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There is a plant called cotoneaster, which, as a gardening-lover, I come across all the time and have even grown it. I don;t think I am alone in thinking it was cotton-easter.
It's actually pronounced kuh-TOE-nee-aster.
I heard the name before I ever saw it in print so I didn't have that mistake. But if I'd seen it on a sign at the garden center first I would definitely have pronounced it cotton-easter.
Years ago when I worked at US Steel we would have weekly Safe Job Procedures presented. This amounted to our boss reading in monotone a page long instruction sheet. He wasn't overly educated and we looked forward to his mangling of the English language. This one was his best. "Always remove any debris from the work area. When it comes to safety, make no compromises."
Well, it came out:Remove all derbis. Make no com promises.
Macabre and hyperbole. I thought it was mac-a bray and hyper-bowl. Thank goodness for the online dictionaries that have voice pronunciation!
Same here with macabre. Another word that I still have to force myself to pronounce correctly is "cache". I always want to either make it sound French, with a softer "sh" and a long a on the end, or with a softer a in the middle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vectoris
haha me too with hyper-bowl!
I think we who read a lot more than we listen, are apt to do more of this.
Perhaps that's it. I spent a lot of time alone in the boonies in my late teens, and read a lot. Reading wasn't a common hobby around the community, so obscure words weren't commonly said. Hard to learn pronunciation from context.
Nuclear. Pronounced it NU-cu-lar.
And the proper noun, Penelope. Pronounced it PEN-uh-lope.
And for a long time, I didn't know the difference between "antidote" and "anecdote." I pronounced both of them as "antidote."
And my favorite: wasp. I thought all of the other little kids just could pronounce their r's. I thought I was the only one pronouncing the word correctly, and I was saying "rosp."
When I was in 10th grade (which was a very long time ago), my English teacher was newly-arrived from her former post at a parochial high school, and she assured us that we now had a highly competent teacher.
One day, she had us taking turns reading aloud, and a girl stumbled over the pronunciation of Yosemite. The teacher proudly announced, That is pronounced Yose-might, my dear.
At the ripe old age of 15, I knew that Mrs. Forrester was wrong, and as the school year progressed, she gave us other examples of tortured pronunciation. So, even being born in The US doesn't guarantee correct pronunciation of words like "Yosemite".
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