Embarrassment and apologies

All these years, I have been pronouncing "Wicomico" incorrectly.

(It's the name of a county and a river in Maryland.)

I just found out the correct way to say it.

Oops.

 

Did you have your mother laugh at you for pronouncing butte as butt while reading? Because I did.

 

Because I read well over my age and experience, there were many words I knew the meaning of by context but made up the the pronunciation with phonics.
I quickly learned not to try and put them into a conversation because I was guaranteed to look like an idiot.

 

I'm still that way. I read a lot, but don't get out that much to hear many of the words that I read. Yes, I know that decent dictionaries include pronounciation guides, and there's always the internet.

 

How come the entire English nation can't learn to pronounce aluminum? There is only one i in the word. We didn't all misprounce nuclear just because our idiot in chief couldn't pronounce it. I was like redravin, using words in conversation that I didn't know how to pronounce. Like hors d'oeuvres.

 

I don't see human verbal errors as a big deal--especially with proper names that you can't look up in the online dictionary. I'm smart and I learn the meanings of words but when they pop into my head and I utilize them I can and do mispronounce them. As long as someone gently corrects me--it is no big deal. Not to derail the thread, but there are regional differences too that sound "wrong" but you'll never convince the folks living there that they are.

How about JFK pronouncing Cuba as Cuber?

Here in my adopted Midwest, often settled by German folks, how would you pronounce the street Kirchoff? Kirk-off, Kirch-off, Kirk-ov? My Android street finder says Kirk-off.
I used to live on Rohlwing Rd. Inevitably, newcomers call it Roll-wing Rd. It is not called that by the locals, rather it is Rolling Rd.
Finally, in the early years, I was a big fan of the X-Files but I had no idea how to pronounce the leading man, David Duchovny's, last name. This was pre-Internet. After about 3 years, I finally heard him introduced: Duke-cuhv-ny. I was thinking Duh-chuv-ny. Not even close.

 

There are two 'spellings' (aluminum as you say) and aluminium which corresponds with the spelling of other elements eg helium, deuterium, uranium, actinium etc. There are no elements * that end in only 'um', no lithum, no calcum or sodum. If it were spelled correctly there would be no confuson.

Go Americium!

* Of course there are always molybdenum, lanthanum and platinum which don't help my argument one little bit.

 

Aluminium makes me think UK Top Gear immediately. I love it. And use it. People look at me like I'm nuts. But, I do what I want !

 

What? We say "erbs" here.

I think Col. Sanders' oft-repeated "eleven erbs and spices" has pretty much wiped out hard-h "herbs".

When I was a kid in mid-Michigan, one of our two TV channels frequently announced that it had "transmitting facilities in Onondaga." They said it like this: "on-un-DAY-ga".

Southern Michigan got most of its place names from upstate New York. The Onondagas were one of the tribes of the Iroquois confederation, which formerly held that territory. No surprise, there's a county there named Onondaga. It's a pretty important one, too -- it contains Syracuse and almost half a million people.

But when I went to grad school at Cornell, I learned that the New York county was pronounced "on-un-DAHHG-uh".

Presumably that is closer to the way the Iroquois said it.

But to my ear, it sounded so affected. Like "toe-MAHH-toe".

 

Fine. Pe-can pie or pe-con pie?

As far as British pronunciations, you pronounce jaguar with three syllables instead of two. Do you also pronounce labour with three syllables?

 

I say herbs and 'erbs, meself.
Also, some guidos in New Jersey have started calling people Herbs as an insult.
Not sure if it's spelled the same, though, as I've only heard it on XboxLive.

 

Pee-kahn. Pffft.

 

The US is on it's own for many spelling and pronounciation tasks, which is fine, it makes for a dynamic language.

There can still be confusion in 'blighty' over pronounciation which we find very amusing.

 

The funny thing is, it wasn't all that long ago (few hundered years or so) that spelling was not codified. You can look at some manuscripts where the same word is spelled a few different ways, sometimes in the same paragraph.

Pronunciation is similar but it's more regional.

Think about rhyming dictionairies and New Zealand accents vs US accents. You need a whole different set of rhyming words.