Commonly mispronounced words

[Sun_Sparkz]

I have trouble when speaking i think it comes from my father who was a stutterer.
If i have to say two words together sometimes i get the second letter of the second word mixed into the second letter of the first word. Its very frusterating.

Examples:

"Forest Floor" becomes "Florest Floor"
"Sylvester Stallone" becomes "Stylvester Stalone"

[Urbane Guerrilla]

And mishandled homonyms are something RichLevy and I agree on: solecisms are bad. Native English speakers do not have an excuse for mistaking your for you're, nor to and too [make yore]. I remember a real groaner of a bit of substandard writing I saw on a little sign in a military building I worked in at Misawa Air Base: "you'r" the poor SOB wrote. Charles Strunk and E.B. White are spinning in their graves... end for end.

Loose/Lose aren't even homonyms. Perhaps the explanation is that "loose" is really a typo?

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Don't get me started on the ignoramuses who don't decline their pronouns as English should, and in all seeming innocence deliver themselves of phrases like "between her and I" -- in real English, pronouns have a predicate case, an objective form, dammit! "Wanna be perfect, like I?" Where were these people hiding during English class?

[Happy Monkey]

The Ultimate Book of Perfect Energy has some good grammar lessons, though unfortunately sales are currently suspended. Here's the most famous.

And a new one, for Canadians!

[Frenchie]

Yeah, Urbane Guerilla, Jaguar was right....since ignoramus wasn't a Latin 2nd declension masculine noun with the -us ending, it doesn't make sense that the plural would be ignorami....it's form the verb ignorare, and its ending is -mus, the 1st person plural. So the plural is ignoramuses.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Wecome to the Cellar, Frenchie.

[busterb]

I have no place in this thread.

Not a mispronounced word. Not words... and never will be
I instantly lose respect and think less of the intellegence of those who use the non-words:
irregardless & proactive.

There is a difference between British and Trans-Atlantic, British is not necessarily "right", Trans is also correct.

[Frenchie]

Oh and on the actual subject of the board, this isn't a commonly mispronounced word (I hope), but once I heard someone pronounce icicle as "iss-ickle"...I nearly gagged

[Crimson Ghost]

I once mispronounced "Yes, I love you too, dear" by saying "Would you move your ass? I can't see the TV!"

They sound so similar............

[DanaC]

proactive is a word. It's in the dictionary. It might be a modern addition, but language is constantly developing and new words being added all the time.

[CzinZumerzet]

The way 'herb' is commonly mispronounced 'erb with emphasis on the fact of the dropped aitch, as though the speaker is somehow trying to make a point.

The word then emerges as Urb.... Can anyone explain it?

[DanaC]

That's just the way it's pronounced in some places I think. That's one of the problems with pronunciation, particularly in a language like English. Regional accents and dialects which have evolved separately mean that people from one part of the English speaking world may well pronounce things entirely differently to someone else from a different place.

Some words are mispronounced because the speaker has only seen the word printed rather than having heard it spoken, but with something like 'herb' I doubt that's the case.

I believe sounding the 'h' in herb is a British pronunciation, but even within Britian it varies.

[DanaC]

Ha. Okay I went searching:

Herb

The word herb, which can be pronounced with or without the (h), is one of a number of words borrowed into English from French. The (h) sound had been lost in Latin and was not pronounced in French or the other Romance languages, which are descended from Latin, although it was retained in the spelling of some words. In both Old and Middle English, however, h was generally pronounced, as in the native English words happy and hot. Through the influence of spelling, then, the h came to be pronounced in most words borrowed from French, such as haste and hostel. In a few other words borrowed from French the h has remained silent, as in honor, honest, hour, and heir. And in another small group of French loan words, including herb, humble, human, and humor, the h may or may not be pronounced depending on the dialect of English. In British English, herb and its derivatives, such as herbaceous, herbal, herbicide, and herbivore, are pronounced with h. In American English, herb and herbal are more often pronounced without the h, while the opposite is true of herbaceous, herbicide, and herbivore, which are more often pronounced with the h.

[CzinZumerzet]

Dana that's all fab and not a systemic explanation I have seen before, but imediately reminded me of "'umble, very very 'umble" but at this moment the Dickens character escapes me ... Heap? Uriah Heap...? Or 'eap.

My cockney late husband used to talk about 'ammerin' hup the hautobahn' on his return from a football match somewhere in the old West Germany, when all of the aitches were transposed - shifted abaht

Down here in the West its a whole different ball-game, as is the case for -I guess- all of the UK Cellarites. Vive la difference, it all adds colour and variety.

My condolences by the way on the loss of your friend. I am playing catch up as usual.

[JayMcGee]

Well, tbh, I think that all'n'all this thread has shown that all UK residents are incapable of mis-prouncitation..... ( with the notable exception of those born in Essex)......