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[moonwise]

Stolen from linguaphiles

The 100 most commonly mispronounced words in the English language

This... is one of my major pet peeves. It drives me straight up the wall to hear gross mispronunciations by people who ought to know better. They include the mispronunciation of "nu-clee-ar" as "nu-kyuu-ler," which is a favorite gaffe of our Fearless Leader Dubya. I get so agitated over hearing that mispronounced over and over again on the TV that I have to turn it off. After all, exactly how smart can Dubya be if he can't even pronounce "nuclear" properly?

An omission from this list is "coupon," which I hear mispronounced constantly as "kyoo-pon" instead of "koo-pon." Maybe that's a Jersey regionalism.

Improper spelling gets me even more and if I got into the homonym problems like "you're" and "your" we'd be here all day. However, gotta eat some crow because I spelled "peroxynitrite" wrong through my entire thesis. The embarrassment was alleviated when I saw that my boss doesn't know how to spell "succinctly."

See, littlelicks, I told you I was anal-retentive.

Comments

[little-licks.livejournal.com]

The "nu-kyu-ler" thing seems symptomatic of a Southern upbringing - just about every I grew around said it that way, including a few nuclear reactor engineers.

Another Southern mis-pronounciation that bugs me is "waRsh" vs. "wash." Ick.

Here's one that's been getting me lately: "exacerbate." For some reason, the word itself has been eluding me. It's hard to sound erudite when you pause in the middle of a statement and say, "...exsaberate? Exasperate....no, that's not it...ack!"

[arafel.livejournal.com]

I agree with you to some extent, as there are pronunciations on the list that are clearly regionalisms and a function of what brand of English the immigrant who got off the boat spoke. Some are slurred English, like "February," and it's hard to call those one way or another. But the flagrant errors, like "for all intensive purposes," drive me nuts because they're plain wrong. Like "irregardless."

"Nuclear" is just a giant pet peeve of mine. ^_^

[arafel.livejournal.com]

Interesting - my dad says "warsh" and he's not from the South. I understand it's also a holdover from a Pennsylvania Dutch accent, which would make sense since my grandmother comes from that area.

*grins* I hear ya, I get tangled on "specific" sometimes.

[caoin.livejournal.com]

One of my favourite Simpsons moments is when Homer is proudly correcting people, ‘It’s not nuclear, it’s nucular’.

One of my pet peeves is newsreaders pronouncing Beijing as Beige-ing. The city is not getting any beiger! Seems to be part of an assumption that all foreigners pronounce j like the French.

[pipeandslippers.livejournal.com]

See, I told you you should get a job in the UK. Those contractions of which you are speaking mostly don't happen here. In fact just the other day i was talking to someone who said that the US way of saying nuclear was nucular. Perhpas your esteemed leader is to blame.

Are spelling isn't necessarily any better though! ;-)

[lordraziel.livejournal.com]

I don't think my pronunciation is that bad. It's my spelling that is terrible. Though I do say "Old Timers Disease", even though I know what the correct pronunciation is. It just amuses me. :)

[wickedorin.livejournal.com]

You're not anal-retentive. You're just very thorough.