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Joined: Dec 2000
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How many of you have embarrassed yourselves by mispronouncing words you've learned from reading? You sound it out in your head and store it there until you have a chance to use it in conversation. When you finally do use it, you're faced with looks of total incomprehension, or worse, laughter. My worst ones were in Junior High. I've since learned to look up new words!
Mine were awry and misled. I thought they made perfect sense in context. As in, something had gone AW-ree (I think I linked it with the NASA term yaw, as in pitch, roll and yaw; something gone out of kilter) and MY-selled (akin to chiselled or cheated).
Anyway, I'm guessing many of you have had the same experience.
Care to share?
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Forgot one. Armageddon. Asked my Dad how to pronounce it, he helpfully replied: "Easy, it's ar-meg-eh-DON." Needless to say I got laughed out of Sunday School.
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Joined: Jan 2001
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I've had that sort of thing happen a lot. Even now I occasionally have to stop and think whether it's a "THESS-or-us" or a "thess-AR-us"!
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old hand
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My roommate is notorious for this kind of stuff, and I'm merciless about pointing it out to him... For caricature, he came up with <kuh RIC uh chur>. I've got a call in to see what else I've mocked him about lately ~
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I initially assumed that it was pronounced /FAL a roap/ and had that corrected to /fuh LAIR uh pee/. Now I have a flag set in my brain that says that's wrong and I was right in the first place and am now hopelessly confused. To make matters worse I think my stack is full or not there and that I will never know which is correct. Fortunately, it's not a word that I have to use every day. If there are others I have been so badly embarrassed that I have suppressed the whole incident and don't remember them.
Is that book so old that no one knows what I am talking about? Too Late the Phalarope.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I still can't say the word coin correctly. Using a long o, I have two distinct syllables: co'-inn. That's the way it looked to me as a child, and I cannot get my mouth around that oy sound, though I have no difficulty with it in other words. I try to say "change", when I can! 
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<EP-i-tome PAR-a-DG-m> Two classics! Done them both. <Phalarope> Reminds me of two botanical words: Liriope (yes, I pronounced it LEE-ree-ope) and clematis (still not sure which way to say that one; grew up with cle-MA-tis, my gardening buddies all use CLEM-uh-tis). My mnemonic device for remembering Liriope is that it rhymes with calliope. <Coin> Love that. A friend from North Carolina says "awl" for oil; cracks on me for saying OY-ill.
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Misled is a classic; I had a problem with that too. I still don't know to this day (tell me, someone) if grisly is pronounced like the bear or to rhyme with rice-lee.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Only Doug gives us: A friend from North Carolina says "awl" for oil
My Boot Camp company commander (the shell-shocked WWII Chief Gunner's Mate) pronounced it /OH-'ll/.
I did ribald as RYE-bald instead of ribbled. When I learned ribbled I back-formed the verb ribble. I also back-formed the verb misle pronounced /mizzle/ when the mispronunciation of misled occurred to me.
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