Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Same for me, though my pronunciation is exclusively /niːʃ/.

[StrangerCoug]

I'm an American that pronounces it /niːʃ/, but then again, I've taken French class. I understand /nɪtʃ/ too.

[Moose-tache]

Much like "route," this is a word with one form in Britain, two forms in America, but one American form in the minds of Brits.
To me, the FLEECE version is metaphorical ("this animal has a weird NEESH," "Your documentary is too NEESH"), while the KIT version implies something physical ("carve a NITCH into this piece of wood").

[Raphael]

Oh, in the video that I was talking about in my previous post here, it was used in a metaphorical sense.

[Z500]

I'm an American that pronounces it /niːʃ/, but then again, I've taken French class. I understand /nɪtʃ/ too.

I feel like 25 years ago Americans never said /niːʃ/, but now I'm hearing it everywhere and I finally get to say it "right" again, but I'm wracking my brain to undo the training I did to get myself to say /nɪtʃ/ lol

[foxcatdog]

One the topic of Niche does anyone pronounce Quiche /kwi:tʃ/ or even /kwɪtʃ/ i know i don't.

[Raphael]

I learned today that "Yosemite" has four syllables. I had always assumed it had two.

[Travis B.]

I learned today that "Yosemite" has four syllables. I had always assumed it had two.

It is tricky knowing that sometimes final <e> in English just happens to be /i/, but a good rule of thumb is that this is true if a word is not a native or nativized English word of Germanic, Oïl, or Latinate origin and the word does not have primary stress on its final syllable. A good example of this is that it is traditional in many English dialects such as that here to pronounce final unstressed <e> in words of German origin as /i/.

As for medial <e>, it is sometimes pronounced and sometimes not pronounced depending on the word, stress, carefulness, free variation, and the particular dialect when not at the end of a morpheme. Of course as it has primary stress in Yosemite so it is always pronounced in it.

[jal]

I realize that I thought the pronunciation has /I/ instead of /E/. I've heard it spoken more often than seen it written, probably (nature documentaries etc.), but must've gotten the 2nd vowel wrong.


JAL

[Travis B.]

Of course, there are exceptions to what I said above, e.g. it is common to pronounce Porsche as monosyllabic, and when it is pronounced disyllabically it is common to pronounce the second vowel as a schwa.

[Raphael]

Of course, there are exceptions to what I said above, e.g. it is common to pronounce Porsche as monosyllabic,

Burn those heretics!

[Zju]

Of course, there are exceptions to what I said above, e.g. it is common to pronounce Porsche as monosyllabic, and when it is pronounced disyllabically it is common to pronounce the second vowel as a schwa.

Talk about posh pronunciation.

[Travis B.]

Of course, there are exceptions to what I said above, e.g. it is common to pronounce Porsche as monosyllabic, and when it is pronounced disyllabically it is common to pronounce the second vowel as a schwa.

Talk about posh pronunciation.

I don't think Porsche and posh would ever merge, because posh has LOT whereas Porsche has NORTH/FORCE.

[quinterbeck]

If Porsche is disyllabic, then it is identical to the name Portia for me.

More: show

But I say it monosyllabic... don't tell Raphael

[jal]

In Dutch, "Porsche" is also pronounced monosyllabic /pOrsj/.


JAL

[xxx]

in French it depends on your latitude,
in the north, one syllable (to reduce the opening time of cavities offered to the cold...)
in the south two (although the number of climate refugees is increasing the tendency to monosyllabism...)

[Glenn]

I have had to unlearn a number of pronunciations over the years, some of which have been more difficult to unlearn than others. Some of the notable recent ones have involved realizing that I had been stressing a word on the wrong syllable all along.
I learned from Mark’s blog entry (here that the Ramayana is stressed on the antepenult (ra-MA-ya-na, as Mark puts it). Until then, I had always stressed the penultimate syllable (ra-ma-YA-na), and the same for the Mahabharata.

These misplaced stressed cropped up elsewhere as well, notably with the name of Mark’s own conworld, Almea. When I first encountered Almea over twenty years ago, I instinctively stressed it on the first syllable ([‘al.mɛ.ja]); it was only a few years ago that I realized that it is in fact stressed on the penult ([al.ˈmɛ.ja], as given in the Almeopedia, and in accordance with Verdurian phonology).

One of my longest struggles is with the British spelling draught. I learned at least forty years ago that it is homophonous with draft (/dɹæft/ in my dialect), but to this day, when I first see it on the page, my instinct is to pronounce it as /dɹɔt/.

[Glenn]

(Removing duplicate post.)

[Raphael]

One of my longest struggles is with the British spelling draught. I learned at least forty years ago that it is homophonous with draft (/dɹæft/ in my dialect), but to this day, when I first see it on the page, my instinct is to pronounce it as /dɹɔt/.

Same.

[Travis B.]

One of my longest struggles is with the British spelling draught. I learned at least forty years ago that it is homophonous with draft (/dɹæft/ in my dialect), but to this day, when I first see it on the page, my instinct is to pronounce it as /dɹɔt/.

Same.

Same here as well.