Wordie: There is No 'X' in 'Espresso': Words Butchered by Americans: Comments

Comment by Asativum, 2 months ago

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:39:56 +0000

Wait, our kind host on this page says: "I'm talking about adding letters that aren't even in the word or skipping ones that aren't silent (syncope and apocope). I mean, c'mon."

But if you skip saying letters that aren't silent -- is this a koan?

Comment by reesetee, 2 months ago

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:07:10 +0000

Grew up in PA, ptero.

Comment by pterodactyl, 2 months ago

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:24:59 +0000

I'm American, too, and I always hear buoy pronounced to rhyme with phooey. Reesetee, I think you're right about regional variations, and I have to ask -- did you grow up in Pennsylvania, or are you a transplant?

Comment by frogapplause, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:17:24 +0000

Yes, chained_bear... shudder, shudder, shudder. Egads! I better get back to my cartooning work. I'm losing it.

Comment by reesetee, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:09:51 +0000

Jmp: I say "boy" for "buoy," and I'm American. I wonder whether that's a regional thing? Actually, I wonder whether many of these pronunciation differences are regional rather than national.

Comment by bilby, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:09:34 +0000

My radio announcer was Australian. Conclusion: we mangle with the best of them. And all this on a day where a medical survey showed that Australians have surpassed Americans in levels of obesity.
Doctor interviewed on TV news: "If there was a Fat Olympics, we'd be favourites for the gold medal."

I'm sooooo proud *glowing*.

Comment by Prolagus, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:54:02 +0000

I'm with you c_b! (but maybe this list is about Americans specifically).

Comment by chained_bear, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:37:09 +0000

Can we just say that people mispronounce things all the time, and not make it something that's distinctively American?

P.S. frogapplause, did you mean "shudder," by any chance?

Comment by frogapplause, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:03:11 +0000

Statistics pronounced as "stuh-sti-sticks" (said often by someone I knew who did NOT have a fluency disorder).

Comment by frogapplause, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:55:48 +0000

I've heard "specific" pronounced as "pacific" (wince, shutter).

Comment by bilby, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:07:43 +0000

That's it. I'm burning my Mickey Mouse ears.

Comment by johnmperry, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:36:20 +0000

How about 'buoy'? We Brits rhyme it with boy, whereas Americans rhyme with phooey.

Comment by bilby, 2 months ago

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:17:50 +0000

I heard a radio announcer say escalate twice yesterday with a pronunciation that resembled eskewlate. Nasty.

Comment by picklechipsluva5, 10 months ago

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 05:02:02 +0000

Oh yeah, and the misspelling two below. *Dictionary

Comment by picklechipsluva5, 10 months ago

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 05:01:22 +0000

Sorry about the misspelling below. *Debateable

Comment by picklechipsluva5, 10 months ago

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 05:00:28 +0000

Another word would be roof, although it is debateble. It is listed in the dicionary as both "rufe" and "roof (oo as in book)." Which do ya'lls (ha) use? I use roof, not rufe.

Comment by chained_bear, 10 months ago

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 17:24:09 +0000

I hate to say this, but it isn't that Americans butcher these words--it's that lots of people don't pronounce things right, regardless of where they live or grew up. I have a lot of these words on my own "GAH!"-type list. And I would imagine a lot of the people who are posting here and complaining about those who mispronounce things, are American themselves.

I'm not trying to argue or anything--just wanted to point that out. It makes me sad to witness discussions about British and American English that don't compare the two so much as complain that one of them is wrong. To use a phrase I hate (in keeping with the style of this page!), "it's all good." :)

Comment by abiohphobia, 10 months ago

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:02:25 +0000

awesome list

how bout caramel

Comment by lorilori, about 1 year ago

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 21:22:11 +0000

How about escape? I can't stand when people say "excape."

Comment by uselessness, about 1 year ago

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 14:58:12 +0000

Also, hover. It only has one "o," not two.

Comment by uselessness, about 1 year ago

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 09:07:44 +0000

To billifer: I could never pronounce it like that. Sounds too much like "dur," which as we all know is a bastardization of "duh." Kinda defeats the purpose of an intellectual word like "dour." :-)

Another word for this list: associate. People insist on turning that "c" into an "sh."

"dour"

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 00:39:50 +0000

This was one that was recently featured on the KPBS show A Way With Words: dour. The correct pronunciation, which I didn't realize until hearing the show, is not (IPA) /daʊɹ/ ("sour") but actually /dʊɹ/ ("sure").

Comment by colleen, about 1 year ago

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:31:55 +0000

there was that great bit on the Simpsons when Lisa flipped on Marge for insisting on saying "foilage" for "foliage."

Comment by uselessness, about 1 year ago

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:57:44 +0000

Excellent link! There, too, I find myself busted for "salmon." Dang dang dang.

Comment by pedalinfaith, about 1 year ago

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:48:28 +0000

That list is spun gold! I'm heretofore pimping it in the list description. And, of course, you've just created another hour or two of pleasure reading for me. Hooray for PBS.

Comment by inkhorn, about 1 year ago

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:50:39 +0000

I've never been able to get my tongue around the word vehement, no matter how many times I hear it.

Comment by inkhorn, about 1 year ago

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:48:36 +0000

I like this list. I even like the URL. Beastly.

Comment by pedalinfaith, about 1 year ago

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:35:03 +0000

Or, what's even worse, the egregious 'inner-resting'.

Comment by uselessness, about 1 year ago

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 21:44:00 +0000

interesting (intresting)?

Comment by inkhorn, about 1 year ago

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 21:30:09 +0000

facsimile

Fak-sim-uh-lee, NOT fax-a-mile.

Comment by angharad, about 1 year ago

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 20:44:19 +0000

Seanahan, what I love about jaguar is that there's the correct way, the American way, *and* the UK way (jag-yoo-er).

Comment by seanahan, about 1 year ago

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:17:32 +0000

I pronounce both Porsche and Jaguar the "American" way, because people look at me so strangely when I say them correctly.

Comment by uselessness, about 1 year ago

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:09:08 +0000

Okay, we're one-for-one. ;-)

Comment by pedalinfaith, about 1 year ago

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 14:54:54 +0000

So, she sheepishly admits, I had to look it up and--gack--I've been pronouncing Porsche incorrectly all these years and thinking it was the "POR-sha" people who were being pretentious!

Comment by uselessness, about 1 year ago

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:32:47 +0000

I'm never ordering fish for dinner again. And that color -- it's pinkish.

Oh, as long as we're on the car/road theme, how about Porsche?

Also, probably? ('probly')

Comment by pedalinfaith, about 1 year ago

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:29:36 +0000

I could probably live with jagwire because I'm first generation Yankee and it makes up for all of the Southerners who pronounce "ire" words as "ahr" (for example, squire is pronounced squahr, which of course rhymes with square. :) I could probably go with sment too since it counteracts all of my relatives who pronounce it CEEment. :)

But ashfalt is unforgiveable. And that's definitely going on the list. In fact, maybe we need a list of the words with their mispronunciations spelled phoenetically (e.g., ashfalt, febbuary, reelator, and so on).

But, uselessness, I think you are the odd one out when it comes to salmon, though. Both the pronunciation guides for m-w and dictionary.com have the 'l' as silent.

This reminds me ... pronunciation is often mispronounced as pronounciation.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Comment by uselessness, about 1 year ago

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:29:39 +0000

Words my dad can't pronounce, and I don't think he's alone:
jaguar -- he says "jagwire"
cement -- he says "sment"
asphalt -- he says "ashfalt"
salmon -- he says "sammin"

Not sure about the last one actually, maybe that's how it's really pronounced, but I try to include an "l" sound when I say it. Maybe I'm the weird one. :-)

Comment by Asativum, about 1 year ago

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:41:13 +0000

I'll second asterisk, which I usually hear as Asterix. (No Obelix, though.)

Comment by nkocharh, about 1 year ago

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:24:58 +0000

I would like to propose the addition of asterisk, which I often hear pronounced "asterik".

Comment by seanahan, about 1 year ago

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 23:45:59 +0000

For the record, the spelling "Aluminum" predates the spelling "Aluminium". Therefore it is the British who are screwing up
butchering the language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Spelling

Comment by John, about 1 year ago

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 23:14:50 +0000

Great list. Though butchering language -- and some of these words -- is an international pastime. This page talks in particular about "ask" being mispronounced through the ages (google "ax"), and this amazon review claims that Chaucer wrote "ask" as "aks".

Comment by agreatnotion, about 1 year ago

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 23:03:01 +0000

Great list. Don't forget how "aluminium" was reduced to "aluminum."

Comment by pedalinfaith, about 1 year ago

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 01:22:38 +0000

Wonderful! Thanks, kad and angharad, for the additions and the pointer to Kaichi's list.

Comment by kad, about 1 year ago

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 09:23:04 +0000

I often hear "supposably" instead of "supposedly." Then there's Oregon. How most of America can mispronounce the name of one of our own states is beyond me.

I love this list, by the way :)

Comment by angharad, about 1 year ago

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 08:43:39 +0000

Some of my peeves: realtor, athlete, library, tsunami.
You might also take a look at
http://wordie.org/people/Kaichi?wl=173