Interesting examples of hyper-correction

Rick   Sat Aug 02, 2008 12:09 pm GMT
English speakers notice that words ending in "s" in French have a silent "s", so they pronounce French borrowings that actually end with /s/ in French without it, i.e. "coup de grace" as "koo day grah", however "coup de grace" does have a final /s/ as it doesn't end in "s".
Xie   Sat Aug 02, 2008 4:44 pm GMT
More girls are adding r's all the time to the back of every vowel... to sound American.
Rick   Sat Aug 02, 2008 7:52 pm GMT
Okay here is a hypercorrection that I find annoying:

"between you and I"

"for you and I"

Also, this isn't really a hypercoreection but I hate it when people say "my husband/wife and I's"
Lazar   Sat Aug 02, 2008 9:20 pm GMT
<<English speakers notice that words ending in "s" in French have a silent "s", so they pronounce French borrowings that actually end with /s/ in French without it, i.e. "coup de grace" as "koo day grah", however "coup de grace" does have a final /s/ as it doesn't end in "s".>>

Another example is "fleur-de-lis", which people tend to pronounce [..."li:], even though in French it's pronounced [...lis]. The hypercorrected pronunciation is the first one given by dictionary.com, and the only one given by m-w.com and dictionary.cambridge.org.
Guest   Sat Aug 02, 2008 9:54 pm GMT
Britons in avoiding h-dropping will often avoid pronouncing the weak forms of "he", "him", "his", and "her" without an initial [h].
Guest   Sun Aug 03, 2008 6:19 am GMT
no they don't
Guest   Sun Aug 03, 2008 6:20 am GMT
yes they do
Guest   Sun Aug 03, 2008 5:57 pm GMT
<<Okay here is a hypercorrection that I find annoying:

"between you and I">>

This grates on my nerves too, especially since I hear people say this a lot on scripted television. Unsurprisingly, this is the title of one of Jessica Simpson's songs, which she repeats over and over again in the lyrics. Where the heck do they get these writers from???
Trawicks   Mon Aug 04, 2008 3:22 pm GMT
<<Germans would rarely pronounce an English W as an English V. Instead they are FAR more likely to pronounce an English V as an English W. For example they would say things that sound like "While I was at the uniwersity, I had the adwantage of playing wery well on the wiolin." I have yet to meet a German that does not make this mistake.>>

You know, this may not be an example of hypercorrection at all, but simply due to the use of [v\] common in many German dialects, which often sounds to English speakers like 'w.'
Guest   Tue Aug 05, 2008 12:59 pm GMT
"You know, this may not be an example of hypercorrection at all, but simply due to the use of [v\] common in many German dialects, which often sounds to English speakers like 'w.' "

No, it's actually hypercorrection. They really do hypercorrect and the "smarter" ones are aware of the mistake.