People who can't figure out how to pronounce written words or names

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My company has been promoting a piece of information we send out related to a protein called "tyramine." People have been calling and asking for this piece of information. Now, I understand this might be a scary word: it's unfamiliar, it's technical, and it's scientific. However, a sane person could probably come up with a reasonable guess as to how to pronounce this word. The only guess factors are how the y and the i are pronounced. But I regularly, like at least 75% of the time, get these people who switch the letters around (e.g., tryamine), add new letters (tyrazine), add new syllables (tyramazine), or even make up totally new words.

Also, at my last job there was a man in charge whose last name was Filer. Seems pretty straightforward. But again, at least half of the people who called and asked for him asked for Mr. Filler.

What is up with these people?

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 23 June 2005 19:48 (twenty years ago)

"Hello, is Mr Pz... Pzzz... Pzzzamarintinaozez there?"

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 23 June 2005 19:50 (twenty years ago)

"No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It's not that hard: Samir Na-gheen-an-a-jar. Nagheenanajar."

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Thursday, 23 June 2005 19:53 (twenty years ago)

I've actually taken to mispronouncing co-workers' names, especially when I'm answering the phones. Ha ha ha ha. I'm sad.

― Huk-L, Thursday, 23 June 2005 19:55 (twenty years ago)

people be dumb, yo

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Thursday, 23 June 2005 19:56 (twenty years ago)

It's a defense mechanism of members of the undereducated what-once-would-have-been-called the working class, ingrained in the nervous system.

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:10 (twenty years ago)

I have to pronounce baseball players' names on a regular basis, and trust me, there aren't enough pronouciation guides available on the internet.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:12 (twenty years ago)

may I have your job, please?

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:21 (twenty years ago)

At least you don't semi-regularly get called "Mr Castrato".

― Markelby (Mark C), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:34 (twenty years ago)

I was thinking of compiling a list of names that Todd mispronounces on the Stycast, but I decided that would be mean.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:35 (twenty years ago)

At least you don't semi-regularly get called "Mr Castrato".
-- Markelby (boyincorduro...), June 23rd, 2005 4:34 PM. (Mark C) (later)

I am hoping that you get called this because of some mispronunciation of your name, and not, um, other reasons.

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:39 (twenty years ago)

To which of Captain Beefheart's seven octaves does your singing voice correspond most closely, Markelby?

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:42 (twenty years ago)

DOMO ARIGATO MR. CASTRATO!

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:49 (twenty years ago)

DOMO domo WA WA WA

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:50 (twenty years ago)

who knows

― c/n (Cozen), Thursday, 23 June 2005 20:54 (twenty years ago)

Some people just don't seem to be able to hear how things are pronounced.

A guy that I work with keeps on talking about making a 'Forstian pact'. I don't have the heart to correct him.

― bert (bert), Thursday, 23 June 2005 21:18 (twenty years ago)

how about a certain US prez who says "nuke-u-lure" You'd think his advisors would have corrected that issue long ago. Again I say Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot.

― Wiggy (Wiggy), Thursday, 23 June 2005 23:43 (twenty years ago)

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2004/06/20/200_eddie2106.jpg

"Who wants to be a milwonaire!?"

― Sasha (sgh), Friday, 24 June 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

Dude, I have customers who can't pronounce the name of their own companies correctly (I am certain I've posted on ILX about this before). One company which has the word "colony" in it's name, is chronically mispronounced by two of it's employees as either "Connie" or "call a lamb a ding dong" or something. Then there's this other woman who pronounces the word "anaconda" in her husband's homebuilding company's name as "ANDUHCONDUH". That extraneous "D" makes me want to bang the phone receiver on the desk repeatedly.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 24 June 2005 12:48 (twenty years ago)

anyone want some chipole-ty peppers?

― monsanto and yanni (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 24 June 2005 12:50 (twenty years ago)

Tennis commentators to thread.

― The Lex (The Lex), Friday, 24 June 2005 12:52 (twenty years ago)

but what's weirder is when you've been writing to someone and spelling something correctly many times over, but whenever they write back to you they can NEVER get the spelling right. do they think YOUR spelling is wrong, or do they really pay that little attention to what's going on around them?

― monsanto and yanni (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 24 June 2005 12:53 (twenty years ago)

I have some sympathy with this, but then you get cases like my coworker M. who is very good friends with another coworker, Alexandra. Very good friends *and yet* she still pronounces AND SPELLS her name 'Alexander'. A man's name. When she sees the correct version every day on emails, memos, staff lists etc. It's faintly bizarre really.

― Archel (Archel), Friday, 24 June 2005 12:57 (twenty years ago)

My girlfriend's name is the French spelling of a name of which everyone knows the English spelling. She gets this all the time.

― beanz (beanz), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:00 (twenty years ago)

It's hard to pay attention to stuff.

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:01 (twenty years ago)

It's very rare that people spell my name right. Even at Sainsburys where I had a prominent name badge it would always end up with an 'e'. People tend to make an effort when it's a very unfamiliar name but when it's variant of a well known name the effort goes out the window.

― Raston Warrior Robot (alix), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:12 (twenty years ago)

My immediate boss (not the one that sings) pronounced Mitsubishi as "Mitsubooshi" and even though everyone has tried to correct him, he ignores them and carries on using his own pronunciation.

― Steve.n. (sjkirk), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:17 (twenty years ago)

I once had a substitute teacher who pronounced my name as "Nyquil". That's the moment I started losing all respect for the education system in the U.S.

― Leon C. (Ex Leon), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:20 (twenty years ago)

I can't decide if I respect or detest the people who don't even try to pronounce "tyramine" but just spell it out.

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:22 (twenty years ago)

A very minor one but unbelievably infuriating: a colleague who says "quork" instead of "quark".

― beanz (beanz), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:26 (twenty years ago)

That's how it's pronounced, if we're talking subatomic particles innit?

I've detailed this one on the co-workers' annoying habits thread, but my colleague is unable to pronounce an entirely simple Chinese name consisting of three syllables. She doesn't have to read ideograms or anything, it's written down in English phonetically and is said every day several times correctly in her presence.

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:31 (twenty years ago)

I once had a substitute teacher who pronounced my name as "Nyquil".

I had one call me Nike! WTF?

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:33 (twenty years ago)

It's not like they're weird or exotic names! What is wrong with these people?

― Leon C. (Ex Leon), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:35 (twenty years ago)

people be dumb, yo
-- mookieproof (mookieproo...), June 23rd, 2005 3:56 PM. (mookieproof) (later)

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:36 (twenty years ago)

my last name has been americanized, and is very straightforward. sounds just like it looks. apparently people think things can't be that easy, and therefore look for ways to complicate it. sometimes going as far as adding new letters and syllables. i think some people's brains overheat once they are confronted with something with more than 2 syllables.

― oops (Oops), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:36 (twenty years ago)

i'm always being mistaken for "erin" in spite of my facial hair and obviously mannish voice.

― AaronK (AaronK), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:37 (twenty years ago)

Here is what goes through the mind of a reasonable intelligent sensible person when confronted with the given word: Well, I don't know how to pronounce it but I shouldn't be expected to. Is it "Tyra mine," as Dan Perry would refer to his beloved Tyra Banks? No that's obviously a trap, the wrong answer, a decoy. The last syllable is probably "meen" and and the first is either a short "i", "ti" like in "till", "till the next time we say goodbye" or a long English "i" as in "tie," "tie one on" so it's either TIR-a-meen or TIE-ra-meen, I'll just open my mouth and see which comes out, maybe they'll correct me and I'll learn something.

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:37 (twenty years ago)

Companies who change their name to something easy to mispronounce for bullshit reasons of "synergy" or whatever, Dud or Dud? My bank recently changed its name to Renasant. Anybody care to take a guess?

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:37 (twenty years ago)

My very first headmistress refused to call me 'Alix', despite this being my name. She insisted I was 'Alexandra'. Rather confusing for a 5 year old.

― Raston Warrior Robot (alix), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:38 (twenty years ago)

That's how it's pronounced, if we're talking subatomic particles innit?

The people at the QuarkXpress sales dept say it with an open A...
(I realised that was ambiguous after I posted it.)

― beanz (beanz), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:38 (twenty years ago)

Did they put a statue of Michelangelo's (Buonarotti not Matos) David in the lobby, Rock?

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:39 (twenty years ago)

Sorry, it's Buonarroti.

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:40 (twenty years ago)

Heh, then he's a pretentious geek. Burn him alive!
xpost

Renasant certainly conjours up a vision of a thrusting, forward-looking, reborn...nose.

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:40 (twenty years ago)

...Here is what goes through everybody else's mind: Oh, my god I hated chemistry in high school, the lab the labbooks, I used to copy it all off that brain who was my best friend's lab partner. I hated foreign language class, all I learned to say was "Donde es [sic] Madrid", What is it some kind of thyroid drug, my aunt had a thyroid problem her eyes popped out, maybe she died early because of it. I have to remember to call Cousin Thea for her birthday this weekend, but then I can watch Nadine In Dateland on Saturday night...

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:45 (twenty years ago)

hah posted to the wrong thread.

― AaronK (AaronK), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:45 (twenty years ago)

No statuary. I guess they just couldn't live with the socialist implications of The People's Banking and Trust Co. anymore and had to change it to something totally stoopid.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:45 (twenty years ago)

So Nick, is it pronounced TEER-uh-meen?

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:47 (twenty years ago)

"No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It's not that hard: Samir Na-gheen-an-a-jar. Nagheenanajar."

This was my first thought when I saw this thread.

I hate this, too. People call the clinic all the time and say "What is this Mee? So....? Prah?....STOL?!" all dragged out for a whole minute like that. God, sound it the fuck out. MISOPROSTOL.

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:47 (twenty years ago)

It's TIE-ra-meen. But TEER-a-meen is a reasonable guess, as is teer-a-min or tie-ra-min.

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:49 (twenty years ago)

Half the people in my home province couldn't pronounce the name Ian. I'd here "EYE-un" or "Een" constantly and think "it's a two-syllable, Anglo name - what the fuck???"

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Friday, 24 June 2005 13:49 (twenty years ago)

Skipping 89 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

i find it pretty easy to tell who's a reader and who isn't. there are words, phrases, and names that come up in literature all the time (not just "literature" in the collegiate sense, but newspapers, popular magazines, on the headline crawls of cable news networks), so much so that someone who reads would have to be a complete space cadet to get them wrong. but if you don't read and you only hear the words spoken (and you don't have the cognitive experience of knowing how to turn written letter combinations into particular sounds), it's more likely you'll make mistakes.

― the underground homme (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 2 July 2005 03:00 (twenty years ago)

There's an American grown-up fratboy character in Martin Amis's Night Train who makes a lot of these mistakes- the one that I remember is "I treated her with the upmost correctitude."

― k/l (Ken L), Saturday, 2 July 2005 03:04 (twenty years ago)

People who can't figure out how to write spoken words or names

― }}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}16 kilks out en me choppa!!! wot wot wot he does guitar WIT (ex , Saturday, 2 July 2005 03:07 (twenty years ago)

Good one.

― k/l (Ken L), Saturday, 2 July 2005 03:09 (twenty years ago)

i think a lot of people actually write 'all intensive purposes' because it's prevalent enough -in speech- to be considered correct. i can still vaguely recall the first time i saw 'for all intents and purposes' in print and realized that what i thought i had been hearing, and probably was hearing, 'all intensive purposes', was not right. a while later after i heard it said enough i realized that it was not right but not because of my mishearing it.

― Josh (Josh), Saturday, 2 July 2005 05:39 (twenty years ago)

and - jody, while there's certainly a lot of not questioning going on, i think part of the propogration of misused phrases like that is due to their resemblance to idioms, which are often opaque to those who have never before used them. (and those who use them fluently often have no idea why they came to mean what they mean - and needn't, really.)

― Josh (Josh), Saturday, 2 July 2005 05:42 (twenty years ago)

I refrained from commenting on the misspelling of "definitely"

you know that was intentional, right?

― jaymc (jaymc), Saturday, 2 July 2005 05:44 (twenty years ago)

NICE COVER, J

― oops (Oops), Saturday, 2 July 2005 05:44 (twenty years ago)

well, i see you noted that. so consider me to have emphasized it.

i think i once took 'intensive purposes' to somehow be referring to important ones, or relevant ones.

― Josh (Josh), Saturday, 2 July 2005 05:45 (twenty years ago)

my example related to "for all intensive purposes" is that for many years i heard "at one's beck and call" as "at one's beckon call" and somehow never came across it in print.

― jaymc (jaymc), Saturday, 2 July 2005 05:46 (twenty years ago)

definately is definitely the one I see done the most. i don't get it: how often is an 'a' pronounced that way when followed by an 'e'?

― oops (Oops), Saturday, 2 July 2005 05:50 (twenty years ago)

I had the moment where I realized that "could of" was actually "could have". I don't remember ever writing the mistake -- I knew the grammar well enough to write "could have" -- but that thing I was hearing which I thought was "could of" (and which I took to be a variant grammar that no one seemed to talk about) was, I realized, "could have". I was maybe 13ish when this happened.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 2 July 2005 08:02 (twenty years ago)

When I was a kid I read to myself all the time - no one read *to* me - so I made my own pronunciations for things. I have had a few embarrasing moments over the years as a result, like the time in primary school I had to read aloud in a play and I pronounced "italian" as "itta-leean". Everyone laughed, I didnt know why, and I was most upset!

― Trayce (trayce), Saturday, 2 July 2005 08:17 (twenty years ago)

I refrained from commenting on the misspelling of "definitely"

you know that was intentional, right?
I realize now that I should have typed "mispelling."

― k/l (Ken L), Saturday, 2 July 2005 09:12 (twenty years ago)

haha trayce i did the same thing - got the piss ripped out of me when i was about 9 or 10 for pronouncing poltergeist "polter-jee-ist" - all the other kids had parents who weren't arsed about letting them see cert 18 films at that age so they'd all seen the film, but i hadn't, i had just read a book about them. a friend (very very smart friend) pronounced misled "mize-ld" when we were reading something in class, but i just thought that was sweet.

― emsk, Saturday, 2 July 2005 11:05 (twenty years ago)

A very very smart man, W.V.O. Quine, once said there should be twowords- "mis-LED" AND "mize-ld."

― k/l (Ken L), Saturday, 2 July 2005 12:26 (twenty years ago)

words/phrases that people ALWAYS spell wrong (i know there's another thread for the topic but this one's handier):

clique ("click")
piqued my interest ("peaked my interest")
vocal cords ("vocal chords")
for all intents and purposes ("for all intensive purposes")
segue ("segway,"* "segueway")

also "weary" when they mean "wary"

― the underground homme (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 2 July 2005 22:02 (twenty years ago)

and hordes/hoards.

― emsk, Saturday, 2 July 2005 22:22 (twenty years ago)

Once when I was about 8 I cracked my mother up by pronouncing the state uhRIZZuhnuh. I knew the name of the state, I just don't think I'd ever seen it spelt!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 2 July 2005 22:34 (twenty years ago)

i just teased my friend today about the first time he was in Arizona, saw a road sign for Tucson, and pronounced it "tuck-son". This was just like 6-7 years ago. His excuses vary from "i was tired" to "i knew the correct pronunciation. i'm just a clown here to amuse you."

― oops (Oops), Sunday, 3 July 2005 06:27 (twenty years ago)

club congress has a framed magazine article on the wall with the title "under the tucson sun."

(which if you don't know is a pun on this movie from a few years ago)

― the underground homme (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 3 July 2005 06:31 (twenty years ago)

One time I saw Terri Garr telling a story about Sonny Bono reading from a script and saying "OK, ca-yay-oh!" So she says to herself: "ca-yay-oh, WTF is that, lemme see that script!" The word in question was, of course,"ciao."

― k/l (Ken L), Sunday, 3 July 2005 12:47 (twenty years ago)

my favorite is that NO ONE in my workplace can pronounce LA CANADA. it always comes out resembling that country to our north instead of can-ya-da. i guess it doesn't help that there's a suburb, charlotte, that is pronounced locally as char-LOT. nevermind that the rest of the world pronounces it like the common female name of the same spelling. we also get ridiculous customer names, and i always at least try to pronounce them but most of my coworkers resort to 'um... yeah i'm just gonna spell it for you...' it's probably obnoxious but if i hear the girl next to me mispronouncing or struggling, i always yell over to correct her. i'm a jerk.

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 3 July 2005 15:07 (twenty years ago)

i guess it doesn't help that there's a suburb, charlotte, that is pronounced locally as char-LOT.

You must be in Rochester! Don't forget Chili, pronounced CHY-LYE.

I'm sympathetic to mispronouncers, though, because my wife is one. I don't know if it's some form of dyslexia or what, but she has real trouble with lots of pronunciations. A lot of them are cute. I liked how she used to say "gor-zon-gala cheese." I was sad when she learned how to say it right.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 3 July 2005 15:12 (twenty years ago)

i was going to mention chili, but i felt i'd already gone on too long!

i am also a nerd because as i was reading this thread and typing out my response i thought, "i wish everyone knew IPA so we could avoid trying to type out pronunciations syllabically."

your wife reminds me of small children who eat pasghettis! :-)

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 3 July 2005 15:19 (twenty years ago)

i had no idea about the charlotte thing either.

― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Sunday, 3 July 2005 15:32 (twenty years ago)

I misspronounced La Cañada at work the other day because our stupid program doesn't have an ñ character, making it look like La Canada (which didn't seem right to me and I said so, and was quickly corrected.)

Little things like spelling the goddamn word correctly make all the difference in eliciting a proper pronunciation.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Sunday, 3 July 2005 16:28 (twenty years ago)

I also mispronounced it.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Sunday, 3 July 2005 16:29 (twenty years ago)

So "stipend" is pronounced more like the lead singer of R.E.M.'S last name than it is like "sippin'". Why not just fucking sue me then?

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 15:39 (twenty years ago)

My parents have a neighbor who planted some nanking cherry bushes -- or as he called them, "naked cherry."

There's a town called Nevada that is pronounced nuh-VAY-duh.

― mike h. (mike h.), Thursday, 14 July 2005 20:50 (twenty years ago)

i once had a boss that mispronounced SO many things. she also made words up. at first, i thought about correcting her, but shes so "PERFECT" that i just let her sound like a dummy, and tried not to snort when she'd babble on to her friends...

she made up the word "trangent", when she should have been using the word "transient". this homeless dude killed some ppl on her street, and for months she went on and on and on about the "trangent" that was on the loose.

she also says "theartre" instead of "theatre". she adds a freaking R! can she not hear herself doing that?! she sounds like a retard!

she also mis-pronounces her best friends last name in a very noticable way. the friend is a person with a famous last name, so i dont see how she can say it wrong over and over!!

i ALSO cant stand people that make up certain words. this is a bit hypocritical, because i sortof do it...but not really. anyway, she used to invite her clients to meet her for "breky". as in, short for "breakfast". THAT IS NOT A WORD, NOT DOES IT SOUND CUTE OR COOL.

(also, if i have mis-spelled anything, sorry. im a horrible speller)

― shh! (wide-eyed), Thursday, 14 July 2005 21:48 (twenty years ago)

nine months pass...

Words I am embarrassed to have mispronounced in public:

hyperbole

placebo

I pronounced both as written (place-bow, hyper-bowl). This was in middle school and high school, but still the sting of humiliation is with me.

― WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot (unclejessjess), Monday, 17 April 2006 15:02 (nineteen years ago)

I know lots of people that use "breky".

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Monday, 17 April 2006 16:41 (nineteen years ago)

I was working with someone who kept pronouncing segue "sa-GOO". But that was excusable as just not knowing what the word was...

The inability to pronounce certain words amazes (ie: "pisses off") me. I used to have a boss that would refuse to pronounce people's names correctly if she'd never heard that pronunciation before, but had heard a similar one. For example, (before he was popular) she would have pronounced Jerry Seinfeld as Jerry .. Sinefield. And she would pause before saying the last name because she knew she was wrong, but she ~~couldn't~~ wouldn't say a name that was slightly different from what she was used to.

― dave vire think (dave225.3), Monday, 17 April 2006 17:23 (nineteen years ago)

My Ecuadoran friend wrote to me in an email: "I'll probably need your help late around." Later on.
I used to pronounce the comic strip "Priscilla's Pop" as presh-liss pop.

― Bnad, Monday, 17 April 2006 17:39 (nineteen years ago)

I was working with someone who kept pronouncing segue "sa-GOO".

HYSTERICS

― Dan (So Awesome) Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 17 April 2006 17:47 (nineteen years ago)

I remember I met hanging out with some Dutch guys (for fun, not for sex), and we were at a winebar and they were ordering and they pointed at "gouda" and said "we'll have the HOW-DA", and i cracked the fuck up. how-da. hahaha, but then they said in holland, where the cheese comes from, thats how its pronounced. oh ok. so then next time i was at a sandwich place, i was ordering a smoked gouda sandwich, so i said, "hi, i'll have the smoked how-da sandwich" and then she cracked the fuck up, but i said, no, in holland where the cheese comes from, thats how its pronounced. but instead of taking that to note, she went and told the other waiters and i could hear them laughing in the back. "HOW-DA?? hahahaha!"

― phil-two (phil-two), Monday, 17 April 2006 17:55 (nineteen years ago)

or maybe it really is "goo-duh" and those dutch guys were just fucking with me.

― phil-two (phil-two), Monday, 17 April 2006 17:55 (nineteen years ago)

you shoulda fucked them.

― remy (x Jeremy), Monday, 17 April 2006 17:55 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe if you looked more Dutch, Phil.

― Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 17 April 2006 17:56 (nineteen years ago)

dutch east indies! i could be from jakarta maybe and emigrated to amsterdam

― phil-two (phil-two), Monday, 17 April 2006 17:57 (nineteen years ago)

also, some people call me "Mr. Ho", but my fucking last name is OH. how does "OH" = HO?

― phil-two (phil-two), Monday, 17 April 2006 17:59 (nineteen years ago)

i feel like i just set myself up for something.

― phil-two (phil-two), Monday, 17 April 2006 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

Look at me, not saying anything!

― Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 17 April 2006 18:02 (nineteen years ago)

I have a coworker that pronounces "documentary" DOCK-YOU-MEN-TARRY everytime AND he's a film teacher.

― Washable School Paste (sexyDancer), Monday, 17 April 2006 18:04 (nineteen years ago)

The Simpsons had a pretty good gag along these lines --

MARGE: Run, Bart! Run like the wind! [pronounced with a long "i," like "kind.']
LISA: Mom, it's "wind."
MARGE: Mmmm . . . I've only ever seen it written.

Never fails to crack me up.

― phil d. (Phil D.), Monday, 17 April 2006 18:08 (nineteen years ago)

also, some people call me "Mr. Ho", but my fucking last name is OH. how does "OH" = HO?

My last name is not that simple, but it's simple enough. The most common one I get is "Moosh-roosh." The fuck is wrong with you people? LOOK AT MY NAME. It's pronounced EXACTLY like it looks: MUSHRUSH.

It's like because it looks weird they assume it can't be that simple.

― martin m. (mushrush), Monday, 17 April 2006 18:17 (nineteen years ago)

Martin, mine too. No one ever guesses right.

― Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 17 April 2006 18:21 (nineteen years ago)

British people tend to pronounce my last name correctly, I suppose the prevailing accent works in my favor, but in the US I get all the variants from SOW-ner, SOO-ner, SUN-ner, etc, every possible vowel sound except maybe SIN-ner. Usually I don't bother to correct them if it's someone I'm dealing with only briefly.

2.) That thing that I keep my clothes in? For the longest time, I thought that it was called "chester drawers".

So did I--this is how my (Arkansan) family pronounces it. When I was a kind I figured that someone named Chester designed it.

― sgs (sgs), Monday, 17 April 2006 18:26 (nineteen years ago)

When I was a KID rather. Guh.

― sgs (sgs), Monday, 17 April 2006 18:28 (nineteen years ago)

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