What amusing mis-pronunciations have you heard?

[Perknose]

This fucktard vocabulary "word a day" beaver-boy I once had the misfortune to work with pronounced posthumous as "post HEW muss." I intentionally did not clue him in.

But the dead nuts funniest was on Crete. My buddy and I were hitch-hiking down to the south coast, looking for work after the olive harvesting season had ended in the middle of Crete. Hitch-hiking on roads with NO cars all day long consisted of hiking from small village to small village, punctuated by the only two rides we got . . . on donkeys!

Anway, we get down to just above Arvi, still up in the mountains, and we're talking to this enthusiastic Greek guy. No work, but he's sure as hell trying to tell us something cool and important.

We just aren't getting it, and he's getting more and more frustrated and even MAD. He kept saying sheen, sheen, sheen. I knew some Greek by that time, but this guy wasn't all that bright and I didn't yet know enough Greek.

This went on for the longest damned time. He was getting so angry, I thought he might attack us (ok, not really, but he was PISSED!)

It finally dawned on us that he was trying to say the English word Chicken, which might have made more sense if we'd been talking about food, which we hadn't been! D:

 

[JujuFish]

The correct way. An 'I' followed by a single consonant then another vowel has a long sound.

What f'ed up way do Brits pronounce capillary?

So you pronounce intimate as in-tie-mate? Or definite as def-eye-night?

 

[Soundmanred]

He kept saying sheen, sheen, sheen. It finally dawned on us that he was trying to say the English word Chicken

Omg !! Funny dude , im fuckin' laugin' like an hour

 

[wheresmybacon]

WTF@:

volumptuous = voluptuous
warsh = wash

Chicagoans pronunciation of the o vowel:

Todd = Tadd
Mom = Mam

This isn't pronunciation, just a weird regional oddity. Some folks from the South refer to any type of soda/soft drink as a Coke:

"Hey y'all pick up some Cokes at the store. What kind of Cokes? Get me some Diet Rite and Mt. Dew, and get whatever else kind of Cokes y'all want."

 

[wheresmybacon]

This fucktard vocabulary "word a day" beaver-boy I once had the misfortune to work with pronounced posthumous as "post HEW muss." I intentionally did not clue him in.

But the dead nuts funniest was on Crete. My buddy and I were hitch-hiking down to the south coast, looking for work after the olive harvesting season had ended in the middle of Crete. Hitch-hiking on roads with NO cars all day long consisted of hiking from small village to small village, punctuated by the only two rides we got . . . on donkeys!

Anway, we get down to just above Arvi, still up in the mountains, and we're talking to this enthusiastic Greek guy. No work, but he's sure as hell trying to tell us something cool and important.

We just aren't getting it, and he's getting more and more frustrated and even MAD. He kept saying sheen, sheen, sheen. I knew some Greek by that time, but this guy wasn't all that bright and I didn't yet know enough Greek.

This went on for the longest damned time. He was getting so angry, I thought he might attack us (ok, not really, but he was PISSED!)

It finally dawned on us that he was trying to say the English word Chicken, which might have made more sense if we'd been talking about food, which we hadn't been! D:

LMAO @ Sheen. Nice

 

[ShawnD1]

"Hey y'all pick up some Cokes at the store. What kind of Cokes? Get me some Diet Rite and Mt. Dew, and get whatever else kind of Cokes y'all want."

Sometimes there are differences like cap-ill-air-e vs cap-ill-uh-ree then sometimes there are people who are just flat out retarded.

I'm gonna go buy me a Ford truck. One of them Toyota Corolla type of Ford trucks.
D:

 

[Printer Bandit]

What was that meant to be?

let's get out of dodge?

 

[Arcadio]

I listen to BBC news frequently on NPR, and for some reason hearing 'Asia' pronounced 'Asiar', or 'China' pronounced 'Chiner', etc, always gives me the giggles.

Motherfucking this. Why do they add an "r" sound at the end of words?

 

[ShawnD1]

Motherfucking this. Why do they add an "r" sound at the end of words?

you mean they don't do that over in ameriker?

 

[dainthomas]

So you pronounce intimate as in-tie-mate? Or definite as def-eye-night?

Yes I do.

 

[wheresmybacon]

Americans do an awesome job on Leicester. So we got that goin for us. Which is nice.

 

[bobdole369]

Noone (not even NB) mentioned "al-you-min-i-um" yet? I was chastised once by a South African ship's Mate for calling it "al-oo-min-um" as we say here in the States.

Comp-u-Pack (Compaq)
Mode-i-um (modem) no fuckin clue
Shckrimp (shrimp) wtf?
Linoveum (Lenovo)

 

[Bill Brasky]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=112258&highlight=threed

Threed... lol

 

[cronos]

Noone (not even NB) mentioned "al-you-min-i-um" yet? I was chastised once by a South African ship's Mate for calling it "al-oo-min-um" as we say here in the States.

That's not a pronunciation problem though, there are two different spellings of the same word.

Oh and yes, it was mentioned.

 

[HN]

"cheese!" (jeez)

 

[Perknose]

Originally Posted by HAL9000
How do you pronounce privacy or capillary then?The correct way. An 'I' followed by a single consonant then another vowel has a long sound.

What f'ed up way do Brits pronounce capillary?

Ha ha, I can't remember hearing the word from my time there, but I suspect they pronounce it with a 'i' like in "his" and with emphasis on the second syllable, as in cap ILL aree.

That emphasis on the second syllable marks a ton of different English vs American pronunciations. Think of how differently they pronounce renaissance!

During the first Gulf War, that big asshole General Blackhead (pimple), otherwise knows as Gen. Norman Schwarzkoph, pronounced his Herculean task Her CUE lee an. I instantly thought of the guy as just another semi-literate blowhard, but it could have been he was just palling around with some Brit brass and picked it up from them.

Remember how we Americans ALL used to pronounce Jaguar cars Jag wahr? Somehow, sometime shortly after that Gulf War, when mainly we and the Brits re-took what they called Cue wait back from what many ignorant Americans still call the EYE rack ees, we started to pronounce Jag U are autos just like the Brits do.

 

[Arkaign]

I learned the other day listening to 'A way with words' (NPR program focusing on pronunciation/grammar/all kinds of cool stuff) that I and most of the people I've ever known have been pronouncing 'Forte' completely incorrect. Appartently the 'E' is silent, so it sounds like Fort. I much prefer the 'For-te' two-syllable pronunciation.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

i can't find the brit pronounciation of capillary but its very retarded.

 

[BornStar]

My linear algebra professor pronounced "subtraction" as "substraction" and my history professor pronounced "ethnicity" as "ethnicicity." They were both very distracting although I could excuse the linear algebra professor since he was Chinese, the history professor was American.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

My friend pronounces burgundy as

Ber - Gundy

Jamba juice as JAM-ba not Jahmba.. as in samba/mamba

i've also heard milk as mulk

 

[Moonbeam]

I heard a US Senator describe some exaggeraton as hyperbowl.

 

[AFurryReptile]

Just today I was resetting a password for somebody who told me that her password had an "explanation" point at the end of it. Over the course of the convo she also called it an "exclanation" point and real slowly an "ex-cla-tion" point.

Young, blond, and hot though; I didn't correct her.

 

[mmntech]

Milk pronounced as melk drives me crazy.

My dad has a bad habit of not being able to articulate "o" as an "ah" sound. Says it as a hard "a" instead. So golf becomes galf and hot = hat.

When Titanic came out, there was an old dude in my Grandma's building that called it that Tit-ick movie.

 

[sactoking]

Artisans => ar-TEE-shuns
Gondola => gon-DO-la

 

[sactoking]

I learned the other day listening to 'A way with words' (NPR program focusing on pronunciation/grammar/all kinds of cool stuff) that I and most of the people I've ever known have been pronouncing 'Forte' completely incorrect. Appartently the 'E' is silent, so it sounds like Fort. I much prefer the 'For-te' two-syllable pronunciation.

The NPR people must not know that the term is Italian and the pronunciation is multisyllabic. Did nobody at NPR ever study music?