English Words You've Heard Mangled

[HoneyVision]

I've said it before in a previous thread, but English is one of the worst excuses for a language ever. There's no consistency whatsoever.
For example when "befit" becomes "befitting", we give it an extra 't'. So then why the fuck do we not do the same "vomit" and "edit"? Where's the sense in that?

Also discrepancies in the pronunciation of "country", "could", "couch", "course".
Also "food" and "flood".
Also "oven" and "oval"
Also why do both "breach", "elite", "concrete", "fetus" and "creep" create the same sound when they're using different letters? And why doesn't "tread" sound like them?
Also with "aim" and "age". Same sound, different letters.

I also think that that the letter 'C' is redundant, because we have S and K to cover both sounds. C serves no purpose.

I understand that English has had numerous influences from various languages, but so has every other language in the world. And most of them do a fine job of staying consistent and tidy. Italian is a good example. They have their rules and they're followed with very little inconsistency. Arabic is another good one. The letters that you see are the letters that you say. Why fuck around with silent letters? It's so redundant.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

One of the most commonly mispronounced words in the English language...? Pronunciation!!

Seriously... look at the spelling... it is both pronounced and spelt differently to 'pronounce'. It is 'Pronunciate'... meaning it has an 'Uh' sound in the middle not an 'ow'!


Oh... and people who say 'picked my interest' or 'peaked my interest' not 'piqued'! :/

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

I get crap for saying Tissue "Tiss-u" as opposed to "Tish-u". Same goes for Issue. Apparently I am horribly in the wrong here.

 

[Sherokain]

I can only think of 2 off the top of my head. One I only hear every now and then, and it's "Taw-lit" for Toilet

The one that really, really gets me though is Yoghurt. It seems that Yoh-gurt, which is an Americanism has become the main pronunciation nearly everywhere, even in the UK. The correct pronunciation is Yog-urt.

I don't know why it irks me so much, but I can't stand hearing everyone say Yoh-gurt

I haven't heard' anybody in England say it as yoh-gurt, but it is now spelt as "Yogurt" in all stores, except the one where I work, because I fix it.

LIKE A BOSS!
OT
My mother used to say hambag instead of hand bag, and Seagirl instead of seagull when she was a child. But she was young so i dont know if that counts or not.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

On the aluminium/aluminum thing, let's take a deeper look shall we.

Elements that end in "ium," including the officialy established temporary naming scheme used to identify new elements;

Helium
Lithium
Berylium
Sodium
Magnesium
Potassium
Calcium
Scandium
Titanium
Vanadium
Chromium
Gallium
Germanium
Selenium
Rubidium
Strontium
Yttrium
Zirconium
Niobium
Technetium
Ruthenium
Rhodium
Palladium
Cadmium
Indium
Tellurium
Ceasium
Barium
Cerium
Praseodymium
Neodymium
Promethium
Samarium
Europium
Gandolium
Terbium
Dysprosium
Holmium
Erbium
Thulium
Ytterbium
Lutetium
Hafnium
Rhenium
Osmium
Iridium
Thallium
Polonium
Francium
Radium
Actinium
Thorium
Protactinium
Uranium
Neptunium
Plutonium
Americium
Curium
Berkelium
Californium
Einsteinium
Fermium
Mendelevium
Nobelium
Lawrencium
Rutherfordium
Dubnium
Seaborgium
Bohrium
Hassium
Meitnerium
Darmstadtium
Roentgenium
Coppernicium
Ununtrium*
Flerovium
Ununpentium*
Livermorium
Ununseptium*
Ununoctium*

Total number of elements that end in "ium," 80.

*Temporary name


Elements that end only in "um;"

Molybdenum
Lanthanum
Tantalum
Platinum

Total number, 4.

I think it's safe to say that the majority of elements prefer the customary "ium" suffix, and therefore I feel completely comfortable and right in lumping aluminium in with he other 80 elements that do so. The 4 that don't use the same naming system are anomalies and wildcards, exceptions to the rule.

Besides, all the best elements use ium too.

 

[Poetic Nova]

The whole vocubelary when my mom tries to speak english =w=

 

[Thyunda]

Apart from Americanisms that drive me insame ('erb', 'carmel' and 'aluminum' chief among them), I've heard a Chinese lecturer at my university say 'components' and have it sound like 'kahunas' (everything else he says is just as bad, but that is one I remember for its commonality), I've heard people pronounce 'scythe' as 'skaith', Northernlion of Youtube says 'vaguely' as something like 'vaggly', and I myself have trouble deciding whether to pronounce 'route' as 'root' or 'raut' (as in 'out').

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

What's that meant to be? Or is it every instance of '-ness'?

'Nesh' is what you'd call someone susceptible to the cold. "I'm a nesh person, put the fire on." My coworkers like to say the word around me just to piss me off.

Also - Route is root, Rout is Rowt.

 

[Teoes]

It's strange, I'm normally really pedantic about pronunciation and mangled English really gets my goat - despite it being an awful inconsistent language as already noted.

What's never occurred to me however is how much I tolerate and use myself. Living where I do in Scotland and working with a lass from the North of England I get 'owt' (anything); 'summat' (something); 'nowt' (nothing); 'wur' (our); 'gonnae' (going to); 'gies' (give me/us) and so on and so on, on a daily basis. Where does the line get drawn between mangled words and local dialect/accent?

My lady's accent makes it hard sometimes to tell the difference between "hungry" and "angry", which keeps me on my toes.

Honourable mention goes to Worcester sauce (Woostershersher sorse). But that's supposed to be mangled, by law.

 

[SecondPrize]

Myself and some friends took a psychology class together at school called Drugs and Behavior. It turned out to be a course on neurobiology and was the most difficult course I took. The professor knew here shit, but whenever she talked about axon buttons she called them boo-tons. I had to struggle to not lose my shit every time. Nuc-u-ler always gets me.
As far as differing versions of English goes, I don't understand how the English pronounce lucky as jammy. I mean, come on, all the letters but one are different.

 

[Denamic]

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.

It's 'mey ley'. That's E as in 'eh', not the English 'ee'.
No 'A' sound in melee in any case.

Also, stop having footnotes in MY post!
I feel violated.

 

[lacktheknack]

Anything and everything PronunciationManual teaches.

<youtube=v-n1vGeVIXo>

<youtube=BzX6jMalUck>

And so on. His consistency is admirable, actually.

 

[Eggsnham]

My step-brother used to pronounce 'subtle' like 'sub-toll'; my other younger brother used to say 'raff' music instead of 'rap' music. He also still pronounces 'ammo' like 'aim-oh'. Oh, and one of my brother's friends (who lives down the street from us, so he's always at our house) pronounces 'rocket launcher' like 'lock-let launcher'.

There are a bunch of other examples of various English phrases that people seem to love to mangle; like 'could have' being turned into 'could of'; and then there's the old "there, their, they're" thing, or the occasional apostrophe 's' being tacked onto a word where it makes absolutely no sense.

That being said, I make my own share of literary mistakes on a regular basis and have learned over time to keep my grammar Nazi rage in check. It still pisses me off when people go out of their way to misspell words, though. It may seem unfair, but if somebody intentionally spells words or phrases using "text-talk", I find it really difficult to take what they're saying seriously.

 

[mrgerry123]

Yh lots of Americans pronounce herbs as "erbs"
tom-ah-to as to-may-to
aluminium as aluminum
sime-ultaneous instead of sim-ultaneous
pooma instead of puma
loo-ten-ant instead of left-ten-ant (actually that one makes a bit of sense)

And generally
pro-nounce-iation instead of pro-nun-ciation
also its Espresso not Expresso

Right, rant over.

Also its anyway not anyways

 

[funkyjiveturkey]

my friend has no sort of speech impediment, yet for some reason he always pronounces "Siren" as "sy-ern"

my sides are in orbit

 

[Angie7F]

Right now for some reason I cant pronounce one of the lines in Demi Lovato's "Fix a heart"
"I tried to sever ties" end up being Severe.
Urgh...

 

[Scars Unseen]

My wife is Japanese, so I get odd pronunciations all the time. Examples include procotol, mouse wash, grand beef, lifesaver(when discussing Star Wars), forgettable(instead of forgetful)... even our daughter's name comes out as Caitolin instead of Caitlin.

Shopping lists also get mangled pretty badly.

 

[Devetta]

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.)

Funny thing, that... we also spell it wrong. I say it that way because it's been spelled aluminum my entire life, in chemistry classes, metal shops, even in the military where I dabbled in shaping aircraft aluminum. The first time I heard "aluminium" pronounced (I believe I was 17 or 18... some time around the turn of the millennium), my gut reaction was "Why the fuck did you add another i? Are you stupid?"

It's almost like we speak a different dialect...

Ah I didn't think about spelling, seeing as it's an element I presumed it would be a universal way to spell it, especially (as someone said above) that 80 elements end in "ium" and only 4 end in "um".

 

[Latinidiot]

Well being dutch, I had a russian professor for a mathematical course once, and the way he said 'definitie' was fantastic. It's supposed to be (defin-ee-tsee in english phonetics I guess), but the way he said it it would become 'deb-niz-iye'

Most fascinating 2hours of class ever.

 

[omega 616]

Americans and the word "solder".

IT IS NOT "SODDER", there is a motherfucking "L" right there! Say him, he is a nice friendly letter.

It's like the word

Spoiler: sod

Sod in British English is a somewhat offensive, pejorative term for a person, derived from sodomite[1] but rarely nowadays used with this meaning. As an insult, it is generally teamed with 'off', i.e., 'sod off' meaning to get lost/go away/stop bothering me/fuck off. It can generally be applied to refer to a person in a most basic sense and frequently preceded by a modifying adjective (?That crazy sod almost ran me over!?). It can be used as many different parts of speech ? e.g. in the imperative mood, ?Sod off, you slag!?; or in adjective form, ?sodding bastard?. Such uses as ?Sod it!? and ?Sod this? are often exclamations of frustration.

, you are a sodder, like it's an adjective.

I think the only word with an L in that you don't pronounce is Salmon but with solder you say the "L".

 

[Cooperblack]

I've always pronounce melee and meme as me-lee and me-me due to not having heard the words spoken until much later than I learned them. Saying meilei and meem sounds really wrong to me.

on another note; in warriors:legends of troy did anybody else get annoyed with the pronunciation of some of the characters names ie:
Odysseus (o-diss-ee-us) becoming (o-diss-ay-us)
&
Zeus (zoos) becoming (zay-us)

did anybody else notice that? have i been pronouncing greek names wrong?
i know they arent english words i was just curious
x

Believe most languages/dialects are wrong. In Swedish we say Zeus like Sävs(sounds as stupid as it looks). The ancient Greek way was Zeús.

Danish is even worse : [Søvs].. god that's so embarrassing :/