Perfect Husband found a fun webpage, and it has spurred me into making a NEW pronunciation meme.
The webpage was about commonly mispronounced words (yes, that’s our idea of fun). We spent almost an hour going through the list, with PH spelling the word for me and then asking me to pronounce it, comparing it with how he pronounces it (his family is American and it shows in some of his speech) and then checking to see if I did it right. I was surprised by some of the “mispronunciations” this page lists.
Many of them I pronounce “correctly” (which the author of the page defines as the original pronunciation). Some of them I do not. Some of them PH pronounces correctly, which I do not, and I pronounce correctly, which he does not.
So now I’m curious about the rest of you.
So.
Want to play?
FIRST: Take a video of yourself reading the following sentences aloud. Try to be honest and pronounce words the way you usually do, instead of how you think they should be pronounced (because then you’ll look really silly if you’re wrong and no one will believe you when you say “I normally say it right!”).
- There are no penguins in the Arctic, but many in Antarctica.
- I like the mauve flowers and lovely foliage in this garden.
- I liked the electoral candidate’s clothes.
- I died of diphtheria in Oregon Trail.
- I especially need an espresso on Monday mornings.
- I haven’t seen a film since February.
- Be careful going up the library steps – you’re liable to fall.
- The point is moot.
- My son is often mischievous.
- My doctor will probably write a prescription.
- I am going to ask my realtor if all this jargon is relevant.
- We went to Tijuana for a well earned respite.
- I did my utmost to convince her that she isn’t fat – just voluptuous!
- Supposedly this guy has a degree in zoology.
- The meme is about pronunciation.
Tomorrow: I will post a vid of ME saying these words, and an answer key, you can learn what words I pronounce wrong!
I bet you can’t wait.
YEAH.
If By Yes 
8. The point is moo. It’s a cow’s opinion. It doesn’t matter. It’s moo.
I thought of that too, when I saw that listed as a “commonly mispronounced word”!
I already know that “espresso” is in here because of the number of people who pronounce is “expresso”. WHICH DRIVES ME BANANAS. I don’t know who started putting the damn “x” in there, but holy shit.
And of course I meant “pronounce IT”, not “pronounce IS”. Making a typo while mocking other people is, I’m pretty sure, an epic fail. 😦
I choose to believe that you always mispronounce “it” by saying “is”
LOL! #4, shouldn’t it be “I died ON THE Oregon Trail”, not IN? Maybe it’s less about mispronunciation and and more about bad grammar!
You obviously didn’t play many computer games in the 1980s!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_trail_game
The second sentence in the link you posted says “on the Oregon trail” not IN the Oregon trail. So basically, I win the grammar test, therefore, I am now excluded from video taping (embarrassing) myself doing the mispronunciation meme test due to the fact that I find fault (thank god) in the shotty grammar exhibited in your “test”. j/k If I can figure out how to use the camera on my laptop, I’m going to teach “y’all a thang or toe about southern gramma”.
Technically it’s “shoddy”, not “shotty”. So I guess you have to do it anyway. 😉
Unless she means that my grammar is full of buckshot.
Yes, you see, but Oregon Trail, in this sentence, refers to the video game. Things happen “in-game”, not “on-game”. You don’t get attacked by an orc ON World of Warcraft or chase ghosts ON Pacman or get rich ON Monopoly. These events happened IN the game, not on the game.
“I died of diphtheria on the Oregon Trail” would be a depressing reference to a difficult period in history. “I died of diphtheria in Oregon Trail” is a reference to a part of our childhoods as well as a popular meme (sadly, dysentery wasn’t on the list of mispronounced words).
Therefore I demand your pronunciation video despite your failure to recognize eighties references!
Hahaha! Okay, I get it now. Hannah, good call. I’m not reading Part II until I figure out how to make a video to submit for grading. I’m a college grad, but I live in the south (U.S.), so I’m not real optimistic this is going to end well for me. PS: Love spending time with grammar nerds. This could be the best/most fun game ever!
😀 If you can’t record it, then we trust you to just say it aloud and self monitor! I hope you mess up a BIT – I won’t feel so idiotic!
I suspect that some of the ‘mispronunciations’ might also be simply accent/dialect variants. Not that I have seen yet what the page defines as correct. Again, it will be interesting to see the atlantic divide in operation here (not that I can see any words in the meme that really obviously are pronounced differently in the US/Canada to how I would say them, setting aside general differences such as roticity).
A lot of the words on the page PH and I were looking at seem to pick on people with strong accents, which I don’t think is fair. I tried to choose words which involve the dropping or adding of letters, or emphasis on the wrong syllable, instead of vowel sounds.
Dark, Red and I all taped ourselves reading these sentences…waiting on your video 🙂
EXCELLENT
Oh boy. This will be good for a laugh! I’m definitely going to get the laptop set up for another laugh tonight.
Love the Oregon Trail discussion. Did you hear they’re brining the game back?! Seriously. (On Facebook).
Congratulations – you’ve made me ADD AN APP ON FACEBOOK!
I believe the only appropriate response to this is WIN! 🙂
(I haven’t added the app yet. I suspect I may at some point in the future. Oregon Trail day at school was pretty much the best day ever)
We used to be able to play it as a reward for doing work well/quickly. The trail in our class computer was completely littered with the gravestones of dead classmates.
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