Common Mispronunciations

Yourdictionary.com has a list of the top 100 mispronounced words and phrases in the english language.  I’m not quite sure of the source for the list, but there are certainly a large number of the entries that I hear mispronounced all the time.  “excape” and “expecially” are two that make me literally cringe when I hear them.

In fairness, I must admit that I just realized that there are a number of them I’ve been mispronouncing, too: [d]diphtheria[/d], [d]forte[/d], [d]herb[/d] (not sure I agree with that...), [d]lambaste[/d], [d]often[/d] (wha?!?!?), and [d]tact[/d].  Man, I don’t feel quite so literate and intelligent now…

(There’s also the top 100 misspelled words, which includes [d]misspell[/d]...)

Posted Friday March 19, 2004 in Interesting by Chris Curtis

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Comments

Uh, about those words?  Your link to Merriam-Webster shows that that list is wrong.

Diphtheria - “+dip” means that’s an accepted pronunciation.

Forte - acceptable as For-TAY and For-TAH

Herb - either way.  UK traditionally “herb”, U.S. it’s growing, but is usually still just “erb”

lambaste - either bAst or bast are acceptable

often - listed acceptable either way

But you pronounced “tact” like “tack”?

Totally agree that excape is the worst “word” spoken.  Can’t say that I’ve ever heard anyone say expecially.  You poor poor creature.

By Derek Jones on March 19, 2004 at 03:58pm link

Oh, and I hate “acrossed”. wink

By Derek Jones on March 19, 2004 at 04:00pm link

Well, I was just providing the dictionary links for convenience, not really to link to their example pronunciation.  Looking at the pronunciations listed both at M-W and at dictionary.com, though, I do have to wonder how accurate that original mispronunciation list is…

And, no, I’ve always pronounced “tact” as, well, “tact”.  With the “t” sound on the end.  The list, however, said that it should be pronounced as “tack”.

“often” is really the one that threw me, though.  I’ve always thought that pronouncing it as “ofen” was blatantly wrong and that it should have the “t” sound in there.  That list, at least, disagrees.

By Chris Curtis on March 19, 2004 at 04:14pm link

Well if that’s indeed how the tact/tack entry is supposed to read, then it’s blatantly wrong in both American and UK English, heh.

I honestly think my pronunciation of “often” has been hit and miss.

By Derek Jones on March 19, 2004 at 05:21pm link

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