Up until recently, I thought that the US national park was pronounced “yo-semite”, as if it was some sort of ghetto-slang used for greeting a Jewish person.

Pour one out for all my epi-tome homies

Doesn’t mean it isn’t cute/funny when it does happen, though. Just this week my SO pronounced chihuahua as “CHA-HOO-A-HOO-A” so I told them “you know this word, it’s the taco bell dog” lol

It was embarrassingly recently that I realized segue and “segway” were the same word which I apparently didn’t know how to spell.

Edit: BTW - the weird way that English words are spelled or pronounced - and why - is one of my favorrite nerd subjects. I love this thread so freaking much. And how RIGHT nearly everyone here SHOULD have been.

Or… or you read it in the 3 word title of a meme. Doesn’t matter, learned word.

Also dialects are a thing. The way a lot of words come out of my mouth has been culturally labeled as ignorant. I go out of my way to change my pronunciations at work so I get taken seriously, but I’ve been doing it less now that I’m accepted in that world. Maybe that caps how much farther I can go, but maybe I don’t want to go further if it means continuing to act like people who sound like how I sound are less than

Gif

This was me with a number of words over the years, but most memorable “paradigm.”

As a kid I used to pronounce amoeba as “a-MO-ba” instead of “a-MEE-ba”.

As a homeschooled kid with a big vocabulary I was largely not able to pronounce (more reading than talking), this is a sentiment I wish I’d heard earlier in life.

You should never mock someone who pronounces a word strangely: They might be from Reading.

“Facade” caught me in high school.

Interestingly (to me), I have the opposite problem in Spanish. I’ve learned mostly through immersion, so when I see a Spanish word written down sometimes I’m like “Holy heck THAT’S how you spell carrot??” Spanish is a language where the spelling/pronounciation rules are really consistent, but it’s still surprising to see some of these words without having ever thought of how they might be spelled. Toallas (towels) got me too.

I thought I was mispronouncing “duodenum” so I changed it, then I heard doctors on youtube saying it the way I thought was wrong. I had gone from right to wrong back to right. lol

I pronounced entrée as “entry” until I was in my 30s. 😭

This happens to me a lot in the medical field. “Parenchymal” has been my most recent, and I have to think about it every time I hear it or try to say it

I read it in my head as PAIR-EN-KIME-AL, but it’s pronounced PA-RINKA-MAL… though how I read it does help me to spell it

Some words I still can’t pronounce, but I know how to “read”, such as “klebsiella aerogenes”

While we’re on the subject: “Tachypneic” is pronounced like “TA-KIP-NIK”, but I never hear anyone try and pronounce “Bradypneic”. One would assume that it’s pronounced like “BRA-DIP-NIK” (or maybe “BRAY-DIP-NIK”), but I can’t confirm. I think saying “bradypneic” intimidates people