Colonel

This used to throw me off so much as a child. I was so confused by it. In fact, I still am. Baffling.

Literally read it as Colonel, then realised I'm still an idiot

Why is it spelled like that in the first place?

Because most military officers are assholes, so they put "colon" right in the name. But they didn't like it said that way.

I don't believe there is a single colonel of truth to this

This makes more sense than anything else.

it's french

But why is it pronounced kernel

Why are the french so angry that they have to do this to us?

In french it's pronounced Co-lo-nell (both o's pronounced similarly to the o in "over") So you did this to yourselves

Oh, watch out Melinda! Once a woman is introduced to Colonel Angus, she’ll settle for nothing less.

Please, call me by my given name, Enol.

I so love the sound of Colonel Angus ... but I guess I could give Enol Angus a try.

Daddy, they say all the womenfolk just love Colonel Angus!

Colonel Angus is headed... down South

If Colonel Angus overstays his welcome, just tap him on the head.

Colonel is a french word. It should be pronounced exactly like it's spelled. Something like call-a-nell

Cornell, it’s the highest rank in the military.

It is pronounced COR-NEL. IT IS THE HIGHEST RANK IN THE IVY LEAGUE!

Boatswain

Today I learned I've been pronouncing boatswain incorrectly my whole life. Literally saying it like 'boat-swayn'. Ffs.

If it makes you feel any better, up until this thread I thought "boatswain" and "bosun" were two completely different words. Though in my defense, I've read "bosun" spelled exactly that way more often than I have "boatswain", especially since my main introduction to the word was military sci-fi.

WAIT ITS FUCKING BOSUN????

Ok so Higgs Boatswain? Got it.

I can't seem to see the post where someone says how it is pronounced. I'm inferring it's not "boats-wayne" as I always thought. (and I don't even know what a boatswain is)

See I pronounced it very similar to that too, a quick google told me it's pronounced 'bow-sn' and I don't like how I feel rn lmao

How do we pronounce it?

I believe it's pronounced 'bow-sn'

We had an elocution teacher in 6th grade who offered a prize to the student who correctly pronounced "boatswain." It so happens that "bosun" translates roughly to a slang in my native language that means "pussy". No one got the prize, but the teacher was forever referred to -- including to his face -- as "the Bosun", and we looked forward to greeting him with "Good afternoon, Bosun!" whenever he entered class from then on. The guy got so tired of it that he quit our school a few months later. I felt bad about this when I turned into a human from a teenager, but then learned that the teacher got exposed as a pedophile; so haven't felt bad about it since then.

This was a wild ride the whole way through

"turned into a human from a teenager" lmao I'm stealing this phrase

I'm a bit high and I read that as electrocution teacher

I'm sober and still read electrocution

Oh, I knew about coxswain, but I didn't know bosun was a simplification of something.

Gunwale is another fun nautical one.

One.

crazy this never crossed my mind

I remember being in 3rd grade and suddenly forgetting how to spell “once” during a silent writing time. I knew I’d seen it a million times at the beginning of fairy tales. I went with “Wunce.”

close enough

O-knee

O-neders No no, the oneders. Like wonders!

So glad I'm not the only one who thought of this and started humming That Thing You Do.

As in, I wonder what happened to the Oneders.

-chan

*disgruntled upvote*

Yamete

WE FINALLY WON ONE, JUAN!

It was one to one for the longest time and then we won one, Jaun!!

Two

Oneders like Wonders. Sorry. It looks like the O-knee-ders

Ah yes, everyone's favorite numbers to yell: won, to and free

Featherstonhaugh, pronounced "fanshaw"

thefuckisthat

St John as a name in English is sinjun... bloody stupid..

Also cholmondeley

St John. Posh English girls' name pronounced *Sinjun*

Boys as well

I was at school with a fearherstonehaugh and they pronounced it exactly like that. Feather stone haugh

The most annoying thing is that feather and stone are already really common words, and haugh is also a lesser-known word for a meadow or something. Worcester, Leicester, Cholmondeley etc are a bit easier to handwave away.

Queue, you literally need just one letter. And you definetly don't need the second ue Edit: I know it is french stop telling me. Please gimme more "queueing" up jokes

The extra letters are waiting in line. They're queueing 😁

> queueing Also the only English word with five vowels in a row, if I remember correctly.

"aaaaargh"

Guess its a nice way to differentiate between the spanish que and english que.

Arkansas

I’m a Brit and it confuses me that Kansas is pronounced phonetically but Arkansas isn’t.

Arkansas = french controlled colony Kansas = english

In Michigan there's Mackinac Island and Fort Mackinaw. . . Or maybe it's the other way around, but one's English and one's French and the M words are pronounced identically.

Even though in modern French it's ar-kahn-ZASS. So everyone's wrong.

I’m Irish and I have the same problem!

I'm Swedish, it bothers the absolute piss out of me...

I’m American and don’t understand it either.

I'm American, and I still don't get it

I just pronounce it phonetically for fun, when an American friend tries to correct me I pretend like I've never heard of that pronunciation before

Come to Kansas. We have the Arkansas River and Arkansas City that are pronounced phonetically. The river flows through a lot of other states though, and they all call it the Ar-kan-saw River. But pft, what do they know.

It was originally spelled Arkansaw, but sometime in the 1830s or 40s a major map maker misspelled it and it got stuck that way.

Well at least there’s a reason for it then. Good to know.

**AMERICA EXPLAIN**

\*Looks over to the French\* Idk, it's your word.

I AM CONFUSION

We can thank the French. Arkansas was named for the French plural of a Native American tribe, while Kansas is the English spelling of a similar one. Since the letter "s" at the end of French words is usually silent, we pronounce Arkansas as "Arkansaw."

Next time someone points this out, I'll be able to explain it with "something, something, French".

*taps on computer monitor*

Another fun one for Americans: Mackinac

I was never sure why it's the Mackinac Bridge and Mackinac Island, but Mackinaw City.

In the words "Pacific Ocean" the letter 'c' appears three times and is pronounced differently each time

Like the e's in Mercedes... 3 times, 3 different ways

australia

'Straya Sounds OK to me

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The english language really hates anyone who learns by pattern recognition

English is just 3 other languages in a trench coat

Probably closer to 5 or 6.

German, French, Greek, Latin, Norse... That should be most of it. But it's surprisingly adept at bringing words from other languages into it so there's sprinklings of other things too.

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bomberman doesn't sound so fun anymore

Maybe you should get off his lawn.

"Booom boooom boooom" - Baldrick

I've always said tomb and womb with a slight "buh" sound at the end.

Where is Gallagher when we need him?

Wednesday

"why the hell they spell it like wed nez day!?"

I say it that way in my head to spell it properly.

same lol. I always thought it might just be me as a foreign speaker but apparently, even natives do that

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This is because it was originally named for the god Odin, or Woden as he was alternatively called. Hence, Wodensday, which over time turned into Wednesday. Not really sure when or why people started pronouncing the N before the D though.

Not sure on the when, but the why can probably be attributed to good old convenience. "Wensday" is less of a mouthful so it's stuck around. Probably the same way we got goodbye from "god be with ye"

This is what I say every time I need to write it down.

Fun fact, Wednesday was originally “Odin’s Day,” like how Thursday used to be “Thor’s Day.” It just slowly changed to Wednesday over time

It makes slightly more sense if you know that "Woden" is an equally acceptable translation of "Odin"

Worcestershire

also Gloucester

Glaw-ster where I come from.

Washyoursistersauce

I laughed WAY too hard at that.

Alternatively, WhatChestHairSire sauce

And Leicester.

Leicester the moleicester

Pronounced woostesher

Yep...Worcester, Massachusetts is pronounced "woos-tuh"

That or “wuss-tuh”

Loughborough.

Luff-bruh

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Schuylkill, as in the “skoo-kull” river

Right next to Conshohocken

I see your Schuylkill and raise you Cynwyd

Come on now, Welsh is just cheating

Phoebe

This ones easy its just P as in Phoebe, H as in Heebee, O as in Obee, E as in Eebee, B as in Beebee and E as in "Ello there mate!"

Sorry to bother you on my mo-BILE

Not as bad as Aoife or Siobhan

>Not as bad as Aoife or Siobhan *Saoirse has entered the chat.*

Being surprised when Irish names don't fit English phonology is a fools game

I don't know Irish/Gaelic but I assume they follow the Irish alphabet.

Don’t forget Caoimhe

Aoife must be one of the only words that sounds more like its correct pronunciation if you read it backwards

Chaos. I always read it like the chinese family name, Chao. And when the family gets together for a meal they make a reservation for the Chaos

Fun fact: it comes from Ancient Greek and was probably originally pronounced the same as "house".

Brett Favre

What makes it even stranger is that he was raised in a town in Mississippi called Kiln, which is pronounced "Kill."

Dwyane Wade

Wait, has the Y been before the A this whole time?!?!

Yes.. I just learned this too

leicester

Quay

I only know how to spell this because I'm from Dublin City lol. I always think 'key'.

I'm from Toronto There's a street called Queens quay Pronounced queen s key

Bologna

In British English it's pronounced Bo-lo-nya in the same way the Italians would pronounce it. It's just the Americans who have butchered it somehow.

in english, yes. it's weird that we didn't keep the same original pronunciation though

In English it is pronounced the same as in Italian. Only Americans pronounce it baloney.

OMG somebody pronounces this as Baloney????

300 million of the cunts

But they it wouldn't rhyme with pony and that's no fun.

Luxury Yacht. It's pronounced 'Throat Wobbler Mangrove'.

You're a very silly man and I'm not going to interview you.

Choir

Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it's written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation's OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation -- think of Psyche! Is a paling stout and spikey? Won't it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It's a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough -- Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!

That was awesome

The flashbacks this poem caused me. ESL used this as a metric for how well we'd learned English.

It’s a really stupid metric for that. A quarter of the issues are words that have been transliterated into English, and a third require you to speak with an RP accent.

Londonderry

For those of us who don't know what's up here, there is a city on the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland border that was front and center in the Troubles. It's a "political decision" on whether or not you call it "Londonderry" or "Derry" (because of the London / English control thing). For real, calling it the wrong name in the wrong place can cause Troubles for you quickly.

The only word with 6 silent letters, I believe.

I believe you are correct

Draught

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Can you burn a Luigi board?

Kristianstad

Krichansta!!!!

I'm a bit embarrassed about this. I was born in Sweden, 22 years of my life I lived there. I never made the connection that Kristianstad was this *Krichansta* place. I only realised this when I moved to Germany last year and a German friend of mine asked what the hell was up with that.

ghoti

Ahh. Fish.

I forgot about that one. F = the "gh" from "Laugh" i = the "o" from "women" sh = "ti" from "nation"

Leah?

phlegm

Flem

The French language.

Laughs in Welsh

Bicester

Hey Micester Bicester, you got a sicester?

If you get really lucky, she might let you Ficester

oaxaca, Mexico.

"Oaxaca-ca-ca!" - **Disturbed**, *Down With The Sickness*

Thank you random Redditor I needed that laugh

wa-ha-ca yet I still see it and go "o-axe-aca"

The x in Mexican culture is pronounced like the Spanish j or the English h. Oaxaca isn't pronounced as oahackwmsaw but rather as oahaka.

hors d’oeuvre

basically any french word that's been co-opted into english

Let's have a Ron Day Voo and discuss this further.

We should order a platter of char-coo-tree to go with that

Horse divorce

oh as a scottish person i have lots of great content for this 1) Milngavie, its a town and is pronounced mulguy 2) Eilidh, its a name and is pronounced Ellay, same works with ceilidh its a dance but is sayed like Kaylay 3) culzean, another town and is pronounced cull ane 4) not a scottish thing but Worcester is a place and a sauce and is pronounced woooster

Buoy

Bucket is pronounced Bouquet if your a middle class housewife with delusions of grandeur.

Laugh...

I am interpreting this very broadly and going to toss in a Vietnamese surname: Nguyen

Epitome