Up until recently, I thought that the US national park was pronounced “yo-semite”, as some sort of ghetto-slang for a Jewish person.
Ahahhahhahahaaha that’s actually amazing
There was an '80s cop show called Hill Street Blues that had a recurring latino character named Jesus. All I heard as a kid was “Hey, Zeus” so I thought his actual name was Zeus and everybody just said “hey” to him when addressing him.
I love this so much!
I thought Yosemite Sam had pretty much taught all English speakers the correct pronunciation. I remember my parents saying their Swedish relatives pronounced it “Yohsmeet.”
I have no idea who that is.
EDIT: Oh, that guy. And now I know his name.
Non-native English speaker, young, or both?
The former. Noggie, to be precise. Plus I didn’t watch a whole lot of Bugs Bunny growing up either.
Wassa “Noggie”?
Norwegian
Thank you! Going to call my Brother In-Law that now…
That’s amazing
I say it that way sometimes for fun. I live nearish so sometimes, when visitors hear me say if, they ask if that’s how it’s actually pronounced
Wait how do you phonetically say this?
Yo - seh - mit - ee
are you Donald Trump by chance
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
That dog died over a decade ago. Do younger kids know what that is?
I have been pronouncing it like this since my buddy fucked it up in grade school lmao
Thank you for the new method to make my family groan.
Les Nessman comes to mind.
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.
I’m sorry. I hate that the stereotype that stuck for homeschool kids wasn’t that they’re often very well read and advanced, because that has been my experience encountering them over the years.
In fairness, that stereotype is largely due to capital H Homeschooled kids like me. as in, the subculture as opposed to simply the method of schooling at home.
If you meet someone who was in the subculture, you need to navigate through a few levels of weird damage before our vocabulary is even close to the most notable thing about us.
Opposite for me. Homeschooled kids are weird and dumb generally. I’m sorry I’m weird too. May be my geography because I’m in a super conservative area. The people here who decide to do homeschooling are typically conspiracy theory rednecks.
Or… or you read it in the 3 word title of a meme. Doesn’t matter, learned word.
Words go brrrr.
Me as a small children: I’ll PRE-FACE this by saying…
Family: wait, what??
I did not feel honorable…
Me as a grown-ass Spaniard right now: wait, it’s not pre-face? Is it pre-fis?
Pref-is
Damn, thank you
Just make it clear that it’s a short e like in preference and a soft s.
It is. And yet, we’re both still correct. Somehow…
Same with pre-dator for me xD
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
Pour one out for all my epi-tome homies
Brian Regan presents: Epi-tome of hyper bowl.
Have some Worcestershire sauce on me!
This was me with a number of words over the years, but most memorable “paradigm.”
The one that wakes me up in the middle of the night is albeït. I thought it was fancy foreign speak pronounced “all bait”, but it is just a short form of “all be it”, is pronounced exactly like that, and is a synonym for “all though it be”.
“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 still have to “translate” that one in my head every time I read it.
Same!
And I definitely read it out loud in front of a class in high school the wrong way.
When I was learning Japanese, I came across a sentence along the lines of “lets buy stuff at the <shoppingumouru>”, I could understand most of it fine, but didn’t recognize bracketed word, which was conveniently written in a script that denotes loan words (and I have trancscribed phonetically abovr). I probably spent at least half an hour trying to look up “shoppingumouru” simce I couldn’t find it in my dictionary. Eventually, I turned to Google translate and immediately facepalmed when I saw the answer.
I studied Malayalam (the language of Kerala state in India) a few years ago. I learned the script quickly and one day walking through the capital of Thiruvananthapuram I saw a van with the word “POLICE” and then the Malayalam word underneath it. I was all excited to learn a new Malayalam word without needing my tutor, until I sounded it out and realized it was just “POLICE” written with the Malayalam script.
Fun fact: Malayalam is the only language whose named is a palindrome. Its English name, at least - in the Malayalam script it’s not.
When learning Spanish I read in a book that skateboarding was montar en monopatin. In college I spoke that in oral exam. My professor was like what the fuck is that?
Is it shopping mall?
Yes! Japanese is a phonetic language and loan words are just phonetisized versions using the syllables (sounds) they have in their alphabet. The katakana version of their alphabet is for just for loan words, onomatopoeias (moo, meow, woof), and other things that are not words. Katakana symbols just represent sounds, not meanings.
Currently staying here for a week and I have no idea how to pronounce Etobicoke. I’m sure it’s not “Et oh buy coke”. I asked a couple of canadiens but that hasn’t helped because what comes out of their mouth is so far removed from the spelling.
Etoba koh is probably the closest I can get to it for ya lol
I was pronouncing “Byrne” like “buy-er-nie” until I saw someone who had that last name pronounce it like “burn”. The way I was pronouncing it was as if I was excitedly saying “bye Ernie” 😂
Don’t count on last names for that stuff.
You’ll find duboise or dubois pronounced dubose which is horrifically wrong.
Brett fucking Favre (fav ray) who pronounces it farv.
I’d say favruh fast but damn this one kills me.
Unless it’s a YouTuber. Then they’re possibly pronouncing it wrong so people will comment about their pronunciation and fuel the algorithm.
For me it’s the word: ruffians
I still slip up and say roff-ians
So you read books but can’t use a dictionary?
See holler, tow-up.
