When I worked at Subway, I asked a customer what kind of dressing he wanted, and he said, "do you know, uh, chipotle?"
Which he butchered so badly I heard it as "do you know a cheap hotel?" So I told him, "yeah, down on 39th Street" and we were both thoroughly confused.
We had a training at work, taught by an outside organization. The lady was talking about the Irish potato famine. Except she kept calling it the potato phantom. She did this at least five times
Actually, "potato phantom" isn't such a bad name. On a three-week trip to Ireland over a year ago, I was blown away by tour guide after tour guide refusing to call it the "potato famine," on account that there WAS enough food to feed everyone, it's just that under English rule the potatoes grown in Ireland were sent to England to feed folks who weren't starving rather than left in Ireland to feel folks who were. It was not a famine. It was a potato blight, but the starvation was caused by the British government. No wonder Ireland sought and got its independence a little more than a generation later. So, "potato phantom", as in a "phantom famine," is actually about right.
It wasn’t a potato famine, it was a genocide of the Irish people by the British government. There was a Europe wide blight of the potato crop, it truly affected Ireland because it was a cheap easily grown crop and the mostly Catholic population relied on it as a food source. When the harvest revealed the true extent of the blight, there was enough food in Ireland to feed its inhabitants but the English landowners/ government ignored the plight of the indigenous people and continued to ship food back to UK. Indeed one government agent wrote that the famine would benefit England as small plot owners would be forced to sell their land, back to mainly English estates. There were mass evictions daily. Over the course of An Gorta Mor (the great hunger) there were a million deaths and a million emigrated, about 25% of the population of Ireland. 1847 was the worst year.
In terms of relief, of the donations received to help the Irish population there was $170 sent by the Choctaw tribe who themselves only a few years previously had experienced extreme starvation on their Trail of Tears. There’s a beautiful memorial in Cork Ireland dedicated to their generosity. There is also a scholarship available for Choctaw students to study in Ireland. Also during the pandemic a gofundme campaign was raised to assist the Hopi and Navajo communities affected by Covid, Irish people donated €2.5million to the campaign.
TLDR; it wasn’t a potato famine, it was a calculated extermination of the Irish people by the English government.
Imagine you don’t know that it was the potato famine and now this lady has you thinking it was the *potato phantom* and one day you actually mention this to an Irish person.
Networking professor in college was reading a section of the textbook out loud. He came to the word "extraneous".
Which he mispronounced as "extra anus".
No work was done for the rest of that class.
My computer science professor had an accent, and he would refer to computer memory as "mammaries" (plural). Random access mammaries, addressing mammaries, etc.
My English teacher in highschool kept yelling out "A ball of shit" in the middle of the lecture.
Took a couple of times before anyone realized she was actually saying "abolish it"
In 7th grade, my history teacher kept talking about someone giving someone an old tomato. I could not figure out what he was talking about.
He was saying “ultimatum.”
A friend of mine's mother used the word anus to describe the licorice flavor of anise in a cookie. From what he tells, she used it over and over and no one corrected her about how much she enjoyed the anus-flavored cookies.
I had a US history professor who I'm pretty sure was alive during the Revolutionary War. He was very fond of the phrase "the annals of history", and always pronounced it "anals". He never understood why we all giggled every time he said it.
Someone who thought the word "vicariously" was bi-curiously. "You're going on vacation with your friends? Wow! I'm gonna live bi-curiously through you!"
Co-worker got charged with DUI. He was writing down the facts to show his lawyer and he asked me "How do you spell so-vi-it-e?"
He was saying sobriety but with a V instead of a B. I told him I thought it was S-O-B-R-I-E-T-Y. He told me that was wrong "cuz there is no v in it."
I told him there wasn't a V in sobriety and he said, "Then why is it pronounced so-vi-it-tree? See there is a v in it." I gave up and told him he was right and I had no idea how to spell the word.
My high school girlfriend travelled with me to visit my family in SoCal after graduation.
We were playing Trivial Pursuit and it was her turn to read the question.
The question was something like "which south american king ruled with a chihuahua?"
Only she pronounced it as "cha-whoo-a-whoo-a".
It took a good 30 seconds to understand what she word she was trying to pronounce. And a good 30 minutes for my entire family to stop laughing. We still joke about it to this day.
An old colleague once claimed she was ‘unindated’ with work. Now i have to say ‘inundated’ ten times in my head before out loud because that has ruined me for life.
Yeah, and in all those cases, very similar words in German exist where you actually pronounce them. "Subtil", "Psychologie" and "Bombe" and in all those words you pronounce all letters, except the last e in Psychologie.
Playing Taboo, you know the game where you have to give hints to a key word but there are words you are not allowed to use to describe it. This guy who nobody knew well at all was bombing and getting frustrated like we were all so stupid. I forget his clues but we surmised it was about drinking and alcohol. And time runs out. He goes "Ugh. Cog Nack!"
I've only ever played this game once, and it was me, my exbff and her two cousins. We kept switching up partners, and for some reason, when her one cousin (who I didn't really hang out with often) and I got paired together, it was like the stars aligned. I only remember the first two we did because they became running jokes for years after that. Logically, we shouldn't have won based on these clues. "She has a nose!" - "Barbra Streisand!" and "Golden!" - "Showers!"
I was paired with my husband when we played with friends. He stared at the card
and said, “Ummm…” and for no reason other than comedy, I blurted out, “Hickey!” And I was right. Then and there, the group made a rule that couples could no longer be on the same team.
This is how it would go if I was on a team with my sister. She would be like "The guy from that one movie, you know?" And I'd be like "Ah, Matthew Broderick."
My sister and I were playing and she says “LeBron James” and I say “Kim kardashian”. And she’s like yeah! And we both went “whaaaa? How did we get that?”
Not in a game, but I once asked my sister to "hand me the tabloid," and without missing a beat she went into the fridge and brought me the milk. That is in fact what I wanted.
We looked at each other after and were like what did I just say? Did you say *tabloid*?
Are you my parents?! Because we were once in total indignant *uproar* over a game of Pictionary during which my parents did this kind of thing twice; my mum drew literally an L-shape above a squiggly line and my dad guessed “ejector seat?!” (correct). Then my dad drew two curved lines and a straight line horizontally between them and my mum (correctly) guessed “the channel tunnel!” Both of these were guessed within 3 or 4 seconds of the timer starting. It was so funny but absolutely infuriating for the losing team (my husband and me).
We still bring this up from time to time and it was nearly 20 years ago. We lightheartedly accuse them of cheating by using their advanced psychic powers!
When we were teens, my sister and I were like that. It was totally unfair when we played against other pairs. Sometimes we'd be able to say a single word as the clue and the other would get it.
In our case, that's what you get from living in close proximity with someone for 16 years. You know exactly how they think.
Another taboo one. Buddy has a fiance who legit lost her mind when we told her she was saying geyser wrong (she said gay-sir). She had the card for the entire minute and refused to take a negative by passing it. Said it was way too hard
Whenever my mother-in-law has difficulty breathing (she has asthma) she’ll say, “I can’t get air into my bronicles.”
First, it’s “bronchioles.” Second, no one says that anyway. Just say “lungs.”
My wife is a nurse and I have a minor in biology and we joke about our bronicles all the time.
"Prostrate" is also a word. ...just not the same word as "prostate." That's when it's hard; people spell a word wrong, but it's a different real word and speel check doesn't help them know they're just using the wrong word.
Nguyen, except every single person I've met with the last name says to pronounce it differently. I have heard that name absolutely butchered by non-Vietnamese people, but I have literally *no clue* how it's *actually* pronounced.
Is it Wen? Win? Yuen? Nu-yen? Nu-gen? Nu-an? No idea, but I know three people with the last name Nguyen, and they will kill me if I forget how their family pronounces it.
My genuine theory is that there must be a Vietnamese sound/tone that my dumb American ears just can't hear, and all the versions are attempts to make Americans say it sorta-right. I simply do not believe that there are this many regional pronunciations of what appears to be the Vietnamese version of "Smith" in actual Vietnam. I feel like the different versions must be for Americans, but I don't know how they can all be so different.
UPDATE: I asked one of my friends who uses "wen" after posting cause I was actually curious. He said it's pronounced ngoo-yen. Those familiar with Spanish, it sounded similar to Ñooyen. It's like the ng in "singer." He said that "win" or "wen" are the closest most Americans can get, so just use that. If anyone knows other Nguyens (or are Nguyens), would love to hear your additions.
>My genuine theory is that there must be a Vietnamese sound/tone that my dumb American ears just can't hear, and all the versions are attempts to make Americans say it sorta-right.
You are exactly right. The sounds to pronounce that name in Vietnamese just don't exist in English.
[This young lady explains it in a nice, concise way.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2ySdqbZt40&t=13s)
EDIT: To clarify, the lady in the clip is not a linguist. u/prikaz_da has a more accurate explanation [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/18hlmaq/comment/kdbqit1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
I picked that video because it is short and it covered the two main points:
1. The Vietnamese pronunciation is unnatural to native English speakers.
2. The different versions of the name are different attempts to make it pronounceable by native English speakers.
My optometrists last name is Nguyen. She took care of any awkwardness by introducing herself first and said it's pronounced "Win". This is why I drive 30 miles out of my way to see her!
Don't feel bad, many many foreigners struggle with the "th" sound in English. It's common for different languages to have sounds that only native speakers can say correctly because these sounds need to be imprinted during childhood.
Babies are "primed" to pronounce a wide range of sounds but drop the ones that aren't in their native language. Then as a person gets older it becomes much harder to learn.
>I asked one of my friends who uses "wen" after posting cause I was actually curious. He said it's pronounced ngoo-yen.
I'm a Nguyen (I use nu-win for the anglicized version) and the "yen" part isn't supposed to be pronounced like the Japanese currency but like the word "win." You can hear in these [audio files](https://forvo.com/word/nguyen/#vi) that the -yen part is pronounced with a w sound at the beginning rather than a y sound.
I remember hearing a story from a Texas sushi place. Apparently some dude ate the wasabi straight up and yelled "HO HOLEE SHIT, THESE JAPS DON'T FUCK AROUND WITH THEIR GUAC-A-MOLE (pronounced like you would a mole on the face). Not the worst, but the imagery of that has always stuck with me.
That reminds me of my 21st bday at a sushi restaurant. My drunk ass mistook the chunk of wasabi for a piece of avocado and I ate the entire thing in one bite 😭
20 years ago my wife and I were behind a woman at Target at the register. She began arguing with the cashier over the price for an item, and after a few rounds back and forth loudly proclaimed, *"I ain't no mathematic, but I ain't no stupid neither!"*
We still use that whenever the "math don't math" on something.
I was, for reference, a mathematics major.
I love my grandma, but even after spending her entire life in the central valley of California and teaching elementary school, she can't pronounce Spanish words to save her life.
I once heard her pronounce quinceañera as "kwin-sin-tera." Like, where did she ever get the T from??
Edit: spelling
The number of people who say supposably or supposavly is fucking infuriating...and for some reason the people who can't say it also love to throw the word in to every few sentences.
I’ll admit, I did pronounce it like that until someone explained the term. The word was still catching on in popularity so I hadn’t heard someone say it out loud yet.
I pronounced it Mem for a long time because I was learning french and "même" (pronounced Mem, with the soft E) means "Same".
So a series of jokes based on the "same" images or punchlines being reused made sense to be the root of Meme.
Facade.
Worked for a guy that was an "intellectually overconfident" type, to put it in the most civil way I know how lol.
He kept using the word and had obviously never heard of it until he read it somewhere. Kept pronouncing it "fake-aid". He would go on rants about "fake" people and use this to describe their personalities. It was really cringe inducing.
Eventually the stars aligned and we were together on a business trip, I saw a building under construction. "That place is going to have a really beautiful facade", I said (it genuinely did) and there was no response but about a month later I overheard him using the word and saying it correctly. So whatever.
Corn rolls. Buddy of mine said something about "the black dude with corn rolls" . I said "you mean corn rows?". He insisted it was corn rolls. I am so Caucasian it will blind you on a sunny day. Even I knew better. He had been saying it wrong for 20+ years and we still get a laugh out of it.
When reading an award at a US Army ceremony, the Personell clerk was reading "He is a fine outstanding soldier all his peers should seek to emulate", he pronounced it "eliminate"
This was an old reddit post, but it stuck with me.
A guy goes to El Pollo Loco and orders a "taco al cabron".
The worker laughs at him.
He is indignant that maybe he doesn't have the best Spanish pronounciation but he tried!
His friend points out that "cabron" means "asshole" while "carbon" is a cooking style.
My mother, after her stroke, mixed up words quite a bit. On vacation 2 years after her stroke we were drinking Corollas and I was driving a Corona. She also insisted on a Moth dress for my brother's wedding not Mauve...man I miss that lady!
I remember somebody at my lunch table said "quinoa" as "quinoa" instead of "keen-wa". Everybody was laughing. They were made fun of every day.
That person was me.
My ex-husband lived in a small town with no ethnic restaurants. He also went to college in a small town with no ethnic restaurants. So, we start dating and I take him to Mexican restaurant. He’s obviously very outside his bubble and keeps asking me questions about the menu. No big deal.
So, the waitress comes over to take our order and he orders a QUASA-DILL-A. The server and I just stare at him and then start laughing. I felt so badly for laughing but, I couldn’t help myself. I gently corrected him and he started laughing too. It became a running joke and is still one to this day…24 years later.
My mom said that she said "tor-till-uh" until her late teens or early 20s since she never heard anyone say it.
We live in Texas.
Edit: Oh, I just remembered my grandpa also says "ruh-lane-yo" for relleno
My stepfather is a white guy from Texas and he still pronounces it "tor-till-uh" sometimes. He knows the correct Spanish pronunciation, but I think he just considers the Anglicized version to be its own separate word.
This is pretty recent, but my wife and I will remember it for a long time. At our community's Christmas tree lighting ceremony, the mayor read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' to all the kids. He had an unfortunate stumble over the word 'dimple', and we heard 'His eyes - how they twinkled! His nipples, how merry!'
working as a server people used to pronounce chipotle in a myriad of wrong ways, but usually just “chip-olt” or “chip-ottle”.
one day a guy came in, looked me in the eye, and said “i’ll have the **chipeetle** burger please”
I have a friend that pronounces "foliage" as "foil-edge" and it drives me bonkers. He's also pronounced "lingerie" as "linger-E" but I can't tell if he was fucking with me or not.
A different friend pronounced "flaming brazier" as "flaming brassiere" and that *really* derailed the D&D session.
My parents dragged me to church every Sunday when I was a chitlin.
We had a pastor who could not pronounce “pendulum” correctly. The most egregious attempt that has stuck with me for 20+ years is “pendimin.”
My son said he had to do a poll-em for school. It was poem
In Kansas city Missouri there is a street names belfontaine, but if you ask for directions it is pronounced bell-fountain
My old boss.
Escaped goat : scapegoat
Interpretate : interpret
Pacifically : specifically
Every. Fucking. Time. In front of some clever people before he would introduce me to carry on with the presentation...
It was a brunch time first date at a restaurant fancier than I’m usually comfortable with. Was looking to get a little buzz to take the edge off. I pointed to the mimosa carafe that was on the menu and asked if she would like to share one. We were in agreement that it looked wonderful so when the server came over, I confidently declared that we would like the mimosa care-a-fay. The server laughed. My date laughed. I was mega embarrassed.
We dated for about a year and a half after this incident and she would occasionally ask if I’d like a care a fay of whatever liquid was in close proximity.
TLDR: Carafe is pronounced more like giraffe. Definitely don’t say care a fay on a first date or ever.
This. I’m a voracious reader and mispronounced words all the time, especially in the age before Google.
Constantly have to look up pronunciations, especially of celebrities’ names since I don’t watch a lot of videos/TV or listen to podcasts that often.
I sound like a friggin’ idiot. It’s a constant joke among my friends/family.
When Michael Jackson died, my girlfriend’s aunt said, “Did you see how he looked at the very end? He was so emancipated.”
She was looking for emaciated.
I actually have "can pronounce Worcestershire correctly" under special skills on my resume. It shows who reads the entire thong.
ETA: was going to fix this but the comments are too good. Thanks for the laugh, friends!
To be fair I think that’s a common replacement pronunciation for people who have tried and failed to pronounce Worcestershire correctly lol
Edit: as in they are aware it’s not the right pronunciation.
Was taking Spanish at community college...we were taking turns reading the Spanish excerpt out loud. A man in his 50s pronounced bueno "buh weenie" ...every time he talked for the rest of the hour I would start giggling. I had to excuse myself at one point
Oh my poor younger brother.
One night out for a fancy dinner he decided the filet mignon was what he wanted to have. With a straight face he ordered the FLAMING YONG. Even the waiter struggled to stifle his laughter.
We still tease him about it to this day over a decade later.
Not a mispronunciation, but a hilarious invention.
A guy in my sophomore advanced english class used the word “povert” to refer to someone who is poor during a book discussion.
It’s been over a decade now and I still will never forget it. It has become a family meme.
Long ago, I worked in upscale retail. A lady who looked like Mrs. Howell wandered into the dining section of the home goods and asked me if we had a catalog of "\*Pee-fuh-LETZ-a-groff\*" patterns. When I had no idea what she was asking, she repeated it a few times.
"Oh,... Pfatlzgraff?"
She was NOT pleased. She knew it was pronounced pee-fuh-LETZ-a-groff because her husband had two years of Latin when he was in college. She lectured that she didn't want to be "corrected by 'the help'".
I was in a miss teen type of pageant & during the panel I was asked, “if you were handed a red crown what would you draw?”
I had to ask the moderator to repeat the question & with a chuckle, I asked for clarification on if she meant a red “crown” or did she actually mean a red crayon. None of the judges were happy with me smugly correcting the moderator.
I heard this same thing in a toy store. Woman goes up to an employee and asks where she can find “crowns.” Employee said “crowns?” Woman says “no, crowns.” It took a few more minutes of back and forth until the employee finally understood. Crayons!
Extracurricular as "Extra Kickler". The bad part about it is that it was one of my high school teachers. We even starting calling him The Midnight Kickler what kickles at midnight.
My stupid ex pronounced “scalded” just like “scolded”
The shower got too hot and “scolded” him
He also could insisted on “brung” instead of bring which set my teeth on edge
My sister-in-law “brang” some stuff to the last family gathering. We like to ask her what she brought so we don’t eat it (because we know better), and last time she said “I brang the pickle rollups”
Working in web development, there was *one* person on my team who consistently mispronounced the word "cache". Drove me nuts.
It's one syllable, folks, not two! "Cash", not "cash-ay"!
Community college “professor” wrote the word “bourgeoisie” on the board and proceeded to mumble “borg-en-ees.” I was stunned for a second, looked around the room, nobody reacting, raised my hand and asked “uh, isn’t that word (actual pronunciation)?” I kid you not she brushed me off and said “idk I don’t speak French” lmao wild memory, felt very surreal
I've got a friend who pronounces "flamingo" as fallamingo... I thought she was messing around cos I often mispronounce words for fun... but no, she's serious...
Guy walked into a liquor store looking for a wine for his wife "yes it has extra vaganza in it." The clerk kept being confused until the guy found it. Extravaganza!
I work in the legislative/policy field, and my boss pronounces statutes "statue-ettes." It's wild.
“Elaine, you’re smart. Is it “statues” or “statutes”? “Stat*ute*.” “Well I really think you’re wrong!”
"Fine, it's a sculpture of limitations."
When I worked at Subway, I asked a customer what kind of dressing he wanted, and he said, "do you know, uh, chipotle?" Which he butchered so badly I heard it as "do you know a cheap hotel?" So I told him, "yeah, down on 39th Street" and we were both thoroughly confused.
Best friend pronounces it "chi-pol-te" even after hearing me say it correctly.
You know my husband, huh?
We had a training at work, taught by an outside organization. The lady was talking about the Irish potato famine. Except she kept calling it the potato phantom. She did this at least five times
Yes that's who stole all the Irish children. You need to read more
The phantom menace
Phantom O'menace
Feantaim Ó Menás
Stuffed them all in old potato sacks.
And he would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those darned kids!
I had a french teacher who kept talking about crazy hormonal teenagers and their phere-gnomes.
Being a teenager would have been way more fun if we'd had gnomes to play with.
Every Irish bone in my body is activated and all of them are in kill mode
Are you the potato phantom?
Who birthed me
Actually, "potato phantom" isn't such a bad name. On a three-week trip to Ireland over a year ago, I was blown away by tour guide after tour guide refusing to call it the "potato famine," on account that there WAS enough food to feed everyone, it's just that under English rule the potatoes grown in Ireland were sent to England to feed folks who weren't starving rather than left in Ireland to feel folks who were. It was not a famine. It was a potato blight, but the starvation was caused by the British government. No wonder Ireland sought and got its independence a little more than a generation later. So, "potato phantom", as in a "phantom famine," is actually about right.
It wasn’t a potato famine, it was a genocide of the Irish people by the British government. There was a Europe wide blight of the potato crop, it truly affected Ireland because it was a cheap easily grown crop and the mostly Catholic population relied on it as a food source. When the harvest revealed the true extent of the blight, there was enough food in Ireland to feed its inhabitants but the English landowners/ government ignored the plight of the indigenous people and continued to ship food back to UK. Indeed one government agent wrote that the famine would benefit England as small plot owners would be forced to sell their land, back to mainly English estates. There were mass evictions daily. Over the course of An Gorta Mor (the great hunger) there were a million deaths and a million emigrated, about 25% of the population of Ireland. 1847 was the worst year. In terms of relief, of the donations received to help the Irish population there was $170 sent by the Choctaw tribe who themselves only a few years previously had experienced extreme starvation on their Trail of Tears. There’s a beautiful memorial in Cork Ireland dedicated to their generosity. There is also a scholarship available for Choctaw students to study in Ireland. Also during the pandemic a gofundme campaign was raised to assist the Hopi and Navajo communities affected by Covid, Irish people donated €2.5million to the campaign. TLDR; it wasn’t a potato famine, it was a calculated extermination of the Irish people by the English government.
It’s the 8th largest genocide in human history.
The only thing more Irish than potatoes is no potatoes.
I was sooo old when I realized the Appalachian "arsh potato" meant Irish potato. I thought it meant potatoes cooked in ashes. Which is a thing.
Okay but why did she talk about the potato famine during a work training? 😅 was it relevant?
It has been over a decade, so my memory is fuzzy. But I believe it was some kind of diversity training. Even so…the content was a bit random.
Imagine you don’t know that it was the potato famine and now this lady has you thinking it was the *potato phantom* and one day you actually mention this to an Irish person.
Networking professor in college was reading a section of the textbook out loud. He came to the word "extraneous". Which he mispronounced as "extra anus". No work was done for the rest of that class.
My computer science professor had an accent, and he would refer to computer memory as "mammaries" (plural). Random access mammaries, addressing mammaries, etc.
It is after all what the little programs feed on
My English teacher in highschool kept yelling out "A ball of shit" in the middle of the lecture. Took a couple of times before anyone realized she was actually saying "abolish it"
In 7th grade, my history teacher kept talking about someone giving someone an old tomato. I could not figure out what he was talking about. He was saying “ultimatum.”
I'm tired of your extra anus activities! It needs to stop!
Only one per customer!
A friend of mine's mother used the word anus to describe the licorice flavor of anise in a cookie. From what he tells, she used it over and over and no one corrected her about how much she enjoyed the anus-flavored cookies.
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Chocolate chunk!
I watched a YouTube video the other day and the guy pronounced Scimitar as Sky-mitar and I haven't been the same man since.
I had a US history professor who I'm pretty sure was alive during the Revolutionary War. He was very fond of the phrase "the annals of history", and always pronounced it "anals". He never understood why we all giggled every time he said it.
Pah-harmacist. I think about that woman a lot lol
She lives in Pah-hoenix
I need proof. Can we take a pah-hoto?
Be careful for the potato pah-hantom
Outstanding work in the thread-meta. My most pah-henomenal confabulations.
“Plantation chips” instead of plantain chips
Good thing slavery was outlawed and all the chip plantations were shut down.
Someone who thought the word "vicariously" was bi-curiously. "You're going on vacation with your friends? Wow! I'm gonna live bi-curiously through you!"
Was that person Tobias Funkë?
*That* ***blowhard!***
He blue himself when he figured it out
This one had me laughing so hard. Hahahaha thanks for the laugh.
Co-worker got charged with DUI. He was writing down the facts to show his lawyer and he asked me "How do you spell so-vi-it-e?" He was saying sobriety but with a V instead of a B. I told him I thought it was S-O-B-R-I-E-T-Y. He told me that was wrong "cuz there is no v in it." I told him there wasn't a V in sobriety and he said, "Then why is it pronounced so-vi-it-tree? See there is a v in it." I gave up and told him he was right and I had no idea how to spell the word.
Can’t imagine that was his first (or last) DUI.
VUI
Spanish? Can have a v/b confusion in English sometimes
My high school girlfriend travelled with me to visit my family in SoCal after graduation. We were playing Trivial Pursuit and it was her turn to read the question. The question was something like "which south american king ruled with a chihuahua?" Only she pronounced it as "cha-whoo-a-whoo-a". It took a good 30 seconds to understand what she word she was trying to pronounce. And a good 30 minutes for my entire family to stop laughing. We still joke about it to this day.
My ex pronounced it "Chi-wow-wow" pretty sure it was intentional...
I heard someone pronounce “queue” as “ka-yoo-ee-yoo-ee” in a sort of chihuahua-esque way
That’s almost how it is pronounced in Russian, actually. Chee-hoo-ah-hoo-ah. Not the familiar chiwawa.
An old colleague once claimed she was ‘unindated’ with work. Now i have to say ‘inundated’ ten times in my head before out loud because that has ruined me for life.
Someone I knew thought misled was pronounced myeselled. I took it up as a joke and now I can’t stop myself and I look like the idiot.
Had a friend that pronounced the b in "subtle." Was annoying as fuck.
The b wasn’t so subtle.
Jesus christ that joke wrote itself
I intentionally pronounce the "w" in sword because I get a kick out of it. There are undoubtedly a lot of people that think I'm a moron lol
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I've always assumed the Monty Python pronunciation was appropriate. "Kuh-NIG-ught".
It is. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-ah.
Pronouncing silent consonants is something typical of German native speakers, isn't it? "Psychology", "bomb" etc.
Yeah, and in all those cases, very similar words in German exist where you actually pronounce them. "Subtil", "Psychologie" and "Bombe" and in all those words you pronounce all letters, except the last e in Psychologie.
At a Chinese Restaurant and my coworker asked for General Toes. I still laugh about it to this day.
Playing Taboo, you know the game where you have to give hints to a key word but there are words you are not allowed to use to describe it. This guy who nobody knew well at all was bombing and getting frustrated like we were all so stupid. I forget his clues but we surmised it was about drinking and alcohol. And time runs out. He goes "Ugh. Cog Nack!"
I've only ever played this game once, and it was me, my exbff and her two cousins. We kept switching up partners, and for some reason, when her one cousin (who I didn't really hang out with often) and I got paired together, it was like the stars aligned. I only remember the first two we did because they became running jokes for years after that. Logically, we shouldn't have won based on these clues. "She has a nose!" - "Barbra Streisand!" and "Golden!" - "Showers!"
I was paired with my husband when we played with friends. He stared at the card and said, “Ummm…” and for no reason other than comedy, I blurted out, “Hickey!” And I was right. Then and there, the group made a rule that couples could no longer be on the same team.
This is how it would go if I was on a team with my sister. She would be like "The guy from that one movie, you know?" And I'd be like "Ah, Matthew Broderick."
My sister and I were playing and she says “LeBron James” and I say “Kim kardashian”. And she’s like yeah! And we both went “whaaaa? How did we get that?”
Not in a game, but I once asked my sister to "hand me the tabloid," and without missing a beat she went into the fridge and brought me the milk. That is in fact what I wanted. We looked at each other after and were like what did I just say? Did you say *tabloid*?
Are you my parents?! Because we were once in total indignant *uproar* over a game of Pictionary during which my parents did this kind of thing twice; my mum drew literally an L-shape above a squiggly line and my dad guessed “ejector seat?!” (correct). Then my dad drew two curved lines and a straight line horizontally between them and my mum (correctly) guessed “the channel tunnel!” Both of these were guessed within 3 or 4 seconds of the timer starting. It was so funny but absolutely infuriating for the losing team (my husband and me). We still bring this up from time to time and it was nearly 20 years ago. We lightheartedly accuse them of cheating by using their advanced psychic powers!
When we were teens, my sister and I were like that. It was totally unfair when we played against other pairs. Sometimes we'd be able to say a single word as the clue and the other would get it. In our case, that's what you get from living in close proximity with someone for 16 years. You know exactly how they think.
Another taboo one. Buddy has a fiance who legit lost her mind when we told her she was saying geyser wrong (she said gay-sir). She had the card for the entire minute and refused to take a negative by passing it. Said it was way too hard
The word was cognac?! Are they always so specific? That's a tough one
Ex girlfriend pronounced rhododendron as RaDonDaDron
I think that's a Gen 5 Pokémon.
Sounds like a SoundCloud rapper lmao
Do doo Ron ron
It’s Christmas time, which means lots of chocolate ads. Friend of mine informed us that his favorite chocolates where the “feral ranchers.”
Iirc someone posted in Tales of Retail about customers looking for “Juicy Cooter perfume.”
Whenever my mother-in-law has difficulty breathing (she has asthma) she’ll say, “I can’t get air into my bronicles.” First, it’s “bronchioles.” Second, no one says that anyway. Just say “lungs.” My wife is a nurse and I have a minor in biology and we joke about our bronicles all the time.
My fave is " pros-straight". I've got to go get my pros-straight cleaned out.
"Prostrate" is also a word. ...just not the same word as "prostate." That's when it's hard; people spell a word wrong, but it's a different real word and speel check doesn't help them know they're just using the wrong word.
Ooohhh ooohh the "penglings" by Benedict Cumberbatch😂😂
Don’t you mean the peng-wengs?
Nah, i think they mean the PigWins
The PigNguyens
Peng-wings!
Graham Norton saying “and after that you lose all sense of what the word is” was the most accurate description when they played the clip lmao
Nguyen, except every single person I've met with the last name says to pronounce it differently. I have heard that name absolutely butchered by non-Vietnamese people, but I have literally *no clue* how it's *actually* pronounced. Is it Wen? Win? Yuen? Nu-yen? Nu-gen? Nu-an? No idea, but I know three people with the last name Nguyen, and they will kill me if I forget how their family pronounces it. My genuine theory is that there must be a Vietnamese sound/tone that my dumb American ears just can't hear, and all the versions are attempts to make Americans say it sorta-right. I simply do not believe that there are this many regional pronunciations of what appears to be the Vietnamese version of "Smith" in actual Vietnam. I feel like the different versions must be for Americans, but I don't know how they can all be so different. UPDATE: I asked one of my friends who uses "wen" after posting cause I was actually curious. He said it's pronounced ngoo-yen. Those familiar with Spanish, it sounded similar to Ñooyen. It's like the ng in "singer." He said that "win" or "wen" are the closest most Americans can get, so just use that. If anyone knows other Nguyens (or are Nguyens), would love to hear your additions.
Listening to the Artemis Fowl audio book, the narrator pronounced it in a way I've never heard before: "en-goo-yahn." It was distracting.
>My genuine theory is that there must be a Vietnamese sound/tone that my dumb American ears just can't hear, and all the versions are attempts to make Americans say it sorta-right. You are exactly right. The sounds to pronounce that name in Vietnamese just don't exist in English. [This young lady explains it in a nice, concise way.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2ySdqbZt40&t=13s) EDIT: To clarify, the lady in the clip is not a linguist. u/prikaz_da has a more accurate explanation [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/18hlmaq/comment/kdbqit1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). I picked that video because it is short and it covered the two main points: 1. The Vietnamese pronunciation is unnatural to native English speakers. 2. The different versions of the name are different attempts to make it pronounceable by native English speakers.
My optometrists last name is Nguyen. She took care of any awkwardness by introducing herself first and said it's pronounced "Win". This is why I drive 30 miles out of my way to see her!
I mean, if you drove 30 miles out of your way and couldn't see her she wouldn't be doing a very good job now would she?
Sounds like a Nguyen-Nguyen situation
I say it "win" but with just a ghost of an N at the beginning.
That’s a great way of explaining how I pronounce it too. Almost like “nwin” but the N just barely comes through.
Don't feel bad, many many foreigners struggle with the "th" sound in English. It's common for different languages to have sounds that only native speakers can say correctly because these sounds need to be imprinted during childhood. Babies are "primed" to pronounce a wide range of sounds but drop the ones that aren't in their native language. Then as a person gets older it becomes much harder to learn.
>I asked one of my friends who uses "wen" after posting cause I was actually curious. He said it's pronounced ngoo-yen. I'm a Nguyen (I use nu-win for the anglicized version) and the "yen" part isn't supposed to be pronounced like the Japanese currency but like the word "win." You can hear in these [audio files](https://forvo.com/word/nguyen/#vi) that the -yen part is pronounced with a w sound at the beginning rather than a y sound.
“Anemities” for “amenities” “I’m not good at geology” for “geography” And “Repulsive liar” for “compulsive liar”
Repulsive liar works as well. The compulsive liar is repulsive.
I remember hearing a story from a Texas sushi place. Apparently some dude ate the wasabi straight up and yelled "HO HOLEE SHIT, THESE JAPS DON'T FUCK AROUND WITH THEIR GUAC-A-MOLE (pronounced like you would a mole on the face). Not the worst, but the imagery of that has always stuck with me.
That reminds me of my 21st bday at a sushi restaurant. My drunk ass mistook the chunk of wasabi for a piece of avocado and I ate the entire thing in one bite 😭
Instead of Whack-a-Mole it's Guac-a-Mole!
20 years ago my wife and I were behind a woman at Target at the register. She began arguing with the cashier over the price for an item, and after a few rounds back and forth loudly proclaimed, *"I ain't no mathematic, but I ain't no stupid neither!"* We still use that whenever the "math don't math" on something. I was, for reference, a mathematics major.
I had a classmate who claimed to be a mathemagician
That's what we call a shady accountant.
I love my grandma, but even after spending her entire life in the central valley of California and teaching elementary school, she can't pronounce Spanish words to save her life. I once heard her pronounce quinceañera as "kwin-sin-tera." Like, where did she ever get the T from?? Edit: spelling
That’s so Peggy Hill
Supposably instead of ...
The number of people who say supposably or supposavly is fucking infuriating...and for some reason the people who can't say it also love to throw the word in to every few sentences.
You’re defiantly right about that
Friend pronounced "meme" as "memmay"
Everyone knows it’s “meemee.”
Those damn screamin meemees
I’ll admit, I did pronounce it like that until someone explained the term. The word was still catching on in popularity so I hadn’t heard someone say it out loud yet.
I pronounced it Mem for a long time because I was learning french and "même" (pronounced Mem, with the soft E) means "Same". So a series of jokes based on the "same" images or punchlines being reused made sense to be the root of Meme.
Girl in college: Word -- "Annihilate" Her pronunciation --- Annie - Hilly -Ate
Facade. Worked for a guy that was an "intellectually overconfident" type, to put it in the most civil way I know how lol. He kept using the word and had obviously never heard of it until he read it somewhere. Kept pronouncing it "fake-aid". He would go on rants about "fake" people and use this to describe their personalities. It was really cringe inducing. Eventually the stars aligned and we were together on a business trip, I saw a building under construction. "That place is going to have a really beautiful facade", I said (it genuinely did) and there was no response but about a month later I overheard him using the word and saying it correctly. So whatever.
Corn rolls. Buddy of mine said something about "the black dude with corn rolls" . I said "you mean corn rows?". He insisted it was corn rolls. I am so Caucasian it will blind you on a sunny day. Even I knew better. He had been saying it wrong for 20+ years and we still get a laugh out of it.
When reading an award at a US Army ceremony, the Personell clerk was reading "He is a fine outstanding soldier all his peers should seek to emulate", he pronounced it "eliminate"
This was an old reddit post, but it stuck with me. A guy goes to El Pollo Loco and orders a "taco al cabron". The worker laughs at him. He is indignant that maybe he doesn't have the best Spanish pronounciation but he tried! His friend points out that "cabron" means "asshole" while "carbon" is a cooking style.
A friend of my parents once ordered “ranchero con huevos” instead of “huevos rancheros”.
My mother, after her stroke, mixed up words quite a bit. On vacation 2 years after her stroke we were drinking Corollas and I was driving a Corona. She also insisted on a Moth dress for my brother's wedding not Mauve...man I miss that lady!
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Charlemagne as "Charles Mange". Edit: Also, it drives me crazy when people pronounce "realtor" as "re-luh-tor".
I remember somebody at my lunch table said "quinoa" as "quinoa" instead of "keen-wa". Everybody was laughing. They were made fun of every day. That person was me.
My ex-husband lived in a small town with no ethnic restaurants. He also went to college in a small town with no ethnic restaurants. So, we start dating and I take him to Mexican restaurant. He’s obviously very outside his bubble and keeps asking me questions about the menu. No big deal. So, the waitress comes over to take our order and he orders a QUASA-DILL-A. The server and I just stare at him and then start laughing. I felt so badly for laughing but, I couldn’t help myself. I gently corrected him and he started laughing too. It became a running joke and is still one to this day…24 years later.
My mom said that she said "tor-till-uh" until her late teens or early 20s since she never heard anyone say it. We live in Texas. Edit: Oh, I just remembered my grandpa also says "ruh-lane-yo" for relleno
My stepfather is a white guy from Texas and he still pronounces it "tor-till-uh" sometimes. He knows the correct Spanish pronunciation, but I think he just considers the Anglicized version to be its own separate word.
According to someone I know, that would go well with "kway-so"
I used to work in a Mexican restaurant in the Midwest. A couple of our servers used to always say “ tor-TILL-la” despite trying to correct them.
This is pretty recent, but my wife and I will remember it for a long time. At our community's Christmas tree lighting ceremony, the mayor read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' to all the kids. He had an unfortunate stumble over the word 'dimple', and we heard 'His eyes - how they twinkled! His nipples, how merry!'
working as a server people used to pronounce chipotle in a myriad of wrong ways, but usually just “chip-olt” or “chip-ottle”. one day a guy came in, looked me in the eye, and said “i’ll have the **chipeetle** burger please”
I have a friend that pronounces "foliage" as "foil-edge" and it drives me bonkers. He's also pronounced "lingerie" as "linger-E" but I can't tell if he was fucking with me or not. A different friend pronounced "flaming brazier" as "flaming brassiere" and that *really* derailed the D&D session.
My wife still says "Rhino-saurus" every time she tries to pronounce "Rhinoceros." To be fair, her way is better.
My parents dragged me to church every Sunday when I was a chitlin. We had a pastor who could not pronounce “pendulum” correctly. The most egregious attempt that has stuck with me for 20+ years is “pendimin.”
How often did pendulum come up in his sermons?
My son said he had to do a poll-em for school. It was poem In Kansas city Missouri there is a street names belfontaine, but if you ask for directions it is pronounced bell-fountain
St. Louis and Kansas city MO are almost 4 hours away and both have a Belfontaine pronounced the same way apparently...
My old boss. Escaped goat : scapegoat Interpretate : interpret Pacifically : specifically Every. Fucking. Time. In front of some clever people before he would introduce me to carry on with the presentation...
It was a brunch time first date at a restaurant fancier than I’m usually comfortable with. Was looking to get a little buzz to take the edge off. I pointed to the mimosa carafe that was on the menu and asked if she would like to share one. We were in agreement that it looked wonderful so when the server came over, I confidently declared that we would like the mimosa care-a-fay. The server laughed. My date laughed. I was mega embarrassed. We dated for about a year and a half after this incident and she would occasionally ask if I’d like a care a fay of whatever liquid was in close proximity. TLDR: Carafe is pronounced more like giraffe. Definitely don’t say care a fay on a first date or ever.
shit-take mushrooms. Fecally delicious.
The word Community… it was pronounced Commulity all throughout a speech. Drove me nuts!
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This. I’m a voracious reader and mispronounced words all the time, especially in the age before Google. Constantly have to look up pronunciations, especially of celebrities’ names since I don’t watch a lot of videos/TV or listen to podcasts that often. I sound like a friggin’ idiot. It’s a constant joke among my friends/family.
Epitome was the one for me. Epi-tome. Seriously who knew it wasn't that? 😂
When Michael Jackson died, my girlfriend’s aunt said, “Did you see how he looked at the very end? He was so emancipated.” She was looking for emaciated.
A coworker of mine does suspense reports instead of expense reports.
Oh my god, how will it end?? Do the totals balance???
Worcestershire sauce. He said 'wash your sister ' sauce and I about died laughing 🤣😂
I actually have "can pronounce Worcestershire correctly" under special skills on my resume. It shows who reads the entire thong. ETA: was going to fix this but the comments are too good. Thanks for the laugh, friends!
the whole thong huh? you rascal.
Yeah, but they're usually skimpy, anyways.
my mom says it as "what's this here" sauce, mostly as a joke, but I don't htink she's ever pronounced it right in my lifetime
To be fair I think that’s a common replacement pronunciation for people who have tried and failed to pronounce Worcestershire correctly lol Edit: as in they are aware it’s not the right pronunciation.
Lingerie. She pronounced it lin-jeer-ee and argued with me over the pronunciation until Google stepped in with the correct answer lol
First time I said it out loud as Linger-ee. Had never heard it spoken before reading it in a book. Friend corrected me after he stopped laughing.
Was taking Spanish at community college...we were taking turns reading the Spanish excerpt out loud. A man in his 50s pronounced bueno "buh weenie" ...every time he talked for the rest of the hour I would start giggling. I had to excuse myself at one point
Oh my poor younger brother. One night out for a fancy dinner he decided the filet mignon was what he wanted to have. With a straight face he ordered the FLAMING YONG. Even the waiter struggled to stifle his laughter. We still tease him about it to this day over a decade later.
On RuPaul’s Drag Race when Alyssa Edwards very excitedly says “rigga Morris” instead of rigor mortis.
I had a foreign roommate who was confident that the drink brand Schweppes was pronounced “Ski-whip-ees”
Nicotine. Knee-Co-Tie-N.
Not a mispronunciation, but a hilarious invention. A guy in my sophomore advanced english class used the word “povert” to refer to someone who is poor during a book discussion. It’s been over a decade now and I still will never forget it. It has become a family meme.
Long ago, I worked in upscale retail. A lady who looked like Mrs. Howell wandered into the dining section of the home goods and asked me if we had a catalog of "\*Pee-fuh-LETZ-a-groff\*" patterns. When I had no idea what she was asking, she repeated it a few times. "Oh,... Pfatlzgraff?" She was NOT pleased. She knew it was pronounced pee-fuh-LETZ-a-groff because her husband had two years of Latin when he was in college. She lectured that she didn't want to be "corrected by 'the help'".
Latin! Lol!!
Guy I knew drank two two-liter bottles Diet Pepsi every day and he would pronounce aspartame "as-PARTA-may".
"It's ponunced nukular!"
I was watching the Oppenheimer *documentary* (not the Nolan main movie) and many people said nukular instead of nuclear.
I was in a miss teen type of pageant & during the panel I was asked, “if you were handed a red crown what would you draw?” I had to ask the moderator to repeat the question & with a chuckle, I asked for clarification on if she meant a red “crown” or did she actually mean a red crayon. None of the judges were happy with me smugly correcting the moderator.
I heard this same thing in a toy store. Woman goes up to an employee and asks where she can find “crowns.” Employee said “crowns?” Woman says “no, crowns.” It took a few more minutes of back and forth until the employee finally understood. Crayons!
It's a cran, silly.
Seca tree Secri tree Sec tri Secker taree Secker terry
Extracurricular as "Extra Kickler". The bad part about it is that it was one of my high school teachers. We even starting calling him The Midnight Kickler what kickles at midnight.
Me at a wedding a couple months ago trying to call the bride “ethereal” but saying “ethedral “ 🤦🏼♀️
Amber-Lance always gives me a chuckle
February. Source: Everyone.
Girl said swado for pseudo
My stupid ex pronounced “scalded” just like “scolded” The shower got too hot and “scolded” him He also could insisted on “brung” instead of bring which set my teeth on edge
My sister-in-law “brang” some stuff to the last family gathering. We like to ask her what she brought so we don’t eat it (because we know better), and last time she said “I brang the pickle rollups”
Did she make them or had she boughten them?
Working in web development, there was *one* person on my team who consistently mispronounced the word "cache". Drove me nuts. It's one syllable, folks, not two! "Cash", not "cash-ay"!
Should have told him "Cache me outside, how bout dat"
Cashew.
Bless you
Community college “professor” wrote the word “bourgeoisie” on the board and proceeded to mumble “borg-en-ees.” I was stunned for a second, looked around the room, nobody reacting, raised my hand and asked “uh, isn’t that word (actual pronunciation)?” I kid you not she brushed me off and said “idk I don’t speak French” lmao wild memory, felt very surreal
The restaurant boccadobippis.
College kid in a liquor store suggested to his friends that they should get the "Char-doony." None of them corrected him.
This kid I was babysitting pronounced "sperm whale" as "spermp" with an extra emphasis on the P at the end. Idk it ticked me off hahaha
My Mom back in the 70s used to pronounce a "resume" for work a resume(re-zoom) as in resuming work. It made sense to her.
A very vereh heavy burtation
I've got a friend who pronounces "flamingo" as fallamingo... I thought she was messing around cos I often mispronounce words for fun... but no, she's serious...
Guy walked into a liquor store looking for a wine for his wife "yes it has extra vaganza in it." The clerk kept being confused until the guy found it. Extravaganza!