When I was younger and listening to The Hunger Games, I thought the boy’s name was Peter and my narrator just had an accent.
This was me as a 7 year-old, reading The Hobbit and LotR. 33 years, and many rereads later, I still pronounce Gollum as golem and Smaug as smog.
“[…] I still pronounce […] Smaug as smog.”
Wait, what? I can’t remember when it was pronounced in the movies and I also (mentally) pronounce it as ‘Smog.’ It has never come up in IRL conversation so I don’t know how it’s actually pronounced.
Does anyone have a clip/timestamp on a video to show how it’s actually pronounced? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movies.
It’s /smawg/, it should sort of feel like the name doesn’t fit me your mouth properly, English phonotactics doesn’t allow for gliding from W to G without a vowel in between.
Unless it’s a YouTuber. Then they’re possibly pronouncing it wrong so people will comment about their pronunciation and fuel the algorithm.
As a kid I used to pronounce amoeba as “a-MO-ba” instead of “a-MEE-ba”.
This happens to me a lot in the medical field. “Parenchymal” has been my most recent, and I have to think about it every time I hear it or try to say it
I read it in my head as PAIR-EN-KIME-AL, but it’s pronounced PA-RINKA-MAL… though how I read it does help me to spell it
Some words I still can’t pronounce, but I know how to “read”, such as “klebsiella aerogenes”
While we’re on the subject: “Tachypneic” is pronounced like “TA-KIP-NIK”, but I never hear anyone try and pronounce “Bradypneic”. One would assume that it’s pronounced like “BRA-DIP-NIK” (or maybe “BRAY-DIP-NIK”), but I can’t confirm. I think saying “bradypneic” intimidates people
English fails hard at conveying phonetics through written language. In Brazilian portuguese (my native language) those words would be written as:
- parenquimal (from “parênquima”);
- taquipnéico;
- bradipnéico;
The lack of diacritics (and several other characteristics) makes English really easy to learn but in contrast you get those kinds of problems. I’ve never seen anyone get those words wrong in my field (I’m a vet)
That’s really cool, and I appreciate the insight! I always liked Spanish (‘Latin American’ in my case) because you can pronounce the words as they are spelled. Doesn’t matter if you know what it means, but you can still pronounce it (for the most part)
I’ve always been told that Portuguese is like “Spanish and French had a baby”. Not sure how much truth there is to that, but a quick anecdote: My wife and I were in a cab with a native Portuguese speaker who knew a bit of English and a bit of Romantic languages. My wife knows a bit of French; I know a bit of Spanish… and between the three of us, we were able to speak to each other in a kinda “creole type” delivery. It was really cool to experience
Lastly, I have to ask… do you think “bradypneic” would be pronounced “BRAY-DIP” or “BRA-DIP” in English?
Doesn’t matter if you know what it means, but you can still pronounce it (for the most part)
That’s the beauty of the added gramatical complexity these languages have compared to English, although there are still cases where things get ambiguous. For example, the following words are written differently but pronounced the exact same, generally relying on their context to differentiate them:
- sela/cela;
- censo/senso;
- assento/acento;
- cozer/coser;
- concerto/conserto;
- tacha/taxa;
I’ve always been told that Portuguese is like “Spanish and French had a baby”.
Having studied Spanish, French and English I can confirm that those similarities are definitely present!
My wife and I were in a cab with a native Portuguese speaker who knew a bit of English and a bit of Romantic languages. My wife knows a bit of French; I know a bit of Spanish… and between the three of us, we were able to speak to each other in a kinda “creole type” delivery. It was really cool to experience.
What an interesting story! Where I live there are a lot of Haitian immigrants and communicating with them also involves that “creole type” language. In comparison talking to Cuban / Venezuelan immigrants is made much easier due to the similarities with Spanish. Regardless, the fact you can have a basic talk with an entire continent because of this is so cool.
Lastly, I have to ask… do you think “bradypneic” would be pronounced “BRAY-DIP” or “BRA-DIP” in English?
Definitely the second pronunciation (“BRA-DIP”) is the correct one!
“Tachypneic” is pronounced like “TA-KIP-NIK”,
I’m clearly not qualified to lecture you, but deriving from words like pneumonia, and consulting merriam-webster, are you sure the “p” isn’t silent here, and that the “e” is?
I can confirm that the “p” is not silent in tacypneic, unlike in pneumonia. It’s a weird one imo, but that is how it is
Thanks for enlightening me.
About 20 years ago when memes started appearing there was a site called memebase. I pointed it out to someone and he laughed at me for pronouncing it mêmebase because I speak french
Poutain 😂
It’s spelt “Poutine”.
Is it meem or mehmeh? I use mehmeh.
It’s meem. Originally coined by Steven Pinker, IIRC, to contrast with gene.
Yosemite National Park
Pronounced “Yes, Mate”. It was named by Australians.
so more like yaw-see-mit
Yo sem ih tee
I keep hearing that but that’s kind of what his point is though isn’t it? That that in particular is wrong; and that’s why.
Reread my own shit and had to fix that again too.
Former president says its ‘Yo! Semite’
For me it’s the word: ruffians
I still slip up and say roff-ians
I respect when people misuse meme formats that they’ve only had a verbal description of.
Sich a dumb word, but somehow I never really clicked on this word: “question”. I have spoken the word a lot, but somehow I practiced speaking english less when I moved away from my parents to study. English became more of a read and written language than spoken, so the words became just things to read, not to sound out loud.
After attempting to speak a bit more english again, words were drawn from memory by how they were written. And for some reason the word “question” was incredibly weird. “Kuest-ion”? No, I’m sure there is a “ch”-sound in there. “Kwest-chien”?
I had to check out some youtube videos on pronounciation to get it right.
Oh man, there must be dozens of examples like this you have. It’s such a weird language, with so many words and spellings and pronunciations from so many sources.
I’m from American south, I’ve always said and heard “kwest-chen” - now I’m sitting here saying it over and over wondering how much is regional accent
It’s all good. I sat kwestchen.
I refuse to believe unscurpulous is pronounced in that goofy ass way. People say that in courtrooms goddamn it.
(wondering what’s especially weird about it)
Edit: like, if you think it’s weird that “scrup” isn’t pronounced with a “u” as in “cup”, there’s like 48 thousand other examples in other words.
It might help if you spell it correctly. Unscrupulous
I am going to saw off my feet.
I wonder if by the same criteria the opposite also holds true. Are misspelled words dishonorable? And if yes does it matter if they’re nouns or other functional words like there/they’re/their ?
Correct
I used to think “chaos” had the same “ch” as “church” when I was a kid. Don’t know why I never heard it spoken aloud by someone earlier than I did.
But the one that I find inexcusable is Southern US people who pronounce “jalapeno” with a “j” and “n” instead of an “ha” and “ñ” even though they know better. Sounds so willfully ignorant
I used to think “chaos” had the same “ch” as “church” when I was a kid.
The chao of Sonic Adventure (1998)?
Chaos, pronounced like multiple “ciao” in Italian. 🤌
And on your jalapeño comment: I spent 6 months sending my coworker “hola” in morning greetings until he told me that he thought “hola” was just me saying “Holler [holla] at a player [playa]”. To his credit, he took German on high school. To his discredit, we had been working in Spain for 2 weeks when we had this conversation.
This happened to me… The word was hyperbole. I said it as hyper bowl ee.
The kicker is I’ve heard the word hyperbole before, pronounced correctly, and never knew what it meant, nor how it was spelled.
So I spoke to someone who was a bit more linguistically inclined, both verbally and written (hes also older than me by a few years, and more “into” art and culture)… And he said “you mean hyperbole?” And everything finally clicked. At the time I was embarrassed because I knew both the written and pronounced versions of it, but never put them together, so I felt like it was something I should have been able to figure out on my own and didn’t.
Now? If someone made the same correction to something similar, I’d be like. Ohhhhhh. That makes more sense. Thanks! Instead, I basically exited the situation to go die in private from embarrassment.
I should not have been embarrassed.
I love learning new things.
I had an English teacher correct me on that, except I said hyperbola which is a math concept and is pronounced hyper bowl a.
English is a garbage language anyway tbh you say words the way you like ‼️
Mine was Ganymede. I read so much scifi but didn’t really ever see any scifi shows referencing the planet, and it never came up in conversation. I thought it was supposed to be pronounced gani-mee-dee, as if it was a Greek philosopher.
I’m kinda the same here, except worse. I’m stuck saying Hyper-Bowl, and the “proper” pronunciation breakes down as hyperbally in my head. Sounding like an adverb trips me up so much, I just refuse to use the word now.
Mine is sidereal… I always said side real. Then, I learned it was (roughly) Sid air heal.
Though I did use to say Copernicus as copper knickers too.
Yeaa… I totally learned skibidi rizz from a book…
