Up until recently, I thought that the US national park was pronounced “yo-semite”, as if it was some sort of ghetto-slang used for greeting a Jewish person.
That’s amazing
There was an '80s cop show called Hill Street Blues that had a recurring latino character named Jesus. All I heard as a kid was “Hey, Zeus” so I thought his actual name was Zeus and everybody just said “hey” to him when addressing him.
I love this so much!
I thought Yosemite Sam had pretty much taught all English speakers the correct pronunciation. I remember my parents saying their Swedish relatives pronounced it “Yohsmeet.”
I have no idea who that is.
EDIT: Oh, that guy. And now I know his name.
Non-native English speaker, young, or both?
The former. Noggie, to be precise. Plus I didn’t watch a whole lot of Bugs Bunny growing up either.
Wassa “Noggie”?
Norwegian
Thank you! Going to call my Brother In-Law that now…
I say it that way sometimes for fun. I live nearish so sometimes, when visitors hear me say if, they ask if that’s how it’s actually pronounced
Wait how do you phonetically say this?
Yo - seh - mit - ee
You’re not alone, brother.
Also dialects are a thing. The way a lot of words come out of my mouth has been culturally labeled as ignorant. I go out of my way to change my pronunciations at work so I get taken seriously, but I’ve been doing it less now that I’m accepted in that world. Maybe that caps how much farther I can go, but maybe I don’t want to go further if it means continuing to act like people who sound like how I sound are less than
You should never mock someone who pronounces a word strangely: They might be from Reading.
Me whenever someone can’t pronounce a word
Which by the way is a town name that very often gets mispronounced by people who only read it in books.
Made even more confusing if someone is reading literature at Reading.
Whew don’t get me started about towns called Lebanon in the USA Midwest…
Was that pronounced like red-ing?
Pour one out for all my epi-tome homies
Have some Worcestershire sauce on me!
Or… or you read it in the 3 word title of a meme. Doesn’t matter, learned word.
It was embarrassingly recently that I realized segue and “segway” were the same word which I apparently didn’t know how to spell.
Edit: BTW - the weird way that English words are spelled or pronounced - and why - is one of my favorrite nerd subjects. I love this thread so freaking much. And how RIGHT nearly everyone here SHOULD have been.
Bro let me tell you how recently I realized…
👆
Lol
Yeah, that’s very much an English thing. Many other languages use reasonably consistent spelling and pronunciation, so memorizing the handful of exceptions isn’t really a problem.
However, with English it’s the other way around. You need to memorize the handful of words that are actually pronounced the way they are written. Everything else is just pure chaos. If you read a word, you can’t pronounce it. If you hear a word, you can’t find it in a dictionary.
This was me with a number of words over the years, but most memorable “paradigm.”
The one that wakes me up in the middle of the night is albeït. I thought it was fancy foreign speak pronounced “all bait”, but it is just a short form of “all be it”, is pronounced exactly like that, and is a synonym for “all though it be”.
Gif
Jjjjjifff
haha, I’d never thought of that, but it’s true :D
Nah I learned words reading memes and take out menus
I used to think “chaos” had the same “ch” as “church” when I was a kid. Don’t know why I never heard it spoken aloud by someone earlier than I did.
But the one that I find inexcusable is Southern US people who pronounce “jalapeno” with a “j” and “n” instead of an “ha” and “ñ” even though they know better. Sounds so willfully ignorant
Chaos, pronounced like multiple “ciao” in Italian. 🤌
And on your jalapeño comment: I spent 6 months sending my coworker “hola” in morning greetings until he told me that he thought “hola” was just me saying “Holler [holla] at a player [playa]”. To his credit, he took German on high school. To his discredit, we had been working in Spain for 2 weeks when we had this conversation.
Holler at a beach?
I used to think “chaos” had the same “ch” as “church” when I was a kid.
The chao of Sonic Adventure (1998)?
Unless it’s a YouTuber. Then they’re possibly pronouncing it wrong so people will comment about their pronunciation and fuel the algorithm.
Segue still gets me. In my head I still pronounce it like rogue.
Every time.
Me as a small children: I’ll PRE-FACE this by saying…
Family: wait, what??
I did not feel honorable…
Me as a grown-ass Spaniard right now: wait, it’s not pre-face? Is it pre-fis?
Pref-is
Damn, thank you
Just make it clear that it’s a short e like in preference and a soft s.
It is. And yet, we’re both still correct. Somehow…
Same with pre-dator for me xD
Yo sa mite for Yosemite is my worst one.
My sister and I did this intentionally to be funny as kids. We took my son there last year and he did the same thing without hearing the story. Pretty funny for me.
Sich a dumb word, but somehow I never really clicked on this word: “question”. I have spoken the word a lot, but somehow I practiced speaking english less when I moved away from my parents to study. English became more of a read and written language than spoken, so the words became just things to read, not to sound out loud.
After attempting to speak a bit more english again, words were drawn from memory by how they were written. And for some reason the word “question” was incredibly weird. “Kuest-ion”? No, I’m sure there is a “ch”-sound in there. “Kwest-chien”?
I had to check out some youtube videos on pronounciation to get it right.
Oh man, there must be dozens of examples like this you have. It’s such a weird language, with so many words and spellings and pronunciations from so many sources.
