Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[anteallach]

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

... as in the name of Australia's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko. Wikipedia gets itself into a bit of a twist about the pronunciation: one page gives /ˌkɒziˈʌskoʊ/ while the page about the mountain itself gives /ˌkɒsiˈʌskoʊ/ but follows up with a respelling of "KOZZ-ee-OZ-koh" which would suggest /ˌkɒziˈɒzkoʊ/. It also says /kɒˈʃʊʃkoʊ/ is sometimes used.

My experience is that British people with Polish names mostly use something relatively close to the original Polish but with adjustments such as reduced vowels and simplified consonant clusters. But it does vary.

[alynnidalar]

I used to drive down Kosciuszko Avenue almost every day...

(pronounced /kəʃʊʃkoʊ/ in that area, but it's a heavily Polish-American area so it's unsurprising the pronunciation was closer to the "original")

[Ryusenshi]

Once again, I caught myself using an intrusive /r/. Should I be worried?

[KathTheDragon]

Why would it worry you?

[Travis B.]

Once again, I caught myself using an intrusive /r/. Should I be worried?

If one is trying to speak/emulate an EngE, AusE or NZE variety that would be perfectly normal, and indeed it would be the opposite which would be atypical for such varieties (e.g. I doubt an EFL learner would learn a rhotic EngE variety or a southern NZE variety.)

[alynnidalar]

Once again, I caught myself using an intrusive /r/. Should I be worried?

Tragically, there is no known cure for intrusive /r/. Would you prefer flowers or donations to charity at your memorial service?

[Ryusenshi]

I know that intrusive /r/ is perfectly normal in the English variety I try to emulate (SSBE/Estuary). I also know its phonological origin perfectly well. But there's a prescriptive part of me that still finds it "wrong", and is surprised that it has become so natural for me. Going from "wow, that's so weird" to "huh, it turns out that they indeed do it all the time" to actually doing it myself feels... strange.

[jal]

Today I had an intrusive r in "drawing", when reading that word aloud to my daughter :).


JAL

[Linguoboy]

Today I had an intrusive r in "drawing", when reading that word aloud to my daughter .

I've done that before. It's especially odd given that my accent is fully rhotic.

[Estav]

I just learned that deponent has penultimate stress, like opponent. I had been mentally pronouncing it as /ˈdɛpənənt/ instead of the correct /ˈdəˈponənt/.

[Linguoboy]

Someone reminded me today that I used to say "behemoth" with initial stress and "Leviathan" with penultimate stress.

[jal]

Someone reminded me today that I used to say "behemoth" with initial stress and "Leviathan" with penultimate stress.

As a matter of fact, I thought "behemoth" actually had initial stress :D Thanks for the correction (Leviathan I probably encountered first in a movie or something, so I never had wrong stress there).


JAL

[anteallach]

Someone reminded me today that I used to say "behemoth" with initial stress and "Leviathan" with penultimate stress.

As a matter of fact, I thought "behemoth" actually had initial stress Thanks for the correction (Leviathan I probably encountered first in a movie or something, so I never had wrong stress there).


JAL

Dictionaries give both /ˈbiːəmɒθ/ and /bəˈhiːmɒθ/ for behemoth. However, when I first saw the word written down I mentally made it /ˈbɛhəmɒθ/, which certainly belongs in this thread.

[Linguoboy]

Another one, courtesy of my sister:

The Schefflera arboricola is a popular US houseplant, and we grew up with one in the living room of our house. It is apparently commonly known as the "dwarf umbrella tree", but we never called it that because my parents always referred to it by the bare genus name--or at least an approximation of it.

My sister, never a strong speller, guessed at the spelling just now and came out with "chifolara". This suggests that she, like myself at a younger age, has made some sort of association between the name of the plant and "chifforobe", a piece of furniture we kept in the same room. I suspect we owe the extra syllable to our dad, who might also have been influenced by "chifforobe".

In any case, I was well into adulthood before I learned the proper spelling of the genus name. And it was only today that I learned I've been stressing the wrong syllable. According to Wikipedia, it should be /ˈʃɛflərə/, with initial stress, and not--as I've been saying all this time--/ʃɪˈflerə/.

[Linguoboy]

Another botanical: /əˈgeːv/ for agave.

[Estav]

Another botanical: /əˈgeːv/ for agave.

That one's actually good enough for the OED (which gives "Brit. /əˈɡeɪvi/, /əˈɡɑːvi/, /ˈaɡeɪv/, U.S. /əˈɡɑvi/"). I never looked up the word's etymology before, and I'm a little surprised to find that its spelling is unchanged from its origin as the Latin transliteration of ancient Greek Ἀγαυή [a.gaw.wɛɛ́]. So its etymological history gives lots of room for argument about which pronunciations ought to be considered "correct".

[Ryusenshi]

I thought Sioux was pronounced /sjuːks/, instead of /suː/. So I used to pronounce Siouxsie (and the Banshees) as /sjuːksi/, instead of /suːzi/ (which is actually pronounced like her real name, Suzie).

[Starbeam]

You're telling me. I thought it was pronounced /sai'Vks/.

[sasasha]

I used to think there were two words spelled <awry>, /ʌ'ɹaɪ/ and /'ɔ:ɹi/. The former had more or less awry's real meaning. The latter had a touch of the unexpected or eldritch to it, so like if your trousers went /ʌ'ɹaɪ/ you'd lost them, but if your trousers went /'ɔ:ɹi/, they might have been bewitched by an evil wizard and were glowing green while dancing by themselves at the top of the stairs.

No idea where that came from. I think it might be used in an early Harry Potter book in the context of something going awry because of Voldemort, and my little brain got a bit overexcited.

[Pabappa]

I found the word awry in the manual for the first Mega Man NES game and also pronounced it /'ɔ:ɹi/. I liked that word so much that I made up a baseball team called the Awries which had the same pronunciation. Nobody corrected me, but the few people who heard me probably had no idea where I was getting the name from, so that makes sense. I didnt find out my mistake until many years later. I think I posted this one here before, but it must have been on the old ZBB site because it doesnt come up in a search.

I may have posted this one before too on the other board but ...

bijou. I thought that was the proper spelling of the word "bayou", because i picked it up when i was maybe 10 years old and was confused between a whole bunch of different languages. I learned the proper spelling of bayou and never really encountered the word bijou again until i was 26 yrs old and heard someone say /biʒu/. I wasnt about to correct him, because this was my job and he was my supervisor, but i thought he was wrong for a few seconds until i realized that my childhood mistake had stuck with me all this time.