Problems with Pronunciation

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I have always had problems with pronouncing certain words and peoples names. The other day I was using the word connectivity and my co worker questioned why I pronounced it the way I did. I have always pronounced it the way I did but it was the first time someone asked me about it. There are many words I can not say at all. I try to say them because it might be the only word I can use to describe something, but I have a hard time getting the word out. I wonder if this has something to do with my lack of interaction with people or my isolated childhood.

I have a very difficult time pronouncing a lot of words.

I don't have a problem with the pronunciation of common words as an adult. But even into my early 20s, I would often mispronounce words that I knew only from reading. My written vocabulary used to be more expansive than my spoken vocabulary, and it took real world experience for the latter to catch up to the former. I'm 43 now, and only rarely do I stumble on pronunciation today.

Even at age 53, I still have problems pronouncing certain words.

My total vocabulary is pretty extensive. My spoken vocabulary is considerably less.

I think this is normal particularly for English speakers.

English is a weird language because England was a very invaded place and a lot of cultures and language groups were overlaid in successive waves through history.

There are jokes in England about people who know or don't know how to pronounce the name Cholmondeley. It is considered a sign of ignorance or low social station not to know that it is prononounced "chum-ley" and I think that is the problem with English in a nutshell.

There is also the famous joke spelling of "fish" that appears in Finnegan's Wake: GHOTI
GH as in rough, O is in women, TI is an nation.. ghoti = fish.

With the interplay of various celtic, germanic and romance languages through the ages all contributing bits to modern English, difficulties in pronunciation are an intrinsic feature of the language.

I don't find Gaelic to have much seeming correspondence between spelling (orthography) and pronunciation.

Upon reflection, I am thinking merely as an English speaker using English spelling-sound correspondences.

Yep.

In school we were taught in phonics to sound things out according to how they are spelled. But in reality that turns out to be wrong a lot of the time and you just have to "know" somehow that it is not pronounced that way.

Vice versa spelling is hard for some people because things are not spelled the way they sound. I was always an ace at spelling because I did so much reading as a kid and developed a huge vocabulary. But if I had only read a word in a book, and had never heard anyone pronounce it, I might say it wrong and sound like a fool.

Some words I can't say but they tend to be words a lot of people can't say, like anemone and milenium. Then there's Gaelic words, if you know how to say them it's fine but tourists trying to say some of them is hilarious, Welsh is just something else I have no idea what's going on there. Scotland has some strange pronunciations that if you don't know which ones aren't pronunced like they are spelt you would never guess until someone said it. Like milngavie, if you see it written in scots or Gaelic you can see why it's said mul guy but otherwise you can't. There's somewhere near me pronunced strawn but it's spelt strachan but there's a few of them and I don't know which one it is, it's complicated.

My speech is a lot better than it used to be – but at age 50, I still cannot say the "k" in "asked".

I can say it but it sounds ridiculously over-enunciated if I do. Much easier to just say "assed" lol

I have trouble with some R sounds, like in "roy."

Depends on the language, but i have a particularly difficult time pronouncing French words, as i can't figure out how many of their letter mixes come out to their pronunciation. And i get weird looks if i try to pronounce it as it is spelled.

There are some words that I "mispronounce" on purpose becuase I like the "mispronounciation" better.

Often times, the mispronounced way might be considered normal in other areas.

The two main examples are "Caribbean" and "Himalayan".

Growing up I always heard "Caribbean" pronounced in a kind of jerky manner with the accent on the "ca" and "bee" each syllable standing out. Think of it like a high - low - high - low sound. I pronounce it with a more rolling 'r' and with virtually no accent on any syllable at all. In the past few years I have heard it pronounced my way several times on tv, but as a kid I never heard anyone pronounce it that way.

Himalayan is similar. Instead of accents like HIM-a-LAY-an, mine is more of a heh-mall-yan. This one I actually picked up from an Indian mathematician who I used to know.

As per my NY accent, modified somewhat by a bit of the New York version of African-American Vernacular English (I'm Caucasian, though), I still say "aks" for "ask."

I also have some other "substandard" pronunciations.

My primary accent is the "Woody Allen" accent--but there are some AAVE variations in my speech.

I used to know a woman from Alaska who pronounced Alaska as alasker. I think she probably picked that up growing up in Massachusetts. Do New Englanders often replace the 'a' at the end of a word with "er"?

New England has a number of regional accents, but this phenomenon is a bigger pattern in English:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R

Thanks. That's interesting.

I've also heard people pronounce NASA with an 'r' at the end.