Do you get annoyed when people pronounce words differently?

Post Reply New Topic

Yes, I do feel annoyed when that happens.

Yeah aminals instead of animals and pitcher instead of picture. And pinguins instead of penguins. Oh those people need to have something serious done to them.

You don't think they have a learning disorder?
Some words are hard to to pronounce.
I find when I try to speak that I sometimes pronounce a word incorrectly, but I don't do it on purpose. It's a constant irritation. I have also spelt picture as pitcher and animals as aminals.

No it doesn't really bother me because I was made fun of by how I talked when I was a kid. So I don't care if people have accents. But it annoys me when I have to deal with people who can't speak very good English.

It used to make me mad when I was a kid, and I corrected people angrily. Even though sometimes it was me who was wrong, and I just had invented something I thought sounded better.

I've met so many people who have pronounced "ask" with the s after the k, as "axe." Hate it.
And "alright" as "arright."

That vowel shift in the pronunciation of the word, penguins is a part of my vernacular.

Yes, that's not what I had in mind when I made the original post but that is certainly a subcategory of this. Translating place names into the native language of their inhabitants while speaking in English is kind of stupid, especially when they only translate certain ones. Sometimes they go as far as changing the entire word as in calling Turin "Torino." Other times they don't make any changes as in the examples you pointed out or as in the case of never calling Rome "Roma." Speakers of other languages translate our place names so why shouldn't we translate theirs? I wonder how they draw the line to determine which to translate and which not to. It seems completely random to me.

Improper pronunciation is irritating. My mother and grandmother do this. My mom says "sal-mon" instead of "sammon". In 10th grade English we had a sub teacher come in one day to continue reading The Diary of Anne Frank. She came across a sentence that mentioned Beethoven. She pronounced it "beeth oven". I waited until after the reading was over and kindly corrected her. She wrote me a detention slip.

Yes all the time.

If people pronounce things differently because of an accent or speech individuality it doesn't annoy me. I guess it's more 'bad english' that does.

Though, I also get annoyed when characters use made up languages in movies. Like sometimes in sci-fi movies when they use their native extra-terrestial language. Urgh. Unless it's acted extremely well - urgh, shiver.

I know this one because I pronounce it "pee-can" (I grew up in the mid-west) and someone corrected me on it so I looked it up and it can be pronounced either way.

A lot of people are really annoyed when other people mispronounce or miss use words/grammar, etc. however, it is considered EXTREMELY impolite to correct someone.

On the very first date I had with my (now husband...who has AS) he corrected my use of a word in a very literal way. I was totally annoyed. Thank god he was really cute or we probably wouldn't have made it to date two.

I have cured him of the habit now, because I will go absolutely bat s**t crazy if he corrects me!


I can't seem to cure my 10 year old stepson (also AS) of the habit. I have had to remind him again and again that it makes people feel bad (especially adults) to be corrected by a child.

I read somewhere that people often don't like you specifically...they like the way you make them feel. If you make someone feel stupid and not good about themselves, they are not going to feel good about you, or want to be your friend.

Whether fair or not, I have found that to be very true.



Have you considered the fact that maybe you make him feel nervous and that's why he's second guessing himself?

This is what happened to me with my husband. I felt like he was always just waiting for me to mess up, it made me really nervous and so I'd over-think things and get tongue tied or mispronounce words I would normally never get wrong.

Last edited by Step on 02 Feb 2010, 11:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Kilometer.

Kilo-Meter.

Kill - O - Meter

Like Kilogram.

Good lord, for the thousandth time, it's not "Kill - Ohh - Mtr".

Umm, yes.

A lot you guys are complaining about "mispronunciations" which are simply alternate pronunciations. There are all kind of regional variations on word pronunciation. Even something like "aks" instead of "ask" has historical roots, which have nothing to do with anyone's intelligence or lack thereof.

Most people in the U.S. would say "police" as "puh-LEES", but in some areas of the south they'd say "PO-lees". It doesn't make it wrong. It just gives you a clue as to where they grew up, that's all.

On the other hand, some words are just difficult to pronounce. Like Victoria Woods on "Dinner Ladies", saying, "Minnellium" instead of "millenium".

I've been guilty of saying nucular. It's embarrassing, because that's what George W. Bush said--but it just wants to come out of my mouth that way.

My husband is from England, and says a whole lot of words differently than I do. He parks the car in the GAIR-edge, and I park it in the geh-RAZH.
He eats to-MAH-toes and I eat to-MAY-toes. I don't give him a hard time unless he starts trying to pronounce things the American way, because the way he speaks is a connection to his home. I don't want him to lose that.

The people who pronounced aminals and pinguins were camp counselors for a class trip I took and I dont believe they had any learning disorders.

RhettOracle, do you actually have pronunciation guides? If so, is there any way I can access one?

Also, to the people who are talking about "southern" accents: I've lived in Ohio my whole life and I pronounce all my words like you people say southerners do. For some reason, a lot of people online call the words I say "southern," even though everyone else I know (whom are also from Ohio) pronounces the words like me. Something to think about.