Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[Travis B.]

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?

Exactly. Note that intervocalically, both fortis and lenis affricates are unaspirated voiceless, but are distinguished by preceding vowel length. (This is only for affricates; lenis stops do voice intervocalically for me.)

[Esneirra973]

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?

Exactly. Note that intervocalically, both fortis and lenis affricates are unaspirated voiceless, but are distinguished by preceding vowel length. (This is only for affricates; lenis stops do voice intervocalically for me.)

That's interesting, I've never heard of affricates being pronounced that way in English before.

[anteallach]

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

Exactly. Note that intervocalically, both fortis and lenis affricates are unaspirated voiceless, but are distinguished by preceding vowel length. (This is only for affricates; lenis stops do voice intervocalically for me.)

That's interesting, I've never heard of affricates being pronounced that way in English before.

I think the affricates in my English have the same pattern of aspiration and voicing as the other stops. So the affricates at the beginning of change and child are indeed aspirated. I wouldn't transcribe my lenis ones as fully devoiced like Travis does, though.

I have the dictionary pronunciations of Croat and gymnast with the TRAP vowel in the second syllable.

[Esneirra973]

Exactly. Note that intervocalically, both fortis and lenis affricates are unaspirated voiceless, but are distinguished by preceding vowel length. (This is only for affricates; lenis stops do voice intervocalically for me.)

That's interesting, I've never heard of affricates being pronounced that way in English before.

I think the affricates in my English have the same pattern of aspiration and voicing as the other stops. So the affricates at the beginning of change and child are indeed aspirated. I wouldn't transcribe my lenis ones as fully devoiced like Travis does, though.

I have the dictionary pronunciations of Croat and gymnast with the TRAP vowel in the second syllable.

I pronounce my affricates the same way, and I pronounced stressed voiceless stops with aspiration, but not for voiced stops.

[Starbeam]

I pronounce "Croat" as crow-eight /'kröU.eIt/, by analogy with "Croatian". I literally just learned it's pronounced differently.

I view trying to closely fit the standard language to be highly overrated.

To be clear, I only really try to fit the standard language when doing acting or when I need people to absolutely understand me. I don't have particularly strong accent, but it is there. Moreover, most of my spelling pronunciations are actually considered archaic-ish; like the whine-wine split or the merry-marry split.

[Travis B.]

I pronounce "Croat" as crow-eight /'kröU.eIt/, by analogy with "Croatian". I literally just learned it's pronounced differently.

I have the same pronunciation, for one reason or another.

[Travis B.]

I view trying to closely fit the standard language to be highly overrated.

To be clear, I only really try to fit the standard language when doing acting or when I need people to absolutely understand me. I don't have particularly strong accent, but it is there. Moreover, most of my spelling pronunciations are actually considered archaic-ish; like the whine-wine split or the merry-marry split.

Those are minor compared to how my own idiolect differs from General American, yet I primarily modify my accent when speaking formally (mind you most of the time at work I do not speak formally) or when speaking to non-native speakers who have trouble with my idiolect.

[Starbeam]

I should state the spelling pronunciations I'm using aren't always part of my dialect (Delaware Valley English) or the standard one, but moreso match how the word is written or how it could be differentiated. Like, whine-wine are only split because their written forms are.

[Pabappa]

i guess somehow i grew up saying /'mærɪnə/ for marina and I think Ive even looked it up at least once before and then forgotten it again. Its not a word I use often but I heard the proper pronunciation just now and had to look it up again.

[Linguoboy]

antithesis

When I first came across it in print, I said /ˌæn.tiˈθiːsɪs/.

[Travis B.]

antithesis

When I first came across it in print, I said /ˌæn.tiˈθiːsɪs/.

The spelling of that still looks like it should be /ˌæntaɪˈthiːsɪs/ to me.

[StrangerCoug]

Am I the only one to use to think that "biogas" was the plural of a non-existent word "bioga" and pronounce it in their head accordingly?

[Linguoboy]

Having only read the name of NIAID director Anthony Fauci, I'd assumed he anglicised it to something like /ˈfɔsi/. Turns out it's actually /ˈfaʊtʃi/, a close approximation of the Standard Italian pronunciation.

[Pabappa]

i wonder if foreigners stumble over the ph in upholstery and similar words. i was saying it as /f/ until i was about 10 yrs old, since i had no idea that such a word as "holster" existed. i did the same with haphazard but only when i was very young, maybe 6, and didn't know how to spell "half" .... i figured i was seeing a word meaning "half hazard".

[Kuchigakatai]

I did pronounce it /ˈhæfəzɚd/ for the longest time. I also used to say shepherd /ˈʃɛfɚd/ and Stephen /stifn/.

The likes of upholstery, loophole or uphill never gave me trouble. I guess that by the time I learned upholstery, I knew ph is a Greek a thing, and upholstery doesn't look very Greek or Greco-Latin. By the way, just a moment ago, I learned that it has the same -ster suffix of trickster and gangster. Up + hold + -ster + -ery.

It's kind of funny that dictionaries record both /pθ/ and /fθ/ for -phth- words, but I guess they're all uncommon. Diphtheria, ophthalmologist, diphthong. As of this post, there are in fact nine instances of <dipthong> here on the very ZBB.

Mishear, mishandle, disheartened didn't give me any problems. When I learned honour doesn't have an /h/, I just switched from /dɪsˈhɑnɚ/ to /dɪsˈɑnɚ/ for dishonour. I did pronounce threshold and dishevelled as /ˈθɹɛshoʊld/ and /dɪsˈhɛvəld/ though.

I also used to say /ˈfaɪtnɪŋ/ for fighting (and spell it "fightning") under the influence of lightning /ˈlaɪtnɪŋ/. This was partly because I learned these words early on with the Pokemon trading card game (which had some popularity in San Salvador, although not as much as the Red and Blue Gameboy games, which I played in Spanish anyway), where the Electric type is actually called Lightning and there is also the Fighting type, and I didn't notice the difference in the endings...

[anteallach]

Having only read the name of NIAID director Anthony Fauci, I'd assumed he anglicised it to something like /ˈfɔsi/. Turns out it's actually /ˈfaʊtʃi/, a close approximation of the Standard Italian pronunciation.

/ˈfaʊtʃi/ is what I would have expected, but I don't have much intuition for how Italian-American names get anglicised.

[Linguoboy]

/ˈfaʊtʃi/ is what I would have expected, but I don't have much intuition for how Italian-American names get anglicised.

As with North American surnames of any origin, there's a great deal of variation. I don't know if there's also the kind of regional variation you see with, for example, German surnames.

It is common to see Italian "soft c" equated to NAE /s/. For instance, for years I pronounced Brooklyn-born actor Steve Buscemi's surname /buːˈʃeːmi/, but he apparently says /buːˈsɛmi/. And Michael Cera, from Greater Toronto (another area with a significant number of Italian-speakers and first-generation immigrants) says /ˈsɛɹə/, not /ˈtʃeːra/.

[Nortaneous]

cf. /kɑsɨjʌskəw/ for "Kosciuszko", although in some pronunciations <sc> is even /z/ (or more frequently /sk/)

[Pabappa]

I think youre living near where I grew up. We had a street with that name, although we spelled it without the Z ... and sure enough it was /kɔski'usko/.

[Nortaneous]

nope, we don't have them but they come up