Most annoying mispronunciation - page 2

room = word. Not sure how that one happened.

''About "every"... how do you pronounce "very"? Two syllables! Add an "e" at the beginning. You get THREE syllables. I maintain that if you want to be militant about people pronouncing it "ev-ree" (which is the only way I can fathom it with two syllables) you should pronounce "very" as "vree". As for my pronunciation: I say it with both two and three syllables depending on how fast I am speaking.''

Tiffany, the second ''e'' in the word ''every'' is silent.

Look it up in the dictionary and see for yourself that the ''e'' in ''every'' is silent http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=every .

Tiffany, this spelling system is not consistant. Do you pronounce the ''k'' in ''knight'', the ''w'' in ''write'', the ''o'' in ''chocolate'', the ''t'' in ''castle'', the ''e'' in ''different'', the ''g'' in ''gnome'', the ''w'' in ''two'', the ''gh'' in ''through'', the ''p'' in ''psalm'', the ''b'' in ''lamb'' etc. Do you pronounce ''one'' to rhyme with ''cone''?

By your logic, if we want to be militant about people pronouncing ''one'' as ''wun'' we should pronounce ''cone'' as ''cwun''. Do you pronounce ''cone'' that way? I don't think so.

''every'' is a two syllable word.

''Stever I thought it was a "three-syllable word". :-) I have wrongly presumed that words are pronounced the way they're written.''

They're not. That's a very wrong presumption. ''one'' doesn't rhyme with ''cone''. ''laughter'' doesn't rhyme with ''daughter''. the ''k'' and the ''gh'' are silent in ''knight''. the ''w'' is silent in ''write''. the ''b'' is silent in ''lamb''. ''son'' doesn't rhyme with ''Don''. ''want'' doesn't rhyme with ''pant''. ''ward'' doesn't rhyme with ''hard''. ''was'' doesn't rhyme with ''gas''. ''dose'', ''hose'' and ''lose'' don't rhyme.

''ough'' has the most variation in pronunciations and is the most trickiest.

''warsh'' for ''wash''. No ''r'' in the word.

Also, ''warter'' for ''water''. I don't see any ''r'' in that word either so don't pronounce an ''r'' in that word.

When people mispronounce ''often'' as ''off-ten'' instead of ''off-en'' and when people mispronounce ''cabinet'' as ''kab-net'' instead of
''kab-uh-net''.

Steve K, People that pronounce ''February'' as ''Febuary'' are not in the same class as people that pronounce ''picture'' as ''pitcher'', ''mirror'' as ''meer'' and ''library'' as ''libary''.

Dictionary.com agrees with me. It doesn't list ''pitcher'', ''meer'' and ''libary'' as acceptable pronunciations but it does list ''Febuary'' as an acceptable pronunciation of ''February''.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=February

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=library

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=picture

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=mirror

Pedants insist that ''February'' should be pronounced ''Feb-roo-ary'' (with the first ''r'' pronounced) because it matches the spelling of the word.

Steve, I understand the our english spelling system is not consistent. I have an Italian fiance who has opened my eyes up to this (I am American). I am just saying that this "shift" to saying "every" with three syllables is very natural and I find it hard to discriminate against. I am not encouraging anyone to be militant; in fact, the opposite. English is so varied among its speakers that it's difficult to say who is right and who is wrong in their pronunciation, especially as slight as that.

I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE SAY; PRO-NOUN-CIATE and not PRO-NUN-CIATE.

But, Football, I pronounce 'often', 'off-ten'. The dictionary shows two ways of pronouncing that word.

You don't pronounce the ''t'' in ''soften'', do you? Why then pronounce it in ''often''? ''often'' and ''soften'' rhyme. If you say ''off-ten'' for ''often'' logically you should also say ''sof-ten'' for ''soften''.

Pronouncing the ''t'' in ''often'' is no more acceptable than pronouncing the ''t'' in ''soften''.

Why?

I'm a not a native speaker so I assumed and didn't listen carefully enough to how words are really pronounced. The same case happened with the word WEDNESDAY. I truly thought it was pronounced WED-NES-DAY only to find here that it's actually WENZ-DAY.

Tiffany wrote>> English is so varied among its speakers that it's difficult to say who is right and who is wrong in their pronunciation, especially as slight as that.>>.

Tiffany, this is very true. I found out a few years back that languages that have a lot of variation in them are called "pluricentric" languages. Pluricentric languages are usually languages with large speaking populations like Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese but the British author of the book I was reading claims that even Korean is a pluricentric language. This makes sense when you consider that Korean has five dialects to begin with plus the fact that the partition between North and South has created some differences. For example, South Koreans use helrikoptaw, teiparekoda and keibulka for "heliocopter",tape recorder and cable car but North Korea has chiksunggi, rogumgi and chon-cha san ("mountain electric car") instead.

Regarding correct English pronunciation, I've heard that officially the American and British forms are both correct. In real life, it doesn't always work out that way. I've been rebuked by Americans for saying mae-fee-uh for Mafia instead of mah-fee-uh even though the British say mae-fee-uh ; but I've also been rebuked by Britishers for saying tuh-mei-to instead of tuh-mah-tow. That's a word their touchy about.

Reggie,

German has some words that are like this too where hundert "hundred" and Hunger "hunger" are pronounced hoo-nert and hoo-ner. Overall, however, German spelling is much more phonetic than English.