Up until recently, I thought that the US national park was pronounced "yo-semite", as if it was some sort of ghetto-slang used for greeting a Jewish person.

Doesn't mean it isn't cute/funny when it does happen, though. Just this week my SO pronounced chihuahua as "CHA-HOO-A-HOO-A" so I told them "you know this word, it's the taco bell dog" lol

Also dialects are a thing. The way a lot of words come out of my mouth has been culturally labeled as ignorant. I go out of my way to change my pronunciations at work so I get taken seriously, but I've been doing it less now that I'm accepted in that world. Maybe that caps how much farther I can go, but maybe I don't want to go further if it means continuing to act like people who sound like how I sound are less than

Pour one out for all my epi-tome homies

You should never mock someone who pronounces a word strangely: They might be from Reading.

Or... or you read it in the 3 word title of a meme. Doesn't matter, learned word.

It was embarrassingly recently that I realized segue and "segway" were the same word which I apparently didn't know how to spell.

Edit: BTW - the weird way that English words are spelled or pronounced - and why - is one of my favorrite nerd subjects. I love this thread so freaking much. And how RIGHT nearly everyone here SHOULD have been.

As a homeschooled kid with a big vocabulary I was largely not able to pronounce (more reading than talking), this is a sentiment I wish I'd heard earlier in life.

This was me with a number of words over the years, but most memorable "paradigm."

Gif

"Facade" caught me in high school.

Interestingly (to me), I have the opposite problem in Spanish. I've learned mostly through immersion, so when I see a Spanish word written down sometimes I'm like "Holy heck THAT'S how you spell carrot??" Spanish is a language where the spelling/pronounciation rules are really consistent, but it's still surprising to see some of these words without having ever thought of how they might be spelled. Toallas (towels) got me too.

Unless it's a YouTuber. Then they're possibly pronouncing it wrong so people will comment about their pronunciation and fuel the algorithm.

An-tea-queues

And rather ironically:

Kway instead of Queue --8th grade substitute teacher caught me on that one while reading aloud.

Me as a small children: I'll PRE-FACE this by saying...

Family: wait, what??

I did not feel honorable...

Yo sa mite for Yosemite is my worst one.

Segue still gets me. In my head I still pronounce it like rogue.

I used to think "chaos" had the same "ch" as "church" when I was a kid. Don't know why I never heard it spoken aloud by someone earlier than I did.

But the one that I find inexcusable is Southern US people who pronounce "jalapeno" with a "j" and "n" instead of an "ha" and "ñ" even though they know better. Sounds so willfully ignorant

OK, so then I'm proud of the fact that I thought Hermione from the Harry Potter books was pronounced HER-me-own.

Kubernetes

Sich a dumb word, but somehow I never really clicked on this word: "question". I have spoken the word a lot, but somehow I practiced speaking english less when I moved away from my parents to study. English became more of a read and written language than spoken, so the words became just things to read, not to sound out loud.

After attempting to speak a bit more english again, words were drawn from memory by how they were written. And for some reason the word "question" was incredibly weird. "Kuest-ion"? No, I'm sure there is a "ch"-sound in there. "Kwest-chien"?

I had to check out some youtube videos on pronounciation to get it right.

I thought I was mispronouncing "duodenum" so I changed it, then I heard doctors on youtube saying it the way I thought was wrong. I had gone from right to wrong back to right. lol

I pronounced entrée as "entry" until I was in my 30s. 😭

I have noticed a lot of (youtube) people are keenly aware of their faults. Admitting you have a thing to try improve up on, is an triple up that I can unfortunately only give as 1/3 of a triple agree. If you know you are butchering grammar/spelling, giving a pre-warning is only going to make it funny.

I keep pronouncing "sweat" like "sweet", even though people keeps correcting me about it because my stupid brain is stuck with the wrong pronunciation

Mispronounced words by British people are unacceptable though. The Brits need to be stopped!