Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[Travis B.]

OMG. I just learned that "chasm" has [k] not [tS] <facepalm>.


JAL

Actually, it took me a long time to learn that, too. I'm sure lots of people pronounce it the other way as well.

I was never quite sure about the pronunciation of that word, having mostly read it rather than heard it.

[Linguoboy]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix ... ced_as_/k/

There are nearly 300, not including proper names. (I got "Charon" wrong as a child.) Ones I used to get wrong include archipelago, chameleon, chiaroscuro, chimaera, cinchona, conch, lichen [with stressed /ɪ/], maraschino, pulchritude, sepulcher, and tryptich. Conch and maraschino are so frequently pronounced withou /k/ in the USA that they qualify as alternative pronunciations.

[Nortaneous]

I've never heard <ch> /k/ in 'conch' or 'maraschino'. 'Maraschino' is obviously Italian, but the US doesn't care that much about the difference between Italian and German. (I know someone who moved to Massachusetts from the Midwest and got confused as hell when I mentioned the local chain Tedeschi.)

[Travis B.]

I've never heard <ch> /k/ in 'conch' or 'maraschino'. 'Maraschino' is obviously Italian, but the US doesn't care that much about the difference between Italian and German. (I know someone who moved to Massachusetts from the Midwest and got confused as hell when I mentioned the local chain Tedeschi.)

Likewise I am used to con/tʃ/ and mara/ʃ/ino myself, and practically never hear the "correct" pronunciations.

[Linguoboy]

I've never heard <ch> /k/ in 'conch' or 'maraschino'. 'Maraschino' is obviously Italian, but the US doesn't care that much about the difference between Italian and German. (I know someone who moved to Massachusetts from the Midwest and got confused as hell when I mentioned the local chain Tedeschi.)

IME, the closer you are to the coast, the more likely you are to hear conch with /k/.

Bruschetta is also commonly pronounced with /ʃ/ in the USA. It's hard to say whether this is more influenced by German spelling conventions or by hyperforeign /ʃ/ for ch via French.

[Esneirra973]

Until very recently, I thought that Croat, as in somebody from Croatia, was pronounced /kɹoʊt/.

[anteallach]

I got "Charon" wrong as a child.

AIUI astronomers tend to pronounce it like the name "Sharon".

The discoverer of the moon of Pluto with that name, James Christy, supposedly wanted to name it after his wife, Charlene, or Char /ʃɑr/ for short, and came up with "Charon" (pronounced with initial /ʃɑ/) without knowing of the mythological figure. Of course it isn't the done thing to name astronomical bodies after members of your family, so he was very pleased when he then found that Charon was not only a mythological figure but one particularly suitable for naming a moon of Pluto after. The common astronomical pronunciation retains the /ʃ/, but not the /ɑ/.

As a child finding the name in astronomy books, I mentally pronounced it with initial /tʃ/.

[jal]

Ones I used to get wrong include archipelago, chameleon, chiaroscuro, chimaera, cinchona, conch, lichen [with stressed /ɪ/], maraschino, pulchritude, sepulcher, and tryptich.

Ah, yeah, lichen. A word I read before I ever heard it spoken, and indeed assumed was [lɪtʃn̩] (and it's proper pronunciation I keep assiociating with werewolves, blame Underworld...).


JAL

[Estav]

Until very recently, I thought that Croat, as in somebody from Croatia, was pronounced /kɹoʊt/.

Oh geez, it isn't? (...At least the difference between /oʊ/ and /oʊə/ is not that big; some people have poem as a monosyllable.)

Ones I used to get wrong include archipelago, chameleon, chiaroscuro, chimaera, cinchona, conch, lichen [with stressed /ɪ/], maraschino, pulchritude, sepulcher, and tryptich.

Ah, yeah, lichen. A word I read before I ever heard it spoken, and indeed assumed was [lɪtʃn̩] (and it's proper pronunciation I keep assiociating with werewolves, blame Underworld...).

As with conch, the pronunciation of lichen as [lɪtʃn̩] seems to be common enough to not be considered incorrect by all speakers.

I recently learned that English-speaking chess players very often pronounce the word fianchetto with four syllables and [tʃ]. I first encountered it in writing, and since it looked Italian and related to "flank," I defaulted to using an Italianish pronunciation [fjɑnˈkɛɾo]. Amazingly, the Oxford English Dictionary, in addition to listing a fully naturalized pronunciation with [tʃ] (/fɪənˈtʃɛtəʊ/), lists a non-naturalized pronunciation with [fj] and geminated T but an affricate [tʃ] (/fjanˈtʃɛtto/!).

[Nortaneous]

Until very recently, I thought that Croat, as in somebody from Croatia, was pronounced /kɹoʊt/.

Oh geez, it isn't? (...At least the difference between /oʊ/ and /oʊə/ is not that big; some people have poem as a monosyllable.)

/ʌwə/? I thought it was /ʌwɑ/

but Wiktionary says it's /ʌwæ/, so everyone's wrong!

[jal]

Oh geez, it isn't? (...At least the difference between /oʊ/ and /oʊə/ is not that big; some people have poem as a monosyllable.)

Well, wouldn't it be [kroʊ.æt]?


JAL

[Estav]

/ʌwə/? I thought it was /ʌwɑ/

but Wiktionary says it's /ʌwæ/, so everyone's wrong!

Well, wouldn't it be [kroʊ.æt]?

Hmm, I said /oʊə/ in my previous post because it was the disyllabic pronunciation closest to my previous one. I find it a bit odd to use an unreduced vowel in the second syllable of a word like this; /æ/ feels weird to me the same way it would in gymnast (which I pronounce with [ɘ]). But I don't know what vowel would be considered "most correct," or if there is any one in particular.

[Pabappa]

Ive only ever heard it with /æ/ but its not a word I hear often ... maybe just a dozen times in my whole life. Nationality terms can break stress rules, though, especially if theyre far from the Anglosphere ... Magyar has two full vowels too, after all (though I know most people just say "Hungarian").

[jal]

I find it a bit odd to use an unreduced vowel in the second syllable of a word like this; /æ/ feels weird to me the same way it would in gymnast (which I pronounce with [ɘ]). But I don't know what vowel would be considered "most correct," or if there is any one in particular.

I only know "gymnast" with /æ/, though Wikitionary lists /ɘ/ as possible US alternative, but for Croat, it only lists /æ/.


JAL

[Vijay]

I myself pronounce Croat with /æ/ but gymnast with some kind of central vowel.

[Pabappa]

I remember during the OJ trial someone kept saying "defend-ANT" and i made fun of them, and honestl wondered if it was some kind of subliminal message to make people associate OJ with ants. (I was young.) And some years later a female southern politician kept saying "legisla-TORs" and the same person pronounced Dr Seuss with initial /z/. these capitalized syllablse were not actually stressed, but maybe had secondary stress. this kind of sporadic restoration of unstressed vowels may be associated with formal speech, but its possible that it's a dialectal feature and that I just dont hear it in person because I live in the extreme northeast of the USA. i dont know if the people i heard also used similar pronunciations on other words.

[Vijay]

Those examples sound like hypercorrection to me.

[Esneirra973]

I find it a bit odd to use an unreduced vowel in the second syllable of a word like this; /æ/ feels weird to me the same way it would in gymnast (which I pronounce with [ɘ]). But I don't know what vowel would be considered "most correct," or if there is any one in particular.

I only know "gymnast" with /æ/, though Wikitionary lists /ɘ/ as possible US alternative, but for Croat, it only lists /æ/.


JAL

I pronounce it as [d͡ʒɪmnɪ̈st].

[Travis B.]

I find it a bit odd to use an unreduced vowel in the second syllable of a word like this; /æ/ feels weird to me the same way it would in gymnast (which I pronounce with [ɘ]). But I don't know what vowel would be considered "most correct," or if there is any one in particular.

I only know "gymnast" with /æ/, though Wikitionary lists /ɘ/ as possible US alternative, but for Croat, it only lists /æ/.


JAL

I pronounce it as [d͡ʒɪmnɪ̈st].

Likewise I pronounce it [ˈtʃɘ̃ːmnɘsʲtʲ].

[Esneirra973]

I only know "gymnast" with /æ/, though Wikitionary lists /ɘ/ as possible US alternative, but for Croat, it only lists /æ/.


JAL

I pronounce it as [d͡ʒɪmnɪ̈st].

Likewise I pronounce it [ˈtʃɘ̃ːmnɘsʲtʲ].

With a voiceless affricate? Does that mean that you'd pronounce words like "change" and "child" with a voiceless aspirated affricate?