If you haven’t visited the Pronunciation Manual on YouTube, then you’re probably still mispronouncing common words like “cappucino,” “credenza,””synecdoche,” and “Portia de Rossi.” Who said we never learned ya nothing?
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How To Pronounce “Milk” And Other Tortuous Tongue Twisters
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EdWoody
The one that really pisses me off is when people call it an “expresso”
n900mixalot
@EdWoody: The one that kills me is “eck settera” it is ET CETERA for G-d’s SAKE if you can’t pronounce it don’t bloody use it!
Ron
and how do you pronounce Morons?
Jim Hlavac
Aw, pronunciations change — get used to it. After all Wodensday became Wednesday (and it was pronounced as spelled,) and then for some odd reason the “D” and “N” switched places and now it’s “Wends-day” — Indeed, the history of the English language is replete with “The Great Vowel Change” of the 1200s, and the “Second Great Vowel Change” of the mid 1400s. Until the 1450s English used to have the standard Euro-system like Spanish uses today (Hablo, hablas, hablan, hablamos.) I walk, you walketh, we walkened — Thank heavens some “morons” changed that, eh? Certainly it was no “authority” like the French Academy or the Spanish Academy, which “approves” the “correct” pronunciation and spelling and usage for words in those languages. And what is it with I-ther or E-ther? Aren’t both “correct” in certain places? Sure, yet spelled the same. And who cares how some foreign word used to be pronounced before English took it into our hearts and minds? As for English spelling and pronunciation — there is not much direct relation left — so why worry that some “s” in espresso is (is that “IZ”? hmm,) now an “x” in pronunciation? Why we even a word for such things — nonce words — words that are created or changed to meet current conditions. Wait 20 years, it’ll be different again.
MikeE
@Jim Hlavac: the problem with your post is that things like “expresso” are not an issue of linguistic morphism over time. they are simply evidence of ignorance by the speakers.
I doubt, for example, that “aksed” will ever be acceptable as a pronunciation of “ask”. It will probably always be seen as a display of poor education.
Add to this list the absolutely trisyllabic “nukular” for “nuclear”. The saddest part in this one is, it is two syllables, BOTH of which are homonyms for absolutely common words in the current language: “new” and “clear”.
Triple S
How ’bout ‘pronouncing’ ‘pronunciation’ as ‘pronounciation’? That’s a killer.
Or ‘negotiate’ as ‘negossiate’? That might be just in Australia though, I dunno.
Smithy
@Triple S: That might be just a Julia thing
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There is no “B” in supposeDly.