I recently said "Chia-puss" instead of pronouncing it right and a partner at my law firm turned and said "I've always pronounced it Chiapas," kind of with a "but what do I know?" attitude. It was SUCH a nice way for him to correct me.

Anonymous wrote:I will never, ever forgive my mother for laughing at me (aged maybe 10-12) when I said epitome as epi-tome instead of eh-PIT-toe-mee. She tried to backpedal, saying it was an indication that I was a reader, and that's a good thing... but she laughed at me.

This is not normal. I hope it’s a joke.

I will never, ever forgive my mother for laughing at me (aged maybe 10-12) when I said epitome as epi-tome instead of eh-PIT-toe-mee. She tried to backpedal, saying it was an indication that I was a reader, and that's a good thing... but she laughed at me.

I'm French and there are so many English words I don't pronounce correctly, despite being a bookworm and extremely well-read in classic English literature (mostly British). It also took many years for me to switch to American spellings, since I learned English in the UK.

All the words that the US has in common with France I risk pronouncing in the French way
Continuité: con-ti-nu-i-té or con-tee-nuu-ee-tay
Niche, French word: nee-shh. Not nitch.

I used to pronounce segue as see-g (hard g sound). My bad. Not a French word!

OP- did you think continuity when pronounced correctly was a different word? I'm sure you had heard it?

I called “clique” “clicky” for decades

Anonymous wrote:How do you say "niche"?
I always avoid saying that word allowed

neesh

*aloud

How do you say "niche"?
I always avoid saying that word allowed

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everybody's got at least one word that they say wrong. That's your word.
Mine is "segue" which I always pronounced as "seg". Nobody ever corrected me although it's not a word I use a lot.

Is it seg-way?

Yes. I had no idea the Segway scooter was named after the word. I just thought it was a name.

Anonymous wrote:I still remember proudly and loudly mispronouncing omnipotent in high school English.

It's hard out here for an autodidact!

Aren't we all autodidacts? I certainly never remember school teaching us how to pronounce hard words (at least not after elementary school). We all have much greater written vocabularies than we do spoken vocabularies.

I listen to a lot of audiobooks and am shocked at how many pronunciation mistakes they make. I look up quite a few to make sure I'm saying things correctly and that they're wrong.

Anonymous wrote:I still remember proudly and loudly mispronouncing omnipotent in high school English.

It's hard out here for an autodidact!

I’m definitely an “Omni-potent” not “om-nip-po-tent”.

I still remember proudly and loudly mispronouncing omnipotent in high school English.

It's hard out here for an autodidact!

Anonymous wrote:Everybody's got at least one word that they say wrong. That's your word.
Mine is "segue" which I always pronounced as "seg". Nobody ever corrected me although it's not a word I use a lot.

Is it seg-way?

Everybody's got at least one word that they say wrong. That's your word.
Mine is "segue" which I always pronounced as "seg". Nobody ever corrected me although it's not a word I use a lot.

No one ever said “hey, you said that wrong” or “no, that’s incorrect” 😭