more insular, so even though we all spoke the same base language, accents and slang developed differently in our own smaller communities. Now we have much more exposure to variations like slang and accents, and some internet-based ones are starting to develop as well. And it’s not necessarily just fleeting online slang either; think about the infamous UA-cam and TikTok “accents,” although a lot of people just consider them to be intonations rather than full-on accents.
The mispronounciation of processes is helpful, just as a way of distinguishing pluralizing the noun vs conjugation the verb. Ie, people seem to use "processEEZ" as plural processes (n), and use "processES" as like the 3rd person tense of to process (v)
Mispronunciation*
"Wait until the new trainee processes the processes."
Please explain why the British add an "f" sound to lieutenant.
Count me as one of the few who says Feb-roo-ary. I also have opinions on long-lived and reprise.
There were 4. I'd seen "vittles" and "victuals" and just figured "vittles" must have been a corruption of the word. Antennae, diptheria and primer, I had all wrong. Well, I had primer right half the time.
Diphtheria. They spelled it wrong along with diphthong.
My study of Latin, half a century ago, makes me pronounce antennae as an-ten-eye.
@@autonomouscollective2599 I don't know why anyone wouldn't pronounce it that way, whether they've studied Latin or not.
I would love to see how you pronounce “flaccid.” I will put money down that 99% of the people here will also mispronounce it
The verb _err_ is pronounced as in the first syllable of "erstwhile." In Europe, the L in "solder" is pronounced.
Also in Canada, so the US is completely alone in this pronunciation.
Always ground my gears hearing yanks say "sauder" and here is a channel I respect legitimising it - so conflicted 😂
That doesn't really clear up anything about "err." It just raises the question of how you pronounce "erst." Personally, I go with "air" for the er in it, but I've heard some say it "ur."
well you guys pronounce aluminum wrong too
@tenzhitihsien888 I earnestly thought it did..
I had no idea about victuals!
As a native English speaker for over 40 years, I find the sentiment that “this adjustment to a word shouldn’t be because it doesn’t fit the rule,” to be laughable. Rules in English are barely guidelines.
I always thought "I before E except after C" was a WEIRD rule.
@ Case in point, actually.
Was expecting expresso/espresso. Loved the list, though.
As a Brit we do say the L in solder over here.
That's fucked up.
Ambidextrous. NOT ambidextrious.
I've never heard anyone ever say ambidextrious.
I have never heard anyone say primmer before. While archaic and not normally used today, another word that is pronounced wrong all the time when it is used, is Ye as in "Ye Old". The Y in ye was originally pronounced the same as th is today so it was meant to be pronounced more like "thee" not yee.
Everyone pronounced the book a "primmer" when I was growing up. And yes, "ye" originally started with a thorn, but early printers didn't have the letter and substituted a "y."
@@WoefulMinion I've read that in recent years, that "ye" was supposed to be "the." But in the poem, "gather the rosebuds while the may"? I think if it's the wrong interpretation, it must go back hundreds of years. I think even in the King James Bible it's used as "you."
@@algorithms-memo104 It can also mean "thee," the singular form of "thou." I suppose it's "ye" because "yee" looks a bit odd.
Ye old is pronounced ye old, despite the history and meaning.
Thee may @@algorithms-memo104... Thee was an intimate form of you, and would have been common at the time that poem was written.
I hate when people pronounce IRON like it's spelled.
“He was the Eye-run Horse” - Norm Macdonald
One of my aliases is I. Ron Mayden. Not trying to be ironic or anything...
Intriguing, really, how (almost) nobody notices the common pronunciation is basically "I yearn" (or "eye-urn"). The same happens with "irony" but not "ironic".
When I was a kid, we had a record of children's song that included "London Bridge Is Falling Down" that included the line "I-ron bars will bend and break".
But I say "I-urn".
How Ironic
The past tense of "lead" is "led." 4:30
True, but the quote may well be from how the person being quote it wrote it.
That's one of my biggest pet peeves in written language. 🙄🤦♂️
*pass tents 😉
@ 😂😂😂
But the past tense of ‘read’ is ‘read’ (not ‘red’). 😂
I hate the word "remuneration"! It sounds weird and awkward and is never necessary. It can always been replaced by better words like "payment". I've also only ever seen it written and never heard it spoken before.
Not always. I don't think you make a remuneration for something you buy in the shop. Do you?
A more accurate synonym might be reimbursement. It does not mean payment.
Really enjoyed this. Ty for the smiles.
3:21 The National Association of REALTORS®(they really do like to capitalise that word) wrote the pronunciation "(rē´al-tôr´)". _That's three syllables!_ What they REALLY don't like is when you put the L before the A -- "reel-a-tors".
4:29 Mike-in-San-Pedro wrote, "They said I was being pedantic, that lead to a vote of no confidence...." He misspelt "led". "Lead" is the present tense, but "led" is the past tense, and if you pronounce it "led", then "lead" is an element, heavy metal.
Now do "experiment" (not "ikspeermint") and "sixth" (not "sikth")! 😎
I have a friend named Mike from San Pedro, but I don't think he knits.
I'll never understand the drift from pedagogue to pedagogy.
Thank you.
Don't think I've even needed to pronounce "skein" so had no idea how. But I guess now I do!
As long as your doing coxswain and boatswain, you may as well do forecastle and worcester.
My Japanese wife's name is 3 syllables, but SO many people in the US modify it somehow to become 2 syllables.
I understand that frustration intimately: my name has 3 too and people reduce it to 2 so I changed the pronunciation (for N. Americans) to force the 3 syllables!
I remember when my wife and I were taking child birth classes the instructor kept saying, "contimeter" instead of "centimeter." I've heard people say, "heigth" instead of "height," as wel..
Are you sure they weren’t saying c_ntimeter where the “_” is a “u”?
People say CONTimeter?!?! Like “kont”? Really? I’ve occasionally heard sontimeter, but not cont.
@@mehill00 It's with the s sound. Centimeter has the s sound, so I kept with that. English is a horrible language.
@@rickseiden1 The pronunciation I heard was "SAHN uh meeter" where the docs are going for "SAHNT uh meeter" and the first 't' gets swallowed up in the speech. I heard back in the '80s that many docs still pronounced it this way, but I'm not sure if they did it for all measurements, or only for cervical dilatation. That was so many years ago, not sure if there are still docs out there saying it that way.
i feel like a good chunk come down to accent at times tbh
An obvious example of a common misproNUNciation is the word, ‘misproNUNciation’, which is often misproNOUNced as ‘misproNOUNciation’.
Mispronouncing "mispronunciation" is some wild irony.
The emphasis on the ending of processes is due to its Latin root; procedere, processus, processis, Specifically the Medieval Latin processis was common and the word entered Old English about this time with this spelling. While spelling conventions obviously changed, the emphasis shared with other -is ending words remained. (In this case Processis is an accusatorial conjugation which usurped earlier, more "proper" spellings from Classical Latin). Since the English plural -es is from the Latinate accusative ending -es, and processus and processis would have used this ending, much like analysis, the same ending and thus emphasis would apply.
No
@@DadgeCity Yes
Astonished to find "forte" was not one of the examples, as in "that's not my forte." This word is mispronounced so consistently that if you pronounce it correctly, people will "correct" you to the mispronunciation or assume _you_ are the uneducated one. Turns out, it's actually meant to be pronounced the same way as "fort."
It's similar to "primer" because forte (strength) is often confused with forte (loud).
@@KwanLowe They're the same word. Even the musical term means "strong", not "loud"...
It's an Italian word and the "e" is pronounced but the accent is on the first syllable, not on the second as it is commonly said. I may be wrong but being Italian this is the choice I make. I also refuse to pronounce niche as "nich."
@@2lipToo If it soothes your Italian soul, I've never heard anyone pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable. They either pronounce the second syllable or they don't, but the accent is always on the first syllable. (I, too, always pronounce the second syllable. I learned the word in music as an Italian loan word. I'm not gonna suddenly pronounce it Frenchly just because I'm using it to mean the same thing outside of music)
You're flogging a dead horse. Forte has been pronounced with two syllables for a long time.
I learnt in latin class it was Ky-zar so now im confused
Well you shouldn't be. She said precisely that. Latin scholars pronounce AE as the letter I. The letter C is pronounced as K. So your pronunciation of Caesar is entirely correct in Latin class. Depending how much you let Latin pronunciation enter the rest of your life will determine how you pronounce words like antennae. Up to you.
I'm a huge logophile, yet I only recently learned that "mores" is 2 syllables. The last having an "ay" sound.
Don't feel to mad. I had amazed a huge vocabulary before I realized I was vocabulary and not volcabulary.
My personal bugbear is the pronunctuation of "Thesaurus". I do the "thes" part like "thes"-pian. Am l wrong?
I lived the first 34 years of my life in the northeastern US before I moved to southern Appalachia where I got a job working in the seafood department of a grocery store. I was quite surprised at how many people pronounce the L in salmon here. I heard it so much that I began to doubt myself. But the dictionaries tell me I've been saying it right all along. It's "samon". They also pronounce the T in the fillet, instead of saying "fillay". Not everyone here pronounces those words wrong, but quite a few do.
a fillet with the t is a type of weld
The scientific word is salmo. So maybe they like to throw in some latin in.
@@ronblack7870 I think that's spelled "fillit." And as for the meat, I've heard the "fillet" with the hard 't' in British TV shows.
Here in Britain, fillet is pronounced the same as "fill it". This is the correct pronunciation.
Fillet is the Anglicised word and is always pronounced with the t. Filet (fi-lay) is the French spelling and pronunciation. Quite a few American words/pronunciations came to them via French, not English (or in some cases, that is how the English word was popularly pronounced in the 18th century)
As a knitter and crocheter who has been a part of several fiber groups, I have never heard "skein" pronounced as "skine" or "skeene". I've only heard it pronounced as "skane". I wonder if I might be more insulated from mispronunciations of this word because I live in Maryland and we have the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which is a HUGE yarn festival so people are more likely to know how to say it right.
But also "grocery". I pronounce it like "gro-shry". The "c" becomes an "sh" for me. I think it is regional diction though.
Everyone in the Navy and Coast Guard should know the last two.
I am a wordsmith and some of these were news to me. There are so many lame videos on UA-cam that are clickbait with titles like, “If you use these words, you are a genius” and then the words turn out to be common. So, I thought these would be commonly known mispronunciations, like the included “etcetera,” but I learned quite a few like “skein.” Some others that can get you laughed at when you are correct are hanged, octopuses, and mauve.
‘Longevity’ reminded me of common mispronunciations of French words and phrases. One example is ‘Chaise longue’ - where, in French spelling, the ‘u’ prevents the ‘g’ from being pronounced like ‘j’. In my country (Australia), it is often misread and mispronounced “chayz lounge”.
For many English speakers, it seems that all French vowels must be pronounced either ‘on’ or ‘ay’). ‘Lingerie’ (which should be pronounced something like “la(ng)-zh(e)ree”, is commonly mispronounced: “Lonjeray”. And “Moulin Rouge” (which should be pronounced “moola(ng)”) is mispronounced like “moolon”.
Along with boatswain and coxswain, you should have also covered forecastle, pronounced folk-sul, which is the upper deck forward of the foremast of a ship.
Gunwale comes to mind.
@@embersmisty Yes, with gunwale pronounced "gunnel". Why are so many of these nautical terms pronounced so differently from how they are spelled?
@@MatthewTheWanderer Just my gut talking, but I'd guess it's a result of centuries of sailors with bad diction having to repeat specialized terms over and over (possibly while drunk) - over time the syllables degrade into simpler forms and then those simpler pronunciations become tradition. And since written language changes more slowly than spoken, the old spellings turn into a trap for us landlubbers.
@@AceiestArtist That makes sense! But I rarely see that happen as much with other professional jargon."
"Folk-sul?" That's where we store the main-sul...
My pet peeve is when something has a long or short life, people say it was long or short lîved instead of short līved. I prefer to keep the vowel long, but that is an unpopular opinion where I live.
I remember learning that decades ago. In all those years I’ve only heard it pronounced correctly a few times.
The solution is avoidance
Yep. Anything I need to say out loud can be done with a grunt and a point.
All the foreigners pronounce emoji and karaoke wrong.
Foreigners are everyone who aren't Nihongo. To be honest, Japanese words written in English are very easy. The vowel sounds are just like Spanish: ah, eh, ih, oh, and oo. Most Japanese words that start with Su are pronounced with the U slurred, like s'kiaki instead of sookiaki, and s'doku instead of soodoku. We won't mention Subaru...
You could make a whole series on this topic.
This is how language changes. Saying nonstandard pronunciations are ‘mistakes’ is itself an error.
If victuals is pronounced vittles, why have I see the word "vittles" separately so many times? (TBF, I've also seen bosun.)
I suppose it’s because people hear the words and don’t know how they’re spelled. Or a writer like Mark Twain might use “vittles” to emphasize the southern-ness of a speaker’s manner of talking.
@@autonomouscollective2599 Or they just thought it would be stupid to spell a word completely different from its sound.
Upon learning English as a kid, I refused to correctly say “tomb” as “toom”. It sounded si silly, and Tomb Raider sounded better to me as “Tom-b raider” instead of this gloomy doomy boomy version.
And "tomb", "comb", and "bomb" don't even rhyme, although "womb" rhymes with "tomb" (opposite ends of a lifecycle).
Asterisk. Not Astericks. And I about lost my mind every time George W. Bush would say new-cyou-lur instead of nuclear.
I *still* can't quite believe remuneration...some years after learning the correct way...
That word is stupid, anyway. No reason to ever use it.
Very interesting. My only miss was "longevity" (but then I'm pedantic), and thank you for including "fentanyl". My local TV station has a long running series on the dangers of fentanyl and all the reporters pronounce it "fentenal".
My dad was an electronics engineer and he pronounced "solder" as "sorder". I have heard people from Tennessee say it this way, and my grandpaw was from there and taught electronics to my dad and his brothers.
R Intrusion.
I met a fellow who pronounced wash as warsh; and as we lived in Northern Virginia (Alexandria), he said Warshington (DC).
@@nsnopper "warsh" is common in Washington state
In British, Indian, Australian, New Zealand and South African English, ‘solder’ is always pronounced with the ‘L’, and ‘primer’ is always pronounced with a long ‘i’.
That “EE-us” addition drives me nuts. I don’t think it’s just for “mischievous” either.
Solder is said "sol der" so much that I now expect it.
My dad read "misled" in a book as a child and for years would pronounce it as "MY-zeld."
You got me on a few of those, and I want to add “excerpt”. UA-camrs reading scripts butcher it every time.
I just love learning the correct pronunciation of words. Especially when I’ve been wrong for so many years.
Never stop learning
I clicked on this video and was immediately rewarded with a memory from 7th grade Reading class in 1970. Every student was to read a paragraph and I cringed when Denise Golombieski said mischeevious. You hit several of my pet peeves. Realtors who say real-eh-tor. TV News anchors reporting on the Fentyn-all crisis. But I have to admit that you caught me with a handful of your examples. I learned that I'm not very nautically minded.
I have literally never heard of half of these words. Most of them aren't used generally, unless you work in a very specific field.
I found I pronounced about half correctly, but I missed boatswain and coxswain. That's really embarrassing, because I've read about 200 naval books on WWII in the Pacific Theater.
The fentanyl one drives me crazy. Everyone says it wrong, so much that I thought that might be the right pronuncation. I'm glad this video cleared it up. On the other hand, I was irritated for years that people pronounced Gorbachev as "Gorbachov," before I learned that the "e" is actually a Russian letter that is pronounced like an "o."
The swapping of the m and n in remuneration is an example of metathesis. It's a common thing, though more so in some dialects of English than others...
I like the way the realtors have incorrectly transcribed their correct pronunciation when described the common incorrect pronunciation. "rē'al-tōr". The common understanding of how to pronounce 'ō' is not what they want, but those symbols aren't particularly well defined. But they definitely don't want you to use three vowels, and what they have shown is surely three vowels. (3:29)
Mischievous is one of my favorites.
Fun video on one of my favorite subjects!
Okay, so this is a video for Americans. Gotcha. I mean come one, you guys seriously don't pronounce both r's in February? Never heard a non-American drop that r is all I'm saying.
Love this list, but you missed one of the biggest annoyances to music fans: REPRISE, meaning to repeat a phrase or section. It's not ree-prize or reh-prize, it's reh-preez.
mourning the loss of "reprise" as in "do again," which is properly (or used to be) pronounced "rePREEze" but now people who think they're fancy say "rePREYEze,," which is a different word ("a deduction or charge made yearly out of a manor or estate")
Thank you for pointing out that distinction.
I would’ve included “beloved,” which is often pronounced in its adjective form as if it were the word heard in wedding ceremonies, which isn’t an adjective at all.
I like they way you've misspelled "diphthong" in the manner in which it is incorrectly pronounced. (3:51)
How about temperature?
Temperchur? Wrong but accepted
The "ae" diphthong in Antennae. in Classical and Vulgar Latin the diphthong "ae" was a glide diphthong that transited from an "a" sound like that found in "father", to an "e" sound similar to that found in "bed" or "met". This is a morphological transition due to the physiological restraints of pronouncing the two vowels sequentially. So Caesar wouldn't have been "k-I-ser" or "K-eye-ser" but "K-aeh-ser". Thus it it's not "antennee" but "antenn-aeh".
I never heard of anyone regarding the pronunciation of both r's in "February" as incorrect. I always heard that "Febuary" was the incorrect pronunciation. I don't object to either.
It's too hard pronouncing the first r .
@@roytee3127 It's doable. To each his own, but I prefer it for myself.
@@roytee3127 I don't mind "febooary," but "febyouary" grates on my ears. Not saying there's anything wrong with either.
@@roytee3127 I'm thumbing this down...
@@cerseilannister1505 Such a Cersei thing to do.
2 more: Nuclear. NOT nu-cyu-ler. And KILometer, not kilOmeter. (Metric is consistent: In English, the accent is always on the first syllable.)
As well as "ath-er-lete", you often get "tri-atha-lon" (it's pronounced as it is spelt: "tri-athlon", no extra A or Schwa sound between the TH and the L) and "Ordinance": there is no I after the D so it is "Ord-nance", which is a term related to artillery ammunition and forms part of the name of the UK's official mapping service, Ordnance Survey.
Ordinance is also a word, albeit with a different meaning.
Your pronunciation of "solder" might be the primary *American* pronunciation. It certainly isn't the primary pronunciation in general. It's pronounced like it's spelled outside the US (which incidentally is not how it's pronounced "as it looks like" in this video; it's not spelled like soldier so I have no idea why anyone would think it "looks like" soldier).
I agree
I wasn't using my soddering iron any more so I sodd it
I completely agree also the American pronunciation of mirror also annoys me it’s mirror not meer
I’ve never lived in the U.S. I pronounce saw-dur. Never heard anyone pronounce it any other way.
Regional dialect differences at their finest
"Is that spelled with a P or a T?"
"P, as in pterodactyl."
I’ve never even heard/seen half of these words, and I’m a native English speaker.
They were all familiar to me.
I feel this content would still be eye opening for my grade school teachers
I don't think people pronounce it 'exetera". They misread "etc" for *ect" (I have often seen it misspelled that way) and hypercorrect to 'ectsetera'.
Another Latin pet peeve of mine is enuciating other Latin abbreviations like e.g. and i.e. While "ee gee" at least is shorter than "for example", there is NO reason to prefer "eye ee" (id est) over "that is".
(That would also get rid of the abomination "ectsetera": "and so on" is even a syllable shorter...)
As for boatswain and coxwain: Naval terminology for whatever reason tends to truncate many pronunciations. e.g "foresail".
I'm so mad at vittles because it makes no sense without the context
"Ek-specially" is like nails on a chalkboard to me. You are getting judged if I ever hear you say "especially" in this manner.
Thank you for pronouncing "often" correctly. There are way to many people inserting a "t" sound into it lately.
English: the language that has more exceptions than rules.
“Diphthong and Diphtheria got me. I stand corrected. “Solder”? Depends if you are in the U.S. or the U.K.
FYI: diphthong is actually pronounced /dɪftɑŋ/ ("diftong") -Hilary Kaine, SLP(C), Reg CASLPO
Worcestershire (british english)
In the UK it's generally called just Worcester/wooster sauce, even though the 'shire' is on the label it's rarely said.
Us Cajuns say "what's dis here" sauce
You mean it's not "Wash-your-sister?"
2:52 antenna/antennae ... so what is the pronunciation of nova/novae? In German it's not novee nor novai.
In British English a "sodder" is something entirely different.
I’ve always written it as “et cetera” in writing anyhow, and “et al”. Two years of Latin at school does that to a person! And I was taught in Latin and biology class it was an-ten-aye, but maybe that’s a British way too? It’s definitely sol-der here in the UK not sodder, but sure not soldier heh