Ask Lemmy

I pronounce caramel as "care-uh-mell".
People always say something and I reply with "no, Carmel is a [beach-town in California], I'm talking about caramel".

I'm fluent in both Spanish and English (obv). When speaking English, I'm conflicted on whether I should pronounce Spanish loan words in a shitty English accent like everyone else, or in a proper Spanish accent. So instead I pronounce them as horribly as I can.

Jalapeño is "yah-la-PEEN-oh". Fajita is "fa-JAI-tah". Quesadilla gets "QUAY-sah-dilah"

(As a joke of course)

agghh these comments my eyes the fauxnetics please god why can't Lemmy have a bigger linguistics community and you mfs wonder why i still use Reddit

.ǝdoɹnƎ uᴉ ƃuᴉʌᴉl uɐᴉlɐɹʇsn∀ uɐ ɯɐ ᴉ ʇnq .ǝɯᴉʇ ǝɥʇ ll∀

I over-pronounce Wednesday. Like wed-nes-day. Most people say wendsday.

Also apparently I'm weird for pronouncing jewelry correctly. I pronounce it like it is spelled, and what it means. It is personal ornaments often containing jewels. Jewel-ry. Not Joolery.

Same thing with Aunt. It's not Ant. There is a U in there.

As an American, it didn't click for me until I visited London for the first time why names like Leicester and Gloucester were pronounced the way they are by Brits. My dumb American brain sees the names as Lei-cester and Glou-cester rather than Leice-ster and Glouce-ster.

Living in Los Angeles as a white person, I refuse to pronounce street and city names that are Spanish the English-speaking way. Knowing Spanish since I was a kid from school and using it on a daily basis, my brain simply doesn’t butcher the pronunciation by default.

It’s caused confusion though for sure. I used to live near a street called La Tijera, but Americans pronounced it almost like Spanish “la tierra” which is a completely different word, and I couldn’t figure out where this street was that everyone was talking about.

I'm German. One day my house was being renovated and they were working with jackhammers to remove parts of the facade. It was incredibly loud and I couldn't bear it. I lived close to university and had recently stopped working in one of the institutes. I knew though that my former colleagues had couches in some of their offices so I thought I'd give them a visit. I walked over to the institute and greeted my Australian former coworker. I explained about the noise in my house and said I was "looking for asylum". Knowing the word "asylum" only from written language, I had no idea it was not actually pronounced "ay suh lum". He asked "you're looking for what?" as he obviously hadn't understood. I repeated "ay suh lum" confidently and he politely said "ah". Not long after, I learned the correct pronunciation of asylum and that memory has haunted me ever since. It's been almost 10 years but I still cringe about it.

I don't personally do this, but many people in my family say the days of the week with "dee". Like "Sundee", "Mondee". I think it's charming, but one of their children said they were weird for saying it that way.

Also, as a programmer, there are some words that programmers use that are abbreviated which I refuse to pronounce the way that others pronounce them because I think it's weird, but virtually everybody pronounces them different to me.

For example, there is a common keyword in programming languages called "enum", and most people I know pronounce it as "EE-num", like it rhymes with "ME dumb". But "enum" is short for "enumeration", so I pronounce it as if it's the first two syllables of "enumeration", like "ee-NUUM". Although I think the normal pronunciation is weird, I don't say anything to people. I just pronounce it the way that I think it should be pronounced. But on multiple occasions, other programmers have called me out for it and asked why I pronounce it "wrong".

There are several other programming terms like this, but they don't immediately come to mind. Enum is the most common example.

My wife says I pronounce crayon wrong. The way she says it, it's a single syllable word that is the same as the first syllable of cranberry. I say it as two syllables: cray-on.

Being fully honest, I've started drawing it out and articulating both syllables more because I know she doesn't like it.

How about Chipotle as chee~pot~ole

I say appree-see-ate for appreciate, and artif-isss-ee-al for artificial.

Yosemite rhymes with Vegemite. Change my mind.

It's Helico-Pter not Heli-Copter. It's a greek word from hélikos (screw, spiral, winding) and pterón (wing).

And since I'm fun at parties, I consequently pronounce it with a slight pause before and stress on the P and not a miniscule pause after the I and a slight stress on the O.

"It is called 'baggel'. I lived in New York."

Solder. I taught myself, never really talked to anyone about it, and for like a decade, I pronounced it like it's spelled. With an L.

I just can't break the habit

I pronounce dragon as dragòn, if you know what I mean.

US American. I've lived overseas a long time and pronounce the 'h' in 'herbs' because, as Eddie Izzard once said, "it's got a fucking 'h' in it". I don't know when I switched but my mom laughed at me when we had a call recently.

One I only noticed a couple years ago: turmeric (was saying, and still frequently hear) 'toomeric'.

I used to pronounce "adjacent" as adjuhsent.

My wife made fun of me the other day for pronouncing the h in homage. I quickly got my revenge when dictionary.com offered my way as the first pronunciation.

Oh-mage is fancier I will admit.

I purposely pronouce "download" like dunlaad to annoy my SO.

sometimes I accidentally pronounce "C'est la Vie" as "sest lah vy" even though I know its "say la vee" just because I read it first and it lives in my head as that first wrong pronunciation. confuses the hell out of people and I have to explain my foolery

Bona fide. It's latin, you say it Bow-nah Fee-day.

I pronounce spigot as "spicket" but that's normal where I'm from.

My mom had a couple of weird ones that took me a while to unlearn:

Stipend = "stipp-ind"
Antibiotics = "antee-BEE-otics"