How it’s actually pronounced: FEB-roo-air-ee Thus, instead of fibri, we slur it so it becomes fibyu. There must be something about two consonants coming together that makes our brains want to take the easy way out. How it’s actually pronounced: de-FIB-ri-lay-tor SherbetĪdmittedly, this might not have ended up on a list of commonly mispronounced English words if it weren’t for the very confusing existence of sorbet, which is not the same as sherbet. If you see this spelling variant in the U.S., it’s probably because you’re at a bar. Not to be confused with “drought,” which is pronounced drowt, “draught” has an F sound in it, but it’s usually only found written in British English this way. But this might be one of those instances where pronouncing something “correctly” doesn’t do the job of communicating what you’re trying to say, because most people will just say “Don’t you mean for-tay?”. Unless you’re referring specifically to the musical term, it’s actually pronounced fort. You can probably blame the coincidence of too many M’s and N’s close together. How it’s actually pronounced: ah-NEM-oh-neeĪs popularized by Finding Nemo, the word “anemone” is basically a tongue twister that lives at the bottom of the ocean (or in a nice bouquet of cut flowers). What people say: ah-MEN-oh-mee…ah-men-oh-NEE? In the case of “jewelry,” there’s more there than meets the eye. Sometimes the mouth giveth an extra syllable, and sometimes it taketh away. How it’s actually pronounced: JEW-ell-ree “Worcester” is pronounced wooster, and if you tack on the “shire,” it’s just sher. How it’s actually pronounced: WOOS-ter-sherįor Americans especially, this sauce is a mouthful because it’s named after a county in England. In line with “mischievous,” prestigious is also a three-syllable word masquerading as a four-syllable word. How it’s actually pronounced: pre-STI-jus To be fair though, people have apparently been making this mistake since the 16th century, so it might as well be considered the correct pronunciation by now. This is a tough one, and a lot of that’s owing to the fact that this word has a lot of vowels, making it appear like it has more syllables than it actually does. How it’s actually pronounced: MIS-chiv-us Some Commonly Mispronounced English Words Mischievous Here are some of the most commonly mispronounced English words that even English speakers struggle with from time to time. In any case, some words are definitely harder to pronounce than others (especially when they’re newer terms people aren’t familiar with). But it’s also just more realistic to acknowledge that “perfect speech” doesn’t really exist, and native speakers of any language are bound to veer off the straight and narrow track of what’s considered “correct” from time to time. It’s true: English is a complicated language, rendering even its most fluent speakers incoherent from time to time. That’s why it’s so surprising that some of the most commonly mispronounced English words are words that even native English speakers get wrong. In fact, getting rid of your accent is usually the final hurdle to so-called “perfect fluency,” and most people never really get there anyway. Naturally, people struggle to articulate sounds in languages they didn’t grow up speaking natively. The conversation around pronunciation struggles is usually centered around the experiences of second-language speakers.
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