Why Do These Words Get Mispronounced So Much? | Otherwords
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- There are actually good reasons why people tend to mispronounce the same words... and why they ofTen end up being the new standard!
Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and finds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fields of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human.
Host: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Creator/Director: Andrew Matthews & Katie Graham
Writer: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Producer: Katie Graham
Editor/Animation: Andrew Matthews
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Fact Checker: Yvonne McGreevy
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell
Stock Images from Shutterstock
Music from APM Music
Otherwords is a production of Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios.
© 2024 PBS. All rights reserved.
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I literally never knew that dower wasn't the only possible pronunciation of dour
Yeah, I heard "dure" and was like, "Nope, sorry, that's terrible."
@@matthewjkhill6657 Yeah, I'm in my 40s and have never, not even once, in my entire life heard anyone pronounce "dour" any other way than rhyming with "sour"!
Yeah, I'd rather avoid using the word than pronouncing it that way.
It's a Scots word, pronounced "doo-er" in Scotland. But your choice...
Never heard anyone use the old pronunciation
The first time I saw the word "manslaughter" I said "man's laughter". And it haunts me to this day
Maybe it even stalks you. (In 2009 I managed a crew of night stockers at Walmart…CREEPY!
[The company, not the crew.🤣])
You’re Killin’ Me! 😂
You just aided and abetted woman’s laughter.
That gets dark really, really fast.
Spell 'therapist' in your braincase, then say the first 3 letters independently. Tell me what the rest is.
When I was pointed out, that there is a "meow" in the word "homeowner" my pronunciation of that word was irreversibly corrupted
Damn you for pointing this out.
Not a problem if you consider it to be two words
@@captainfury497 Ho meowner
Ho meow ner is an improvement
__
When trying to annoy my husband I sometimes pronounce “Illinois” /“Illinuah” to make it sound “french” 😅😂, totally worthy!!!
What you should is pronounce it Illi-noise. That always killed me (I'm from Illinuah).
@@matthewjkhill6657 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Honestly I hope this catches on
omg, this can be used like in the Kimmy Smith song "Peeno Noir"
Vous m'avez fait rire :D
i deliberately pronounce worcestershire sauce as "whats-this-here" sauce to no one's amusement except mine
You are no longer alone. I am amused by that, as well.
Unironically thats closer then war-sesster-shy-er that ive heard a bunch
At least compared to the common pronunciation of the region (wuh-ster-sure)
I add syllables. Wurst-curst-cher-ther-mer-shire-shmire.
Dad??
I thought I cracked the code: war chester shure, nobody buys it
My father has trouble with the word "frustrated" so he pronounces it "flustrated". I think this is a great portmanteau word since I often get flustered when frustrated.
My family does this too!!
Haha, my wife gets angry and often says she's fustrated (no R after the F) it's hard to keep it in and not correct her since she is already frustrated. I have, on occasion, corrected her and it doesn't go well for me.
That's pretty common here in Cincinnati. Fustrated is also somewhat common.
Portmanteau? Wow ok thank you for that 😊
I read a fanfic written from a kid's POV where the author wrote some words out the way the kid would have spelled them by ear.
"Frustrated" turned into "flusterated", and it was honestly my favourite one of the intentionally misspelled words for the exact reason you stated! We often get flustered when we're frustrated!
_I want this to become a thing now._
I'm a 47 year old native English speaker, and while the word "dour" isn't the most common word, but I've still heard it plenty of times. I've never in my life heard anyone pronounce it any other way but "DOW-er." I was not even aware there were any other options.
Ditto.
I, a 64 year old, have certainly heard both, but I rather tended to assume that "dooor" was a Scottish pronunciation.
I pronounce it in the proper way, but I attribute this to watching a great deal of British television while learning English as a youth. The "Dower" pronunciation is more of an Americanism, I think.
Probably due to your dour life.
I'm American and have only heard the "proper" pronunciation from British audiobook narrators, so I assumed it was the British English pronunciation.
Now whenever someone says I'm mispronouncing someone I'll reply "No, you're watching language evolve in real time."
Nice excuse.
How do you say someone? Do you pronounce it “so-me-ownee”?
I've taken to using a quote from "Psych": 'I heard it both ways'. Go ahead, fight me.
My family and I would say "squoze" as the past tense of "squeeze" instead of "squeezed" because it sounded intuitive due to "freeze" and "froze."
I like to pluralize Kleenex to Kleenices (like index/indices).
@@claret.8733 lol. I love it!
That's an interesting one because different variants of English have gone down different paths where strong and weak verbs are concerned. For instance, North Americans generally render the past tense of 'dive' as 'dove', whereas in the UK we say 'dived'.
Squozen
@@Aarkwrite the toothpaste tube has been squozen 🤣
Deliberately mispronouncing words for comic relief like the watermelone thing...probably the best example of that is the Key and Peele substitute teacher sketch lol
A-A-Ron😅
Jay kweline
Also Dina Martina. 😅
I've heard people all over the U.S. refer to Quesadillas as kwe-sah-DILL-ahs, it's a joke 95% of the time, making fun of how so many city names and such are pronounced in Texas and the Southwest. But, that others 5%. Often hard to tell.
A A Ron 🤣🤣🤣
I'm 50 years old and I've never heard the "correct" pronunciation of "dour"...
I'm 73 and can count on one hand the times I've heard or read that word. In my world, it pretty much doesn't exist.
I’ve only heard of the correct way😮
That’s because you’re not a dower - I mean a _doer._ Ah, never mind.
@@brianarbenz1329I'm more of a "don'ter"... Seriously, though, "dour" is spelled like "our" and "hour", so I'm not surprised it's not pronounced correctly by most everyone.
@@sixft7in I had always read the word dour as rhyming with "hour."
Clint, flint, glint, hint, lint, mint, print, splint, sprint, stint, tint, Vint...
Pint!
Pent
😂
I still remember a conversation from when I was young, were I explained to some friends that "infamous" wasn't pronounced "in-fay-muhs", but as "in-fuh-muhs". They refused to believe me.
Were your friends the Three Amigos? 😅
@@thenaiam Who?
What your favorite hummus? inf-hummus.
@@TheHornedKing Ah, sorry, I'm showing my age. It's an 80s movie starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short that had this line:
"Ah, Dusty! Infamous is when you're more than famous! This guy El Guapo is not just famous, he's IN-famous!”
@@thenaiam you mean horrible evil murdering villainous monster not infamous :)
every single day of my life i think about an old recipe that spelled it "spinnage"
I saw a review of a French bakery that praised their "cross songs".
Could be worse, when I was a kid I wanted to help my mom with the grocery list. She was telling me things we needed and I was trying to write all of it down, but I ran into trouble with trying to spell mayonnaise. I didn't know how to spell it so I tried to sound it out, and it came out manass...(In my head I was saying mayonnaise like "man A's") My mom died laughing when she read "man ass". I still hear about it sometimes 25+ years later lol.
I hear it's more bearable with some Catsup
@@jr2904 I want that thick arse :3
Me too, but because of a sign at the grocer
I was a middle-aged adult before I realized that "draught" was an alternate spelling of "draft". I knew that they meant the same thing, but I only encountered "draught" in literature and pronounced (in my head) as "drawt".
My mum learned English as a teenager and was a voracious reader; she read about the American Indian tribe called the See-ox (Sioux), but heard about a different tribe called the Soo. 😊
How do you know you didn't encounter "draught" in speech, given that it's pronounced the same as "draft"?
@@trevorlambert4226 Good point, but irrelevant.
I didn't even know draft was spelt this way in British English (the system I grew up with). I did know it under the context of drinks (water, beer) but I thought it was pronounced drawt. And Idunno, I think it sounds cooler 😅
Me too!
... I learned it just now.
I’ve never heard “dour” in any context as not rhyming with “sour”, so I was surprised to learn it’s not the original pronunciation!
Same! I started thinking, "If it's pronounced that way, why isn't it spelled D-O-O-R? Wait, why isn't 'door' spelled D-O-R?!"
@@roecocoaPour is spelled the same way
@@aryan_kumar Pour, poor, and pore are homophones in my accent but I understand it's different in other regions. Hour is also spelled the same way.
@@roecocoa In my accent, also paw
I've always rhymed it with "sour." My wife corrected me a couple of years ago, and I was sure she was wrong until I looked it up. This was when I was about 57 or 58 years old. I had never heard it pronounced "DOO-er." Perhaps I had never heard it pronounced at all, and had only read it.
Never make fun of someone who phonetically mispronounces a word. Chances are good they learned it from a book without the benefit of a mentor to teach them the correct pronunciation.
I live in the Philippines where our national language is phonetic so some not so common English words are said phonetically. Like graham. People here say it as “gray ham” instead of “gram”. I tried talking to people, ordering at restaurants saying “gram” and nobody understood me and gave me weird looks. Even ads here say it as “gray ham”.
As a Filipino I never knew it was pronounced "Gram" and not "gray-ham"@@carmencorazonreyes7044
I mean yeah, you should really never make fun of people in general right? It can be cruel to allow people to mispronounce words as well. Language is complicated. I speak multiple languages, & I never would have gotten as far as I have without good friends who could correct me along the way when they heard me repeatedly make the same mistake.
Nah, I'll mock them for saying something patently wrong. Like, every part of the spelling tells them no.
Gray-am is the correct English pronunciation. Gram is American only.
My grandma always told me “pee cans are for truck drivers” so I will always pronounce pecan “peh cahn”. No one wants a pee can.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Was your granny from Georgia?
@@pauljordan4452 nope, Detroit lol.
A truck driver wants a pee can!
Holy crap...I watched a kid lose a middle school spelling bee (in Maine) as he was asked to spell "idear". I looked on in horror as he tentatively added the final "r", and was told, "I'm sorry, that's incorrect. 'Idear.' - I-D-E-A, 'Idear.'"
I was infuriated at the injustice.
Way back in the mists of time (~1972), I won a spelling bee in second grade because the word-giver said spell “height” but pronounced it with a “TH” sound at the end of the word, analogously to “width” and “depth”. The little boy ahead of me spelled it “heighth”. Poor thing; he was led right into that trap. I recognized the word, height, and spelled it myself correctly after that to win. It was such a strange way to win that I still remember it! 😸
He was screwed but what it is is what it is. I-D-E-A.
@@williamhelms9942 Reminds me of the one about the cop who pulled of a speeder.
Cop.."Do you have any I.D.?"
Speeder.."Any Idee bout what?"
@@claret.8733Oh gosh, the first time I heard "th" at the end of height, my brain had a record-scratch moment. I was in high school and completely unaware of regional linguistic idiosyncrasies, that there were people that did grow up pronouncing it this way as a completely normal thing. But my poor friend, I kept trying to convince him "heighth" wasn't a real word, it's "heighT." Until I heard his mom say it too, and then saw videos of older people saying it 🫠
I remember seeing a kid losing a spelling bee when he was asked to spell "Onfarrell". Now, that's clearly not a word, but the kid was knocked out anyway because the next kid managed to figure out that this was just the way that the judge pronounced "Unfurl". I still have no idea why somebody with an accent that weird would be chosen for that role in a spelling bee...
I like the bit about dour and sour. Because in scots, they would both be door and soor (to rhyme with moor). So many scots would still say 'he's real dour faced/soor faced' (meaning dark, angrt faced or bitter/angry faced
)
And many other Scots, like my husband for example would use two syllables to pronounce each of those words. So moo-er (like something that moos), doo-er (like something that dos)and soo-er (like something that sues)
There is a sweet you can buy in Scotland called sour plums and my husband uses 3 syllables to pronounce the name.
It sounds like he's saying it in English@@Spiklething
My favourite : Years ago a Boston school board became concerned and , was preparing to do something about , the corruption of 'their' language by foreign influences. A Globe editor wrote that this was a bit odd coming from people who possibly served in 'career ' and wanted their children to go to Harvard to ensure a good 'korea' for them.
The main problem in English is that the relationship between its spelling and its pronunciation is so quayotick.
That's why education exists-DUMMY
😂
The fact I read this and kept scrolling at first without realising anything was wrong lmao
Dearest creature in creation
Study English pronunciation
It's ciaotik for sure
My uncle unironically pronounced “salsa” as “salsta” and I can’t help but use his pronunciation because I love how it throws people off lol
I've only lived in Texas, but as long as I can remember, I have been imitating what I heard on TV! One day at work, I used the word "shmeer", and the person I was talking to couldn't say the shm sound at the beginning of a word! I was amused at their attempt to pronounce it!
saul-sta or sal-sta?
Seems kinda rude to purposely throw people off
Familect!
@@MaxOaklandonly if they don't have a shred of a sense of humor.
My vote is "dower" = dour. I've never heard it any other way.
And my favorite story is my mom asking me to get her some acetaminophen from the cabinet (she worked at a hospital so we didn't have Alleve/Excederin/Tylenol in the house growing up). I yelled back that all I could find were vitamins and ace-tam-o-fin. She still laughs about it.
Once I accidentally said "ace-tone" to my friend on the phone, and he laughed his butt off.
During dinner, my mom asked me to get the colander (straining bowl) from the kitchen. I was very young and confused, but fortunately we kept a calendar pinned over the sink.
She had quite the laugh when I brought that to the dinner table.
@@AdudenamedKemp Lol! Great story
Aleve (naproxen sodium) and Excedrin (aspirin + caffeine) are not the same drug as Tylenol/acetaminophen
“Exasperate” and “exacerbate” are two that I’m always mixing up. “Exasperate” means “to annoy”, while “exacerbate” means “to make worse”. And since annoying things often get worse the longer they go on, their sounds and meanings have fused together in my brain.
Administrate
Honestly, this just reminds me thinking Hermione was said Her-my-one for years
Don't feel bad, I pronounced it "her-moyn" until I read book 4.
I swear that scene of Hermione teaching Viktor how to pronounce her name was included just to stop readers from mangling it! xD
@@Roguefem76 The funniest bit is I never read Harry Potter, or I may have learnt to pronounce it before the age of 18 when I met my Lecturer with the same name😅
My family pronounced it Her-me-oh-knee until we saw the first movie. 🙃
@@jspihlman I feel so much better knowing it wasn't just me reading it wrong
Now how do you say " Wingardium Leviosa " ?
Further to the bit about “Jaguar”: Those of us raised in the U.K. will usually pronounce that word “jag-you-are” or “jag-yu-uh” (depending on how posh the local accent is). The same is true for “Nicaragua”, for some reason, despite the lack of the R at the end.
'Iguana', too. It took me years to learn to pronounce those words properly, simply because adults had told me the wrong thing when I asked about them as a child.
Jaguars used to live in Florida.
I'd always pronounce the orange Malaysian ape as "o-RANG-uh-TANG", until I heard David Attenborough pronounce it "OR-riing, OOH-tan". I've since tried to pronounce it midway between the two - to avoid sounding pretentious, but jeez, David f***ing Attenborough....
As a Nicaraguan-American, the first time I heard the British pronunciation of Nicaragua messed me up! 😖😂 lmao! Also the British pronunciation of 'taco' is a doozy to my ears.
I remember saying “pre-face” in college having never heard someone say the word out loud before and everyone stared at me like I was crazy. Then someone said “do you mean the ‘preh-fuss’?” and I thought I was going to die.
That's funny. I just this instant realized that when I think of it in terms of thing at beginning of book, I say/think pre-face, (undoubtedly b/c I encounter it while reading). But when I use it in speech, such as "I will preface this by saying", I say preh-fus. I only pronounce it 'correctly' when it is divorced from its spelling 😂😂😂
I think the most embarrassing ones to mispronounce are 'macabre' and 'epitome'. Never happened to me but it's a big OOF when it happens.
I have quoted that line from Futurama that's like "I am the greetest! Now I will leave for no raisin" so many times that it is legitimately interfering with my ability to pronounce "greatest" and "reason" in regular life.
Would it be more true to say that it’s illegitimately interfering? 😂🤔
What is regular life for?
It's for hysterical raisins.
Because of Futurama I call champagne as sham-pagin
This is exactly the type of content that I want but never knew existed. Thanks so much! Will be bingeing your videos now.
In the famous words of Connor Oberst, "Language just happened, it was never planned."
Damn, haven't thought about Bright Eyes in ages!
The time my friend ordered shitake mushrooms at the fanciest restaurant we could afford. 😂😂😂
😭😭😭
🤣
That’s the real shitake 😂
I actually pronounce the t in often, and since I was a child, I thought it was odd in the dialect merger zone where I grew up. Presently, as a multilingual adult and linguist, I still pronounce it, I love it when people challenge me on the pronuciation because it gives me my nerdy moments of explanation, which they don't expect.
I'm a native speaker of British English and a fan of the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, and yet, even though I've played Major General Stanley on stage in a production of "The Pirates of Penzance", that includes the exchange between Stanley and the Pirate King confusing the word _often_ with the word _orphan_, my mind is blown by the fact the t "should" be silent! Based on the usage I've experienced, I'd have expected the t to be the norm, and pronunciations without it to be either quirks of haste, dialect, or affectation. I always enjoy the Otherwords series but I found this episode especially fascinating. Thanks Dr B!
i had a friend who unironically called a car accelarator an 'exhilarator' so i would ironically interchange accelerate/accelerating with exhilarate/exhilarating to the point that i sometimes genuinely confuse them.
I love this so much😂😂😂
The US President always says “expodentially” when he means exponentially
My mom grew up in a very small town where almost everyone was of Norwegian descent, and some of the strongest specimens of the "Minnesota accent" are there to this day. One of the less stereotypical but very real aspects of that accent is the strongly hissed "s" sound. My mom hypercorrects the pronunciation of the noun usage of the words "use", "abuse", and "excuse". Standard pronunciation has these words with an unvoiced or hissing "s" when used as a noun, but a voiced "z" sound when used as a verb, but my mom uses the latter pronunciation for both noun and verb. In a different story, I didn't understand a word that a co-worker from Italy was saying, so I tried spelling it. "Did you say c-o-w-s or c-a-u-s-e?" He said, "No, c-h-a-o-s."
There's a priceless video of an italian chef trying to pronounce Worcestershire. I think of it when I need to smile :)
Very interesting!
Thank you for the correct pronunciation of quay. I've read it in print for years but never heard it used in American speech.
I also learned this today...but I imagine it's a pretty common mistake considering "the Florida Keys."
...
Apparently that's actually based on "cay." Quay being a wharf or harbor, cay being a small island.
...I quit English (as a native speaker.)
At least some loan words will have a pronunciation different from the originating language
A great scramble word though
I learned that "cay" was pronounced "key" in fifth grade because our teacher read "The Cay" to us. I'm still waiting for a time that I can put that knowledge to use, but I'm ready!
That was the only mispronunciation that caught me off guard. Like whoa, learned something new today.
My mother is French. English is her second language. She is pushing 90, and only went to grade eight in school, but she’s made English her own, much to the great humorous enrichment of the random people that have known her over the years, or sometimes, only had to interact with her for a minute or two.
She’s amazing with mispronunciations even though she’s been working and living in English Canada since she was 15.
Recently my Catholic mom told me about a friend she has who has problems with her eyes. My mom’s friend has, according to my mom, “immaculate degeneration.” ...Holy loss of vision Batman!
My mom refers to global warming as, “global swarming” because, why not?
She once had to navigate a long, and dark basement stairwell. The lightbulb had burned out. She was reminded of it later that day while at a lunch, and mention the burnt bulb, and her stairwell trip to her coworkers. “It was so dark I had to feel myself all the way down the stairs.”
She mentions turds a lot, as in, “Two turds of a cup of flour.” or, “There was a sale! Everything was two turds off!”
Pomeranian dogs?
“Pomegranians.”
Eavestroughing?
“Earsdropping.”
“Eavesdropping.”
“Earstroughing.”
Want some, “Camel Mile” tea? Go visit my mom.
Want to watch, ‘Life of Brian’ or, ‘The Holy Grail?’ Well my mom won’t be joining you because she doesn’t like, “Monty Pylon.”
And so it goes...
Thanks for making videos eh.
Thanks for posting, she is creative.
What is “eavestroughing”? Curious, as I (Australian) have never heard or seen the word.
Always happy to help out an Australian!
Eavestroughing is probably an Americanization of the English word gutter. They are the things that hangs off the edge of your house’s roof to catch the rain run off and drain it away from the house’s foundation. Eaves trough is nicer to the easily offended puritanical American consumer ear than gutters, although, now that I think of it, the Americans love to bowl and the lanes have gutters rather than troughs, so maybe once again, I have no idea what I’m talking about...
I’m guessing they call eaves troughs ‘gutties’ in Australia?
Eavesdropping is correct though. At least in the US. I've never heard or read "eavestroughing"
And we call them gutters on our houses. Eaves are whatever part of the roof extends beyond the exterior walls, gutters catch and divert the rain into a downspout. Eavesdropping is overhearing a conversation that you're not invited to. I always imagined someone crouching on top of the eaves spying on people talking, dropping into their conversation.
Knowing that language evolves has relaxed me so much. I don't correct people's pronunciation. As long as I understand their meaning, they have succeeded in my book.
You are a better person than I. I'm still rigid. I will aspire to be more like you. 🙂 (And I've known for decades that it evolves. sigh.)
OK, a real life story about one of the examples, "pecan". It goes back to 1964, and confirms what was said about regional pronunciation.
I was at a company training session in Boston, and one of the trainees was from South Carolina. (Let's call him Joe.) We all went out to eat at a local restaurant, and when it came time for dessert Joe asked for the pe-cahn pie. The waitress, a local, gave him a confused look. So he repeated, a little slower, "pe-cahn pie". Still a blank look. So Joe pointed at the menu and re-repeated, "pe-cahn pie".
The waitress suddenly smiled and said, "Oh, you mean pee-can pie."
Now it was Joe looking confused. His response: "I guess so. But where I come from, a pee can is something else."
I learned to read when phonetics were the method used in school. I often deliberately mispronounce words to get the correct spelling when writing. I would say “embar-assed” or “sub-urban.”
100%; when I need to write February I absolutely say feh-brew-ary in my head (just to name one example)!
Indeed. Ar-Kansas
It's crazy how many words you may have come across in written form repeatedly, but never heard spoken. Until one day you have to say it out loud, often in a public setting. And then the small panic just before saying word when you realize you've never actually heard it said before.
Just use a online dictionary v: I do it to learn new English words :3
@@jooshozzono7249 The point is you don't realise you never heard the word said out loud before you have to use it in a public setting. You're so used to reading the word and your mind interpretation of it, you don't realise you never heard it spoken until you have to say it in public.
8:24 - I agree with Harry Cleetus. 🤣
I was a C average Greek student, but that didn't sound right. 😅
That cracked me up. That’s like Beeth Oven.
One of the best videos on UA-cam to date. I love learning how everyone uses different verbiage through time.
I pronounce sandwich “sam’edge.” I am from Alabama, and my mother said “sam’edge” and I never pronounced it like that until I had kids. Something about asking my child, “Do you want a sam’edge?” just felt parental to me. 🥰
My family was always more of a sammich fam
Normally i say Sam-wedge without checking myself
Sammich is Western Pennsylvania
Nebraska: sammy
Ah fellow butteMbrot appreciator
The one that drives me insane, though it’s a mishearing rather than mispronunciation - and it’s become too common as it’s been proliferated online - is “I would of done” instead of the correct form of “I would have done” or “I would’ve done.” People misheard the contraction and invent a verb form that doesn’t exist in English, “of done” or “of been” etc.
Remokin troll
Wait till you hear someone say "I would of went" ...
English is my second language and that also drives me insane.
Because just mispronouncing/miswriting a word is okay but "would of" totally destroys English grammar.
I invested way too much time and energy into learning it to now have to see this.
Sometimes I honestly almost resent native English speakers because so many make mistakes that learners would never make but they make comprehension so much harder.
Mistakes with your/you're and they're/their/there is one of those examples I never saw even the worst English learners in my class make but native speakers make them constantly and they're way more annoying than if someone just writes one noun wrong that doesn't impact grammar
@@Tessa_Grit’s because when English is your native language, the understanding is intuitive, so little grammatical errors don’t trip you up at all and are easy to just gloss over. Not promoting poor grammar at all, I think it’s embarrassing when people are just cool with having poor spelling/grammar, but it makes sense why it happens. Non-native speakers have to think of the language in a more technical way and like “follow the steps and rules of the language” while native speakers can just do it without having to think about it technically like that 🤷♂️ I’m sure that there are little mistakes and idiosyncrasies in your speech in your native language that you and others make that you don’t even think about but would totally trip up someone not familiar and trying to learn. English just gets put under a microscope and endlessly discussed because people all over the world speak it.
@@Tessa_GrA lot of native English speakers (like me here in Canada) are never formally taught the rules of English. I've been told this isn't common in other education systems around the world. It's hard to know what you're saying wrong if you don't have a conceptual understanding of your language's grammar.
I asked to read the word "edible" aloud in class. I knew what it meant, I pronounced it, ee-dibble. The class thought I said "eatable," and laughed; the teacher was not happy.
Xdxxdd bro just use a online dictionary v; they come with the correct pronunciation.
A winter coat in Boston was advertised in print as a Parker.
I new "segue" from reading and /segwei/ from podcasts and I knew both words meant something similar or basically the same: smoothly transition from one topic to another; and it was _several_ years before I realised that it was the same word. English has one of the most insane spelling systems...
I think you missed a point on the intrusive R in non-rhotic accents. They aren’t added to the end of words that end in vowels all the time only when they’re followed by another word that begins with a vowel. So the R wouldn’t show up saying , I like pasta. But if saying, I like pasta on Fridays, then the R would show up because the word pasta is followed by the word on.
Waiting for someone to comment on this. I was watching a Dr Geoff Lindsay video about that right before so I was pretty confused when I heard her theory
Yes! To my surprise, Danish people do exactly what you describe when speaking English, so much so I started growing self-conscious about my "standard" pronunciation.
Absolutely true, but some Americans do say "I have an ideeurrrrr". Don't think I've heard it with pasta and not any other word as often as with idea.
@@Everest314 yeah, but the idear thing is kind of a hick accent idiom, not a non-rhotic accent feature like she was saying. That feature in non-rhotic accents is a connector between a word that ends with a vowel followed by another word that starts with a vowel. Speakers of rhotic accents, put a glottal stop between those words. So me with my Midwestern accent will not put in an R when saying, I like pasta on Tuesday I put a little stop between pasta and on. But someone who’s from Boston might say I like pastar on Tuesday. But both of us would just say I like pasta.
@@pjschmid2251 I wasn't disputing your initial point, I do the connector-R myself (non-native speaker trying to speak a hotchpotch-British-ish accent) so I also frowned over that bit in the video. ... I find it funny, that "connector-R" gets a connector-R (in non-rhotic) between the written Rs. :D
Not sure if I agree with the "hick" lable for "idear" as I have also heard well-educated people do that. I have also observed it a lot when Germans, Dutch or Scandinavians speak American English.
5:52 Little trick for people trying to get silent consonants right in French (because I know that's a hard part), just have in mind the STD rule (*):
's', 't', and 'd' are the major silent consonants. If a word ends with one of them (with no vowel after), it's very likely silent. Any other case, it's very likely pronounced (notably, any consonant followed by a vowel is always pronounced). If you don't know how to deal with a specific word, default to that rule, you'll be right the big majority of times.
Except for a few very common words you will anyway encounter quickly if you learn French (like "fils" (son) or the few words ending with 'b', 'f', 'l', 'p' or 'x'), all the exceptions either trip up French natives themselves or aren't agreed upon, so don't stress too much about them.
(*) Totally not an official name, though highly memorizable.
I like to joke that the key to French pronunciation, I don't speak French, is to ignore half the letters
I am afraid it is a bit more complicated than such a simple rule. For example, in "mers", the s is silent if it means "seas", but it is pronounced in the name of the town "Mers-les-Bains". In "Villers", the name of a lot of villages, the s is pronounced if it is a Belgian village, but is silent if it is a French village. And I learned only recently that "Estaires-sur-la-Lys" has to be pronounced as "Étair", with both s'es silent, but in "Lys" the s is pronounced. To summarize, you have to learn it on a case by case basis.
I grew up in NH and can 100% conform the R problem. I pick on my Mom all the time for it :D Pizzer and Beah
You got me with "Beijing" and "coup de grâce". And, I'm embarrassed to admit, "quay". Also, only in the last year did I learn that the t in bergamot is not, as I had always believed, silent.
tbh I'm not convinced Beijing is mispronounced for the reason she said here. I think it's more akin to "ask", where it's just done because some people find it easier. The "zh" sound is just easier for most English speakers to place between two vowels than "j" is.
@mstegosaurus Same with Gal Gadot. (Clue: she's not French!)
@@JimCullenI agree with you
@@JimCullen As a Mandarin speaker I agree with this. "Beige-ing" is just more intuitive considering English morphology. Also, the standard Mandarin pronunciation of the j in Beijing doesn't exist in English, so zh and the English j sound are both approximations anyway. Neither is more correct than the other imo.
It took me a long time to get used to reading “albeit” and “hyperbole” correctly instead of thinking “al-bet” and “hyper-bowl”.
A friend of mine used to say “all-bite.”
I was saying hyperbowl for way too long.
@@PeperonyCheaseI was saying “hyper-boil” although only while reading to myself
Great stuff, Erica. A nice, measured perspective, balancing legacy 'correctness' and a recognition that language evolves, and emerging majority useage will eventually be considered the _new_ correct. (But god spare me from New-Kyuh-Ler becoming 'correct' in my lifetime...)
Admittedly this was 60 years ago and in England but our English (Language and Literature) teacher was adamant that, amongst other things, words like 'fire' were one syllable only and that includes 'dour'.
Even the music teacher didn't want the carol 'Good King Wenceslas' sung with 'fuel' and 'cruel' as two syllables.
At school, we were led to believe that mispronunciation and misapplication of words would have your audience dismiss you as a 'thicky'.
I recently saw a video about the close-sounding nature of 'cot' and 'caught'. This was from an American point of view as in standard English, they are totally different sounds. Accent plays a big part in how a word sounds and might be spelt.
Aren't diphthongs often considered to be one syllable? It's variable... Are each of these words one, or two syllables: bite, house, coin, oil, vial, aisle, choir, lion, isn't? In poetry, many such words can be comfortably squeezed or stretched into one or two rhythmic syllables, so it feels like a distinction without a difference to try to say "officially" one way or the other. Ah, language!
Having lived in the (US) South for a long time, I know exactly how fire might be pronounced as one syllable. But I am at a loss as to how fuel and cruel might be pronounced as two?
@@thevirtualtraveler In the Christmas Carol ‘Good King Wenceslas’ it’s usually sung with fuel and cruel as if ‘fu-el’ and ‘cru-el’ much to the despair of my teachers.
If you don’t know the Carol, it’s meaningless
The anecdote about 'Good King Wenceslas' is interesting, because the pitch is the same from one syllable to the next in each of those words. It's purely rhythmic. How would your music teacher react to the splitting of a one-syllable word for melody? Rewrites? "I can't get *ANY* satisfaction"
@@tonywebert8326 I’ll ask, next time I see him.
4:41 It should be Hertford, not Hartford. The pronunciation is the same, but she is likely saying the name of the town in England, not the city in Connecticut.
Allowances should like definitely be given to how place names are pronounced by the people that actually live in them.
There’s a town outside of Austin, Texas called Manor, that for some reason they pronounce “May-nor”. The locals of Worcester, Mass. can be heard referring to it as “Wistah”. While the people of Birmingham, U.K. will call their home “Burming-gum”, the city in Alabama is most definitely “Burming-ham”.
@@MrOtistetrax I think I was in my forties before I realised that people pronounced the '-s' on the end of 'St Louis'.
There are 3 places in Canada with the name Dalhousie, all pronounced differently. A university (dal-how-zee), town no. 1 (dal-hoo-zee), town no. 2 (port duh-loo-zee).
As a Canadian, I took French in school. In French class, we were taught that the correct way to pronounce Quebec was kay-BECK. "Qu" is pronounced as a "k", the "e" has an accent over it, so it's pronounced as a long "a", and there is more emphasis on the second syllable. Most English speakers do pronounce it the way you did, so your pronunciation will likely only get criticized if you're speaking to someone French.
Also, as a child, I pronounced sink with a z sound at the beginning. That's the way my mom pronounced it, so that's the way I thought it was pronounced. I stopped when I said the word at school one day, and got laughed at by the class.
@5:11 in australia, we only ever add the "R" where there isn't one if the next word starts with a vowel. so we would pronounce it like "that idear is good", but we would never say "that idear was good"
ua-cam.com/video/IXSjCJvN5Zc/v-deo.html
Absolutely, so much so that the 'r' doesn't end up hitching onto the end of the first word, but really attaches to the beginning of the second word - "that idea ris good". The best example of this is when it's time to head off home and instead farewelling everyone with a "see you later on", in addition to abbreviating the phrase as "later", or "see you", Aussies will often just say "ron", and wander off.
Yeah, I first noticed that because of Phil Keoghan, the host of "The Amazing Race" (though he's from New Zealand). For example, there was once a team named Monica and Sheree. He'd pronounce it "Moniker" when saying their names together.
I've learned English by reading texts in videogames growing up. When I left my country for the first time as an adult I had a perfect vocabulary but oh god so many mispronounced words 😂
Lol! I can relate… a native English speaker, I grew up overseas with little access to my country’s pop culture, and certainly no Saturday morning cartoons! For decades I thought Yosemite Sam or Park was pronounced Yo-zmight instead of YoSEMitty😂
All your base are belong to us
I first learned the word “visage” in French class. It’s not used often in English but it’s pronounced a bit differently than I did while reading Shakespeare out loud in an English class. “I’m not being pretentious, it’s the only way I’ve heard it before I swear 😂”
And then there's glacier…
@@stephenspackman5573 I grew up near Seattle so I saw the glossy-ehs on Mount Rah-nee-eh.
It is frustrating for me to accept that I struggle with the word when speaking and will often say "fustrating" but I'm afraid I say afraid just fine.
On the subject of that quote you ended on, "the only constant is change," can you please make an episode to help me feel better about how the meaning of "literally" is changing to mean "figuratively" and "emphatically" because I hate it so much and I need an explanation of where that started and why it's growing so that maybe I can learn to live with it...
I'd like to know why, on the internet, at least, people constantly type "then" when they mean "than", and vice versa. WHY??
basically:
step 1: use “literally” to add emphasis and show that you mean something literally, not figuratively
step 2: literally is used so much that it looses some of its oomph, so people start applying it to things that are *kinda* literal
step 3: now it just adds emphasis, with no relation to actuality
see also: “awesome” used to be used in things like “our god is an awesome god” because it meant to inspire awe. it got used so much that it mellowed out into just “very good”. fun fact, curse words can also lose their power this way
@@viddorkin some accents both are pronounced the same. in mine (kentuckian) “i like this more than that” is pronounced more like “i like this more then that” or even “i like this more ‘n that.” so for us it’s a there/their/they’re situation (though i actually pronounce they’re as two syllables)
@@anahata2009it’s a joke on the internet to use words for types of speech they aren’t. so people use nouns as verbs, verbs as adjectives, adjectives as nouns, etc etc.
“humbled” is a case of a passive verb form becoming an adjective. so “i’m humbled” means “i feel humble because you are praising me more than i deserve”. “you have humbled me with your excessive applause”. it just lost the negative connotation, and gained the positive one associated with being humble.
@@chesspiece4257 I honestly think it's more deadjectival verbalisation (adjectives being turned into verbs). I think so because it's the simpler process and humble already has a positive connotation. But I have no idea if deverbal adjectivalisation or deadjectival verbalisation is more common.
I say scissors "skizzers" and knife "kuhniffuh" because I started doing it for fun and then keep forgetting other people won't necessarily understand it
My dad says "skizzers" and my husband says "kuh-niffee"...
I'm pretty sure nobody that hears them say those words thinks that they REALLY pronounce it that way...
@@missellyssa true, but I *have* had people be like "???? What are you saying???" If they haven't been Initiated lol. Inconvenient in a hospital setting to ask a coworker if they need skizzers instead of scissors when the scissors in question are trauma shears lol (not ever an emergency situation, but still annoying if someone just needs to open a medication or something)
I took an Old English course in college and the 'kn' sound was once fully pronoucced, so kuhniffuh isn't incorrect. And knight was once pronounced kuh-nich-tuh.
@@kimkimsan that explains why some names like "Murdaugh" or "Laughlin" can be pronounced with the hard c sound!
One note on 8:01, in Old English the word was fisċ, and sc or sċ was pronounced /shk/ so it is much less of a jump to modern /fish/.
Also, the letter K was rarely used then, so perhaps the point about 'fish' is looking at an differernt Germanic language
Yes, I was thinking that. Thanks for picking up on it.
I hate when the stress is shifted to a different syllable in derived words. I'll always pronounce the word "metathesis" with stress on the e: metatheesis.
correction: ask comes from /āscian/, there's also the variant with metathesis /ācsian/, nevertheless the reconstructed ancestor of both is PG /*aiskōn/, which fits the pattern of other PIE present tense verbs which have /sk/ but not /ks/, in the present stem.
the metathesised variant was current, and more or less popular than the non methathesised variant, but the methathesised variant lost eventually due to standardisation.
it is very much an over-reach to state /ācsian/ was the "original form".
"Thank you, Sir Bernard".
UndoubtABLY drives me up the wall
Undoubtedly so.
"We're knights of the round table
We dance whene'er we're able
We do routines and chorus scenes
With footwork impeccable.
We dine well here in Camelot
We eat ham and jam and spam a lot.
"We're knights of the Round Table
Our shows are formidable
But many times
We're given rhymes
That are quite unsingable"
As an Italian, I say "expresso" sometimes when speaking English.
They're basically the same word, coming from the same latin root that did have the "x" and most people will always mispronounce it in informal contexts. So, unless you work for a coffee corporation, it's the least problematic mistake ever, except it'll trigger people who love to correct other people's mistakes which... may be a good thing, them people deserved to be pissed because their own pedantry.
I hear ya, and I learned a lot from what you wrote. In my head: "Even an Italian person using the 'x'?" The way I figure it is, some people are detail people. They've been told the "s" is correct and defend it as such. It's not always about a love of correcting people's mistakes as it is a love of what they've been told is accurate. You and some others on here are clearly Big Picture people. You don't get hung up on the details. We need people like you. Others are detail people. They can zone in on the finer points. We need them too. It all just depends on the circumstance. And just a side note, it took me less than 10 sec to find another Italian online who was making sure people pronounced "espresso" with an "s" sound and not an "x" sound. So apparently Italians don't view this all the same either. She must like details.
There was one example about tonal words that sounded more like change in stressed syllable.
That happens in some European languages.
In Portuguese coco is coconut. First syllable stressed.
If you stress the second syllable, cocó, it means poo.
One of my childhood mispronunciations (akin to baby talk, but more like toddler talk, I guess?) was "ephalent" instead of "elephant" . Sometimes I do that as an adult as a joke or for nostalgia.
I used to do that with "Levorvel" (revolver) and "gulons" (gluons), because it's still funny even when you know you're pronouncing it wrong. Also pronounced jalapeño as Jah-lapenough. And Jorge as Jürgen, but without 'n' at the end. But now I wil positively pronounce watermelon as watermalone on occasion.
I still say Indiot instead of Idiot. I don't know where I got the extra "n" from!
I had a childhood friend who pronounced animal as aminal.
My daughter has a stuffed aminole that I named Oliphaunté (all a fawn tay) - elephant. She can't speak yet, but that won't stop me from intentionally mispronouncing things for her.
Heffalump is a common childhood mispronunciation. I don't know if that's a global thing.
It's really common for French speakers to do the "H" thing when speaking English. In a company I worked with a few years ago, our line manager was Ellen, and our department head was Helene. A french colleague would mispronounce both all the time, but even when presented with the names in text he would say the wrong one.
As a child, my best friend was from Long Island, NY. I grew up being called Trisher (Trisha).
PHD students out here really changing the world for the better.
I think people should speak however they want. That being said there is a special place in hell for people who call records “vinyls”.
Your videos are always so full of insights and examples. Keep them coming. They're entertaining and informative.
My best friend and I grew up together mispronouncing things just to be funny. To this day I still say "pissed office" for "post office", "cat soup" for "ketchup", "moose turds" for "mustard", "chocolate mouse" for "chocolate mousse", on and on. I've also adopted a couple of words my wife coined or mangled when learning to speak English after coming to the U.S. as an adult. She called the clothes hamper the "clothes garbage" (I love that one and refuse to call it anything else, now), and she somehow mixed up "pants" and "buns", so now when there's a cookout I proudly announce that I need to go buy hamburger pants and hotdog pants.
I read of someone (who was well-read as a child) who independently figured out there must be a verb "to misle" (pronounced "MY-zuhl"? meaning "to lead astray"), because it had a past tense of "MY-zuhled" (spelled misled).
to me it was mizzled. LOL
Heh. I don't recall a time when I didn't know what it was supposed to be, but I have a tendency to pronounced it as a derivative of 'misle' anyway, because it's such a cute word.
@@JennieKermode Indeed. Words are my favorite toys.
One weird recent trend is the way many Americans have started pronouncing the plural of the word "process" as though that word is a Greek-form word like crisis, thesis, ellipsis, basis, diagnosis, oasis and axis, which take their plural in -es (crises, theses, axes, etc.) pronounced with a long e (EEZ like "ease"). These words have come directly into English from Greek via Latin and retain their Latin 3rd/5th declension plural forms, just as many technical terms do (mensis, menses, synapsis, synapses, etc.). Prcocess , in contrast, followed the commoner route of Latin-derived words, via Norman/Middle French in the 11th-13th centuries. Thus, for instance, successes, messes, distresses, tresses, dresses, countesses, duresses, confesses, stresses, processes, excesses, etc., with the short-I kit pronunciation. Many Americans do pronounce processes in this way, but the peculiar "processEEZ" pronounciation is spreading in the broadcast media.
Agh this is so true! Probably just because it’s marginally easier to pronounce, though.
A fun fact with "coup de grace" is that the _plural_ of it is "coups de graces", and the way the pronunciation changes as a result is it goes from "coo de grass" to "coop de grass". Adding the "s" means now you have to pronounce the "p"...but _not_ the s itself.
'Coup' and 'coups' are pronounced identically in French.
source? Because I don't think that's true
@@lapis_lazuli578 yeah it's not true. I was repeating something that I had heard elsewhere that I have since learnt was incorrect
Just saw a show where a "professional" anthropologist said "Nucular technology." I instantly lost respect for her. That one is a pet peeve for me.😅
Well done, Doctor! Not only are humans separated by language but by dialect and its pronunciations as well.
1:12 The french word for "what" is not "que" but "quoi". The english equivalent of "que" would be something like "that".
It's like "The cat that I was petting was very friendly" would be "Le chat que je flattais était très amical.
No, there are no fewer than 5 ways to say WHAT in French.
QUE veux-tu? = WHAT do you want? QUEL est ton nom? = WHAT is your name?
QU’EST-CE QUE nous mangeons? = WHAT are we eating?
QU’EST-CE QUI se passe? = WHAT’s happening?
QUOI is usually more of an injection.
Il a décidé de quitter sa femme. -QUOI?! = He decided to leave his wife. -WHAT?!
QUE on the other hand can also be a relative pronoun which you illustrated in your cat example.
QUE is also a conjunction.
Je pense QUE le français est une langue difficile. 😊
Ah oui c'est vrai ahah, Je suis Quebecois alors il est rare d'utilisé le QUE de cet manière meme si c'est grammaticalement acceptable. Par exemple, dans la langue courante, les gens vont plus dire «tu veux quoi?» au lieu de «que veux tu?»@@aegrant100
All of this reminds me of how natives of Quebec say their city name. We always said "kwee-bec" but when I went there I discovered that they say "Ka-bec".
I absolutely love this series. The narrator also has a very easy to understand accent which makes these videos even more enjoyable.
This is only the second video I've found with Dr. Brozovsky and I can tell I'm going to be clicking on anything with her from now on. FASCINATING stuff.
I think I weirdly just met my best friend soulmate. You just taught me so much in this 1 video. Thank you, and I love the 90s background. Feel like I'm watching that old-school kids' science television show. I have a thing for last names due to mine being smith. Thanks for the awesome content. I'm gonna watch this probably like 4 more times because I couldn't take it all in fast enough.
Have you guys done a video about the poem “the chaos” that represents all the craziness of the English language? You can also reference “Ghoti” which is an alternative spelling of fish.
I was really hoping to see something mentioned about the word "FRUSTRATED" because that is one that really sets me off when it is sed wrong. People will say "FUSTRATED" or "FLUSTRATED" and both of those are so horrible to hear. I have worked very hard on trying to let it pass when people do it, but inside it is absolutely like nails on a chalkboard.
Another one is SPECIFIC when people say PACIFIC.
It drives me nuts when people say "eXspresso", THERE IS NOT AN X IN ESPRESSO. The same goes for escape. A lot of people say exscape, my head wants to explode.
I'm totally new to these videos but I've always had a fascination with linguistics. You explain it so well and make it cute and fun at the same time. Thank you so much Dr. Brozovsky!
Thanks for the spotlight on Yoruba language. The tonal differences, makes for hillarious conversation between new learners and native speakers.
I’ve always thought it was cute and funny to pronounce animal like “aminal”. Now that’s just how my daughter says it, and it’s more adorable than ever! ❤🖤
The segue on the Segway killed me.
Thanks for reminding me that language isn't fixed in time or place. I remember correcting people who pronounced the element Al "aluminium" for when I was younger ... until I found out it was a north-american-specific misprint. Both are accepted (here in Canada, at least), so I've tried to retrain myself to say aluminium to honour the namers.
lol you almost had it, unless your misuse of the word "misprint" was sarcasm
I almost always say "emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble" and that mis-emphasis has been slowly creeping into the rest of my speech
My family pronunciation of Lamington (as in the cake) is "lemmington". Which kind of makes more sense somehow for a food item, even though they're not lemon flavoured.
1:32 "Expresso" goes back at least 60+ years, with the British play of 1958 _Expresso Bongo,_ and UK film the following year.
1:00 Me too! Well, cha-oose more like. But yeah, got super confused until I think it was in choir we were singing a song with the word "chaos" in it and I got really confused why everyone was saying the (as far as I was aware) different but similar word kaos (that turns out I'd only ever heard aloud before) instead 😅
In early highschool I read aloud that "honey is vicious" in chemistry
Id never even heard the word viscous before
This is why I appreciate Spanish. How it's spelled is how it's pronounced.
No silent letters, no weird combinations like slough is pronounced SLUFF but bough rhymes with COW and cough is pronounced KAWF.
A good friend of mine from southern Kentucky grew up with those around her prounouncing applique as appleek.