Favorite Mispronunciations you have heard

[Papa]

I sell Broad Band service for a living, and over the last couple of years I've been keeping track when people mangle the word "Broad Band" or mix the term with other words. Here are my favorites:

Broad Ball

Road Band

Broadwidth Band

High Band

Broad Net

Broad Wire

High Speed Band

Broad Brand

Broad Board

Broad Guage

Wide Band

Broad Span

Broad Bait

Broad Line

Broad Land

Bride Brand

Broad Banded

High Runner

[eyesroll]

1. Mis-pro-NOUN-ciation

My last name gets mangled a lot.

It's Whitacre. It's pronounced exactly as it looks. There are no umlauts, silent letters, dipthongs. Wit-uh-ker. (Whit - acre is tolerable to me, although Vince would probably disagree. White-acre is not.)

My maiden name, Rosenzweig, got massacred regularly as well. It's also phoenetic -- Rose -in -swIg (I = eye). But I'd get rahz-in-wig; rosel-white; Ro-ro-um, to hell with it, Stacie.

[Richardo]

2. "remark on this, whittaker walt"

Alan Arkin, The Russians Are Coming

That's what I think of whenever I see your posts, or Whitacre_D_WI's ;-)

[lovedems]

3. An aquaintance of mine a few years back was telling me the story

line of a movie she had seen in which one of the characters got their head "decaffeinated".

That same person (obviously not very bright) was telling me that she was "persuing" a magazine article and came across some useful information...

[Richardo]

4. A former colleague said "DER-biss" when he meant "debris"

...and "fruitation" when he meant "fruition".

And he wasn't trying to be funny. :eyes:

[fudge stripe cookays]

23. A friend told me about a farmer who saw a plane crash and said "derbis"

on TV. Now I use it all the time for a laugh.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

5. Chloresterol

newk-ewe-lur (My 5 year old can pronounce that correctly)

[Westegg]

8. Jimmy Carter also mispronounced "new-kew-lurr"

...Fair is fair. Hell, if we even the playing field, we still win.

Or so I hope.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

13. The difference between Jimmy and *, is

I can forgive Jimmy. :7

[Tims]

14. but at least

he knew what it meant. He was trained as a "new-kew-lurr" engineer.

[Jeebo]

6. How about "subliminable"?

"Misunderestimated"? "Grecians"?

C'mon folks, we're all Bush-bashers here, aren't we?

Ron

[Screaming Lord Byron]

7. My mum proudly annouced to me she had just gotten Breadboard

for her computer.

[nini]

9. Jalepeno.... Sepulveda

Jalepeno - was pronounced Jap-A-leenee :shrug:

Sepulveda was SUH pool vee dah

the jalepeno one was classic.. I had to turn around so the kid working the counter at the place the lady was asking for this wouldn't laugh. It took us both a while to figure out what she was talking about.

[GumboYaYa]

10. I had a guy try to sell me mild and moldew cleaner one time.

[zanana]

11. joolery!

How hard is it to pronounce jewelry! Also, "fith" instead of "fifth". Some people have a bad case of lazy mouth.

[Jeebo]

12. Most people mispronounce "salmon"...

...they pronounce it as if it were spelled "sammon". C'mon, folks, there's an "l" in it! I pronounce the "l" and I occasionally hear somebody else do so, too.

Ron

[Tims]

17. most words with "alm"

the "L" is indeed silent, including salmon. Look them up.

almond
Psalm
palm
alms
balm
calm

Do you pronounce the "T" in often? There are a lot of silent letters in the English language.

[Jeebo]

28. I pronounce the "l" in all those words you mentioned...

...and I always have, and I know lots of people if not most do. And besides, the words you listed are not comparable to "salmon" because they all have a different "a" vowel sound. And no, I don't usually pronounce the "t" in "often", although occasionally I do.

Ron

[tishaLA]

15. I always say

lie-berry instead of library just to piss people off (and hear them start to correct me, like they are the great protectors of the English language or something).

[bobthedrummer]

16. I duck and cover whenever George W. Bush tries to say "nuclear".

:nuke:

[ScreamingMeemie]

18. My father in law called Pensacola Florida PepsiCola Florida and my sister

in law uses Phantom instead of fathom...i.e. I cannot phantom what will happen next week when Diane hears about this.... That one drives me nuts because she thinks she is smart. :hi:

[Screaming Lord Byron]

19. Woman in our office always says 'madyanna' when she leaves for the day

we think she's trying to say manana.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

20. Binoculators

That's what my older boy called them when he was little.

[KamaAina]

21. Us haoles have a way of mangling Hawaiian place names

You just know someone is so new she still has stuff at baggage claim if she refers to Likelike Highway (LEE-kay-LEE-kay), running between Honolulu and Kane'ohe across the Ko'olau range, as "like-like".

[fudge stripe cookays]

22. Pierogies class

It's what reprehensor calls that workout thing I do.

[geniph]

24. My mother pronounced "tampon" as "tampoon"

which made me afraid to use them for years - sounded too much like "harpoon"!

I heard a woman in a Taco Time once trying to order chimichangas: "Gimme a couple of them chimmy changlee things."

It drives me berserk when people say "prostrate" when they mean "prostate."

A woman I used to work was forever using the term "myriad." It was bad enough that she used it for anything that referred to more than two, but she pronounced it "MY RAID." Made me nuts. Look, if you can't pronounce the word, stick to "lots"!

[mac56]

25. A college radio announcer I worked with...

got all artistic and used the word "facade". But he pronounced it "fuh-KADE".

LOL

[bucknaked]

26. Self-defecating, instead of self-deprecating (humor)..

Oh my GOD! When I heard that once, I just could not stop laughing! Man, I cracking up right now, thinking of it!

[southpaw]

27. Busghetti or Pasketti (for spaghetti)