English Words You've Heard Mangled

[LetalisK]

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Yeah but Foy-eh and aluminium sound stupid

If you can speak English, you can speak French. Both are from the same root language, anyway. Spanish, Italian, and a couple dozen other languages. All similar. I don't know more than a word or two of Spanish or Italian, but I can guess at how they're supposed to be pronounced. I also haven't taken French since about the 8th grade, but I can still pronounce some words properly.

How does foy-er sound better than foih-eh? It sounds like someone from Boston saying "Fire". It's a french word for entry room. If you can't say it properly, call it an entrance room. Or something.

He was trying to be funny. He wasn't actually trying to get you to come at him, bro. Settle down. >.>

 

[IndomitableSam]

He was trying to be funny. He wasn't actually trying to get you to come at him, bro. Settle down. >.>

I got that, yes. My insulting the Bostonian accent didn't tip you off? It's all good.

... Aside from people pronouncing things wrong. That's still bad.

 

[LetalisK]

My insulting the Bostonian accent didn't tip you off?

See, I thought you were being serious. You know, since it's Boston and all.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Foyer.

Americans, it's foy-eh (basically, I won't get into french intonations)... not foi-er. It's french. Foy-eh. Every time someone says foi-er, I get angry. Say it with me: Foy-eh. Or maybe Foih-eh would be more appropriate.

you do realize that words get adapted/borrowed into different languages all the time,and often times they are changed pronunciation?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/foyer

in the english language, that pronunciation is correct.

OT: warsher has been mentioned,so i'll mention "coke". not so much a pronunciation, but in alot of areas in the south they use "coke=soda/pop", which bugs the hell out of me for some reason, JUST SAY WHICH FUCKING POP YOU WANT, DON'T CALL IT A COKE UNLESS YOU WANT A MOTHERFUCKIN COKE.

I think the only thing that bugs me is how Americans say aluminium.

it's because in america it is spelled "aluminum", therefore the pronunciation follows.

(i tend to catch myself around foreigners however, i'll try and say aluminium for their convenience.)

 

[darkcalling]

One grandma pronounces tortilla as torTILLya with the ls. My other grandma is guilty of warsh and tar (tire) and regularly refers to going to a mysterious store named Wall-Marts.

Also the entire cast of the CinemaSnob.com pronounces biOpic (like "Okay") as biOPic (like OPtimist, wasn't sure how to write that out). pisses me off so much but I still love those guys.

 

[Smallells]

When I was little, I pronounced "herb" with a non silent "h".
To this day the word "h'ordeuvres" makes my brain hurt.

That's cultural differences. In England at least, you pronounce "herb" with the "h". I now present the great Mr Izzard to serve my point:

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

If you can speak English, you can speak French. Both are from the same root language, anyway. Spanish, Italian, and a couple dozen other languages. All similar. I don't know more than a word or two of Spanish or Italian, but I can guess at how they're supposed to be pronounced. I also haven't taken French since about the 8th grade, but I can still pronounce some words properly.

Actually, English is descended from German, not French. Different roots. The reason English is so messed up is that a few busybodies in the 1700s decided that English needed a standard set of grammar rules. Unfortunately, they chose the rules for French grammar to develop the English rules from, not the Germanic rules whic actually would have made sense given that English is Germanic in origin! /pedantic nitpicking

Where I live, in the American midwest, the mispronunciation of French words is very bad. A town not far from where I live has a French name: Versailles. Now, rather that properly pronouncing it "Ver-sigh", they choose to call it "Ver-sailes". And they will "correct" you if you pronounce it with the proper French phonetics. That drives me up the wall every time.

 

[JET1971]

Ebonics drive me nuts, sounds uneducated to me. "Git yo ass in da house!" Used to hear that all the time from a neighbor as she yelled at her kids when it was dinner time.

Moved to Connecticut years ago and people said hamburg instead of hamburger, Umm sorry I did not order a German city, I ordered a hamburger, and hold the mustard.

 

[trollnystan]

My favourite mangled word isn't exactly English. 13 years ago (give or take) I was waiting with a bunch of others for our first Japanese lesson to start. One of the girls asked me if I liked anaym, and it took me several minutes to figure out she was talking about anime. And she had watched MUCH more anime than I ever had. So I had a good laugh at that =P

Of course nowadays she's a lot more fluent in Japanese than I am, having read it at university and all (yes we became and are still friends).


Anyway, I live in Sweden and, despite Swedes good command of the English language, there are plenty of times I've heard people mangle an English word. Can't come up with any right now though, hence the anecdote.

 

[Agayek]

For years my mother, who grew up in the U.S. South, would pronounce "washer" with an 'R' as in "Put the clothes in the warsher." I've nagged her on it so consistently that she almost never does that any more.

A friend from high school was a master of mispronouncing words. "Rogue"--referring in this case to Rogue from the X-Men--he pronounced as "rog-wah".[footnote]This was before the movie came out, BTW.[/footnote] He also pronounced "scythe" like "sky-th".

What words have you mangled or heard others mangle over the years?

The one I've heard most commonly, and been guilty of myself, is the word "melee". Up until a couple years ago, I pronounced it "mee - lee" instead of "may lay". Drove a few friends of mine up the wall.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Actually, English is descended from German, not French. Different roots. The reason English is so messed up is that a few busybodies in the 1700s decided that English needed a standard set of grammar rules. Unfortunately, they chose the rules for French grammar to develop the English rules from, not the Germanic rules whic actually would have made sense given that English is Germanic in origin! /pedantic nitpicking

Actually, English is derived from both French and German (and more)... being ruled by Romans, Angles, Saxons, Normans, Scots, Dutch, Hanoverians... and Saxons once again rather does that to a language. It would be a fair point that English is a 'West Germanic' language at its core, but it's thoroughly infiltrated with Romance vocabulary and lingual conventions that it doesn't really make much of a difference. The thing is, you can't really say that English is 'descended from German' as that would depend on your definition of 'German'. Hochdeutsch as we know it has only been prevalent for about a hundred and fifty years in what we now know as Germany. Before that, vernacular, regional and colloquial German had as little bearing on Prussian German as Spanish did to French (similar, but by no means mutually intelligible). Directly, English is associated best with Frisian, Scots and (predictably) Middle English. Lingual evolution is best looked south (i.e. Latin/Greek) rather than east (i.e. the pre-cursors to Allemannic German and the various Low/High German dialects).

Oddly, in all of this, the Danes are left out, since Angeln (the ultimate root of the label 'English') is in modern-day lower-Schleswig! Yet Danish is obviously non-Anglo-Frisian, ironically.

 

[Thyunda]

Here in Stoke the words 'Specific' and 'Pacific' mean the same thing, along with 'Genuinely' and 'Generally'.

Also there's this word 'nesh' that really pisses me off.

 

[an annoyed writer]

Oh, these are fun. One I've heard a few times is where some people pronounce "Turret" as "Turrent". I swear, the next time I see that I'm going to behead the person who fucking says or writes that. Fucking seriously.

That sounds like a threat; I'm going to have to report you. See you on the news.

Ain't that cute. I'll admit though, I'd love to see the headlines they'd come up with for that.

"Woman Beheads Man with Claymore Sword! "He pronounced turret as turrent" She says in her defense"

 

[Shodan1980]

When I was little, I pronounced "herb" with a non silent "h".
To this day the word "h'ordeuvres" makes my brain hurt.

That's cultural differences. In England at least, you pronounce "herb" with the "h". I now present the great Mr Izzard to serve my point:

First thing I thought of on the herbs comment from the OP

The thing about the mis-pronounciation of "aluminium" is that its an element from the periodic table. It's name IS aluminium. You don't call Uranium Uranum do you?

OT, Lara. As in Lara Croft. The Podcat is annoying me just now whenever they mispronounce it (though to be fair I think it's only Justin getting it horribly wrong). Her frelling name is Lara Croft. Not Laura Croft. Its not like she's an obscure character whose name you're unlikely to have heard spoken aloud in game, or in two big-budget movies or anything.

 

[an annoyed writer]

Oh, these are fun. One I've heard a few times is where some people pronounce "Turret" as "Turrent". I swear, the next time I see that I'm going to behead the person who fucking says or writes that. Fucking seriously.

Turrent

Okay, so which kind of sword do you want me to use? Pick one:

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

When I was in my first year of Highschool we had a teacher from Iran for our.. I guess woodworking class is probably the easiest non-colloquial way of describing it.

Anyway she pronounced Tri-square as Try-see-quare and goggles as googles. We knew she pronounced goggles wrongly but it wasn't until the next year that we figured out that Try-see-quare was wrong when we got another teacher.

 

[Atomic Spy Crab]

Oh, these are fun. One I've heard a few times is where some people pronounce "Turret" as "Turrent". I swear, the next time I see that I'm going to behead the person who fucking says or writes that. Fucking seriously.

Turrent

Okay, so which kind of sword do you want me to use? Pick one:

The scimitar