People who can't pronouce simple abbreviations

[TimmyHate]

The one that bugs me most? People who say Eftpost (eff-ta-pos-ta).

The word is EFTPOS - Electronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sale.

No EFFIN T at the end.

[HYHYBT]

The extra letters on the end are another thing, but lots of stuff like that I've never heard spoken, or too rarely to remember. Is URL said letter by letter, or pronounced as a word? If it's a word, is it "earl" or "you-rl" or something else? And, most importantly, how much will people care if I guess wrongly?

Given only the letters themselves, I'd pronounce EFTPOS as "eee-eff-tee-pee-oh-ess," but making a two-syllable word out of it, with varying possibilities on where to put the accent and which vowel sounds to use, makes sense too. And who decides which is right anyway?

[TimmyHate]

the EFTPOS one is one that bugs me more than some of the the others - in this case because it is also a brand name so the company can control the pronounciation. Its been in common use since 1985 - all the commercials I've ever seen pronounce it as if it were two sillable - eft-pos

URL doesn't bug me as much being that it is not a brand name and has not been in common use as long - I pronouce it eu-are-el

I dunno, likely its one of those little things that bugs me more than it should

[Bloodsoul]

Actually shouldn't "URL" have been in use for the last twenty years or so?

"GIF" is the only one that trips me up that I can recall; I keep wanting to pronounce it like the similarly named brand of peanut butter.

[Ginger Tea]

I have heard it pronounced You Are Ell from a few people, but I say it like Earl but more emphasis on the U sound.

Words that never got spoken that divide the net are plentiful.
I say Lol not Ell Oh Ell.

Eye Os not I O S, this is a throw back from saying M S Dos, though due to the branding I did know to say Oh Es two.

I say Gif as in Gift not Jif, even if the guy who named it says it's jif, I don't know off the top of my head how many soft J followed by i words there are, I say Gig-ah cos it's written as Giga, but I have heard some people say Jigga watts (iir back to the future) but when it is not written with a J I probably go hard G for I words without even thinking.

The same goes for names, I was watching Radio Dead Air Tuesday morning (well it starts at 2AM UK time even if its 8 or so where he is) and he had his review of the movie Daleks invasion Earth and said Bernard differently to how we say it over here. Same with Colin, same spelling of the name but Colin Powel was called Coe-lin, it's not quite the same as Live and Live as they mean two different things but share the same spelling, but basically I've had a few moments when I end up going "oh you mean <British pronunciation>" even if I am listnening to a podcast and not actually interacting with the speaker.

Some words I pronounce wrong as I glanced at the spelling but transposed a vowel or something similar.
Prime and only conscious example is Sudoku, I think I started of with Soduku then changed to Suduko, mainly as I never had to bother with the word, I just say "the only time I write these days is filling in a Sudoku puzzle and I only had the correct spelling due to a book being on my 'desk'.

[gremcint]

This thread could basically be about my mom, when my sister took it she kept calling it Tae Won Do and eventually just started calling it kicking.

[Lachrymose]

I say Gif as in Gift not Jif, even if the guy who named it says it's jif, I don't know off the top of my head how many soft J followed by i words there are

I know you mean "G", so..off the top of my head:

-giant
-giraffe
-gigantic
-gi..normous

Hmm...that's all I can think of. Also gymnastic, gymnasium, gyro, if you're going by like vowel sounds. ETA: But, to be fair, the Greek-rooted words are usually pronounced as kind of a "y" rather than a "gy" sound: Yee-ro, for instance.

I've always said jif for gif. I'm trying to change it (I don't know why. Probably because I work with an ex-graphic artist who says it with a hard g), but it's tough.

ETA2: I have a reverse annoyance with this. It's HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)...one P, two As. Not HIPPA. I think that only annoys me though because I'm in the industry.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Adding the extra "T" on the end makes some sense.

You're waiting for the deposits to post, you're waiting for your daily transactions to post...post is so commonly used that the extra "T" gets tacked on.

Besides I've given up on complaining about how words are pronounced. If you think about it, English is not the same now as it was 100 years ago. or 100 years before that. Languages evolve and they do so usually based on how a word's pronunciation is altered by the public at large.

Language is not carved in stone. It evolves as time goes on. Hell pull Willy Shakespeare out of his time and plunk him down in the middle of London and he'll be totally baffled as to what people are saying.

[patiokitty]

I live in a province where how something is spelled is often not how it's pronounced. Fine examples of this would be Topsail Road which is pronounced Tops'll Road. Or Pouch Cove, pronounced as Pooch Cove. And we aren't going to get into how they butcher any French place name here either....Baie Vert is usually pronounced as Bay Vurt. And it just gets worse, I swear. I live just off of Lemarchant Road and I have never once heard it pronounced the way the French would. People seem to pronounce it as Lahmarchant, stress the first and last syllables and pronouncing the t at the end. I can't even...

I've had to throw away a lot of my pet peeves about pronunciations in the past seven years that I've lived here. I've also gotten used to people laughing at me when I pronounce a word the way I would assume it to be pronounced and then being 'corrected' afterwards. I swear that the people here like to chew on their words a bit before spitting them out as a word that only sort of resembles the original.

[Ginger Tea]

Hearing Americans pronounce UK place names is always jarring, but saying that it is how it is spelt, so when you just have the letters and no guide you work out your best guess or follow the herd with whatever was deemed 'right', myself I just internally say "he means place name in spoken English." and wont correct if its a passing stranger, if its someone I work long term with I might try and fix a few of the words if they become a problem.

"It's pronounced Bouquet."
There is a town near Manchester or in the area of Granada TV coverage (although they own around half of the ITV network with Carlton now, its just that Granada was the Northwest network) called Blackley and one news anchor or Richard Whitley on Countdown pronounced it Black Lee as it reads on the page, the letters and phone calls that came in saying its "Blake lee" I think they had collectively tried poshing the place up in the last few decades and it might have once been Black Lee, but as with Hyacinth being called Bucket just wasn't befitting of her (presumed) stature.


And yes I did mean to write soft G, my brain was toying with the idea of thinking of J words and my fingers took over.

[SongsOfDragons]

Hearing Yanks say 'Norwich' is enough to make me jump. 'NOOOOR-WHICH' they say...ARGH

It's Norrich, or if you're a local, Narch is all you need

Leicester, Cirencester and Gloucester are all similar. What is it about -cester that confuggles tongues?

Oh and here's a great list if you have an American friend over and want to film a challenge

[crashhelmet]

Hearing Yanks say 'Norwich' is enough to make me jump. 'NOOOOR-WHICH' they say...ARGH

It's Norrich, or if you're a local, Narch is all you need

Leicester, Cirencester and Gloucester are all similar. What is it about -cester that confuggles tongues?

Oh and here's a great list if you have an American friend over and want to film a challenge

But your list leaves off Llanfairpwllgwyngyll

[Ginger Tea]

Ah that's welsh, you can't speak the language unless you have a mouth full of phlegm (think it was a black adder quote).

[anakhouri]

My hometown is called Louisville. You can always tell a native because they say "Loo-uh-vull" while everyone else says "Loo-ee-ville".

I don't get annoyed when people mispronounce things, unless they've learned the right way and continue to do it wrong. As a kid I read all sorts of words that I never heard used aloud, so it was quite a shock to me that 'lapel' is'la-pell" and 'lay-ple"

(new-cul-lar as opposed to 'new-clee-ar' drives me crazy though, everyone in the English-speaking world has heard this said correctly. I am looking at you, George W. Bush)

[wolfie]

(new-cul-lar as opposed to 'new-clee-ar' drives me crazy though, everyone in the English-speaking world has heard this said correctly. I am looking at you, George W. Bush)

When I was in University, it was fairly common for profs to have cartoons related to their field posted in their office window. One I saw in the Physics department showed a chain-link fence with a sign on it "No admittance to people who say 'nucular'".