What do you think is the most mispronounced word in English

[justusforus]

In replying to another friend, I mentioned President Bush and his mispronunciation of the word "nuclear".  Instead of it sounding like "nuke-clee-ar" he (and many others either picked it up or I noticed it) pronounced it "nuke-you-lar".  Is there a word that is either a pet peeve or that you notice is often mispronounced?

[linguaholic]

Well, I am not a native speaker of English and therefore I can only speak for non native-speakers, but I guess that is equally interesting  :wacky:

A lot of people (at least here in Switzerland) are having problems pronouncing "Pirates of the Caribbean"

they put the stress on "beeeaan". Whereas the stress should be on the "ri" part of the word. Or maybe even both pronunciations are possible? I just checked the audio on dict.cc and there you can get audio samples for caribbean and I was surprised to find out that you can find both pronunciations. :frozen:

[Alfonso]

Its got to be Uranus. People used to pronounce it as \  yu̇-ˈrā-nəs\ but I guess because of so many people were making fun of the name they changed it to \ˈyu̇r-ə-nəs\.

[LauraM]

Yes, I can think of words that I hear mispronounced frequently. 

For instance," February."  It's hard to pronounce and it often winds up sounding like Feb-yoo-ary, as people don't pronounce the first "r."  It should be Feb-roo-ary. 

There's also "escape" which is sometimes mispronounced as "ex-cape" but it should be an "s" sound, not an "x" sound. 

I also hear "often" mispronounced sometimes.  The "t" is silent; it should be "of-fen." 

[MyDigitalpoint]

I believe that among the most mispronounced English words, are those words that start with"h"

I believe this comes from the number of Spanish and German speakers that relocated, work or study temporary in the United States.

In Spanish and German, H has no sound, words starting with this consonant are pronounced as starting with the first vowel, in example, history (gistory) is pronounced (eestory)

Now, one of the most misspelled word I have seen is neice or nice instead of niece

[nkaujntses]

Chaos: Many mispronounce it as how it looks when it's supposed to be pronounced as "kay-oss."

Colonel: Growing up, I've always mispronounce it as "colonial." "But that's how it's spelled!" I would argue. The correct way to say it is "kernel."

[SpiralArchitect]

For some reason, people here in India never seem to get the word monotonous right. Even my English teacher in school pronounced it as mono - tonas instead of in a flow as monotonous. Admittedly, its a difficult word for non-natives, still pretty annoying.

[zambothegreat]

Yes, I can think of words that I hear mispronounced frequently. 

For instance," February."  It's hard to pronounce and it often winds up sounding like Feb-yoo-ary, as people don't pronounce the first "r."  It should be Feb-roo-ary.

I was going to bring that up, in addition to "library". Library is definitely easier to pronounce than February, but many people pronounce it as "ly-bary", which makes them sound plain stupid.

[JoeDirt]

Since I'm not a native English speaker, I'm only gonna talk about non-natives. The most mispronounced English word I hear is "beautiful" believe it or not, they pronounce it "buryful" or 'bautiful'...

[rgaz83]

Well, I am not a native speaker of English and therefore I can only speak for non native-speakers, but I guess that is equally interesting  :wacky:

A lot of people (at least here in Switzerland) are having problems pronouncing "Pirates of the Caribbean"

they put the stress on "beeeaan". Whereas the stress should be on the "ri" part of the word. Or maybe even both pronunciations are possible? I just checked the audio on dict.cc and there you can get audio samples for caribbean and I was surprised to find out that you can find both pronunciations. :frozen:

I think it depends on where you're from as to which pronunciation you use. There are a couple other words like that (which escape me at the moment), where neither pronunciation is "wrong". But, to my English-speaking ear, both ways of saying Caribbean are equally valid. If you actually go TO the Caribbean, they'd probably pronounce it one way or the other, but I don't know which way that'd be.  :grin:

[mccanono]

Most foreign students would read "Choir" as /tsoir/

[Dame6089]

I catch myself saying "scuse me" a lot. Not sure this is a mispronunciation as much as it is my dialect. I know it is "excuse me", but I have generally slurred it to "scuse me" my entire life. As long as people get the idea, I don't think it matters much.

[davidexct]

I am from India and English language is not givenuch priority here, so people here mis pronounce many of they words here. The one I remember is there and their, most of the people here pronounce both of these words similarly. Many more words exist which are mispronounced here.

[Amatenshi]

In replying to another friend, I mentioned President Bush and his mispronunciation of the word "nuclear".  Instead of it sounding like "nuke-clee-ar" he (and many others either picked it up or I noticed it) pronounced it "nuke-you-lar".  Is there a word that is either a pet peeve or that you notice is often mispronounced?

I thought that was mostly Republican politicians who mispronounced "nuclear" as "nucular" on TV. As for what I think people mispronounce often, I can't think of anything other than "February", because it's a subconscious (and very common) thing. It also depends on where you are, because of dialect and accent. For example, you might go to New York, and hear someone say, "Can I ax (ask) you something?"

[Baburra]

I just thought of one. I hear a lot of people mispronouncing the word "shepherd" often. I usually hear people say "she-ferd" instead of the correct pronunciation which is "she-Perd" wherein the "H" is disregarded altogether.

[Denis Hard]

I listen to a lot of pod-casts dealing with exams, online degrees and so on. What I've ever failed to notice is that most people mispronounce the word "Candidate" as:

Can-a-dit. instead of

ˈkændɪdət

They omit the second "D."

[broknkyboard]

I think it could be 'Library', I've heard so many people pronounce it as Lie-bary, or put too much stress on the 'ra' instead if the 'li'. It should be 'Lie-braery' phonetically.

[Monox D. I-Fly]

On 10/5/2013 at 4:29 PM, Alfonso said:

Its got to be Uranus. People used to pronounce it as \  yu̇-ˈrā-nəs\ but I guess because of so many people were making fun of the name they changed it to \ˈyu̇r-ə-nəs\.

I thought Uranus isn't pronounced with "y". At first I thought that's how my native language read it until I knew that native English speaker pronounced it as "Yuranus". However, when I read Sailor Moon manga in Japanese, the name "Sailor Uranus" is written in Katakana as "Seeraa Uranusu" instead of "Seeraa Yuranusu". Then again, Japanese aren't that good in English either.