Got called out once for pronouncing epitome as Epi-tome.
That one stung more than Camus as Cah-mus instead of Cah-moo. At least thats just the French fucking with us.
It can happen with common words too! Like I didn’t know I was pronouncing Thai food wrong till that John Oliver episode
How were you pronouncing it?
Thigh food
That's adorable
Aw shucks
You never heard anyone say Thailand? Or you just never made the connection?
I think it’s the former, I also think I maybe imagined the “Th” when someone else said it. I also may have been surrounded by others who mispronounced both.
So in short I blame society /s
So in short I blame society /s
Ha! Typical millennial
Edit: since it's not always clear on the internet, I too am being sarcastic.
Uh, thanks for the heads up. I’ve been pronouncing epitome both correctly and incorrectly my entire adult life because for some reason I thought they were two different words.
If anyone's wondering and since it's not clarified here..
Epitome is pronounced like this: ||UK|US| |phonetic|/ɪˈpɪt.ə.mi/|/ɪˈpɪt̬.ə.mi/| |non-phonetic|epittomee|epiddomee|
I've been an avid reader since I was 6/7 and I hate reading dictionary listings with phonetic spellings as ironically they only make it harder for me to know how to pronounce a word. I'm also a native speaker.
Reading a new English word as a foreigner is super frustrating because you never know how to pronounce that.
Yes sure unanimous is not 'un-animous', it's 'you-nanimous'. Makes total sense.
Don't even get me started on the dozen different ways to pronounce 'ough'.
English is tough, but it can be understood through thorough thought, though.
I'm learning Swedish slowly, and I was raised in the US south, so I am constantly corrected on pronunciation lol.
With words starting with "un" you can figure out pronunciation by removing the "un" and see if the rest of the word is it's own word which means the opposite. "animous" is not a word so you would use the long "u" sound in "unanimous". Same for uniform or university. But not unironic or unintentional.
Through that logic I'd always figured unanimous stems from "without animosity" and the word animous just got lost to time, which would make un-animous the more sensible pronunciation. But it seems that while they do share a common etymology, it's not "un" as in negation, but rather "un" from "unus" meaning one, with both sharing "animus" meaning mind.
I also found out that animous used to exist as a synonym for animus at one point.
Fucking English, dumb language held together by tape and desperation.
Most languages don't need spelling lessons.
I pronounced hyperbole as it is spelled "hyper bowl" for decades and nobody corrected me! It wasn't until I finally saw someone say it in a TV show that I realized the error of my ways. Now I stumble over the word every time I try to say it because I have decades of habit to overcome. Sometimes when I think I might need to say it, I start mouthing it ahead of time so that I get it right on the first try. There are at least a dozen other words like this for me, and I'm sure dozens more that I'm not even aware of.
Edit: for those of you who have never heard it pronounced, hyperbole is pronounced "high-per-buh-lee".
I was 17 when my friend pointed out to me that epitome is pronounced epi-tome-ey
Rather than how I was saying it Epi-Tome.
Congrats, I was first corrected while meeting new people in college 😔
I even had it in a song I wrote and the whole thing was ruined because it didn't rhyme anymore. Also it was ruined by my songwriting skills.
Same here, but I knew the correct pronunciation of the word when spoken, I just didn't know they were the same damn word. When it finally clicked in my head, I about slapped myself.
I'm almost 50 and recently learned I've been pronouncing two words wrong.
"Template" as 'tem' + 'plate' (like a dish) instead of 'tem' + 'plet' (like 'let')
"Opacity" saying the middle 'a' like 'hay' instead of like 'math'.
That one I was SURE I was right when my wife told me, so I asked my Google home mini: "Hey Google, how do you pronounce the word 'opacity'?" (Pronouncing it my way), and to prove that Google has a mean sense of humor, (and I swear this is true) responded with "Guacamole". My wife has not let me live that down.
At least for template I think both pronunciations are correct. Or at least I feel like I hear temPLATE as often as I hear tempLET.
Template is sometimes pronounced template.
I thought 'segue' was pronounced 'seg' and 'Segway' was 'Segway'. I blame the mall cop transportation.
Unless they have a father with a PhD in English who acts like an English teacher with them their whole childhood.
I loved my dad, but boy did it suck when I showed him some piece of creative writing I wrote and he got out the red pen.
It is even more funny if the reading isn't in your native language. I can write in English at a C1-C2 level but I am at the B level when speaking as I have no clue how to pronounce most of my regular vocabulary that I use when writing.
My pet theory is that spoken English and written English are two different languages that kinda translate between them.
In spoken English, "I read books." doesn't have ambiguous tense.
I somehow didn't realise that "retry" was literally "re-try" and not "ret-ree" until I was in my 20s
Is not shibboleth just phonetic?
Shibboleth is pronounced just like it is spelled, but some languages do not have an "sh" phoneme. In the story, soldiers used the word shibboleth to identify foreigners trying to sneak into their territory. If they pronounced it "sibboleth," then the person was exposed as a foreigner.
Modern Greek is one such language. I introduced my friend Sharon to some Greek relatives, and they called her "Saron" so we all started calling her "Sauron."
I am so with you. I'm not a native speaker. I learned most of my English from reading books - thousands of books, actually. So written English is absolutely no problem.
My pronounciation sucks, and my listening comprehension is horrible, on the other hand.
if i see Irish or Welsh i'm basically not even trying, although they both sound great
My wife has an English degree and I constantly throw out words that she swears I'm making up. Mungy is one for instance.
I have an English degree and I always tell my wife that it is my license to make up words.
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