What words did you mispronounce for a long time?

[Randall]

Since most INTPs tend to read a lot, and aren't terribly social, there is a chance that they have encountered certain words a number of times, without knowing how they are actually pronounced.

So, what words did you mispronounce for awhile?

I recently heard the word 'dysthymia' out loud for the first time, and couldn't believe that my brain had skipped over the second 'y' so many times. I had thought it was pronounced 'dysthmia'. I was also a victim of 'synecdoche'.

For the record, here is the correct pronunciation:

Spoiler: blarg

[skip]

I mispronounced cupboard wrong in my head when I read it, as a kid. It came up several times in the Beverly Cleary Ramona books. I always read it as "cup board" and wondered what it meant. Naturally, I imagined tea cups sitting in a row on a board. I didn't associate it with the spoken word "cubburd" until later.

[djm]

The majority of words. I grew up in a city with a strong regional accent, and did not really need to communicate outside of that pool until I went to university, at which point I found I was not taken seriously until I reigned in the local dialect.

Moving from one city with a strong regional accent, to another with an equally strong but very different regional accent, was a culture shock. It was only after mingling with the mostly middle class student population that I started to speak in a way most english people could easily pick up. I still have the remnants of my home town accent, and it gets stronger for a week or so whenever I visit home, but for the most part I don't use slang, regional words or colloquialisms in day-to-day speech, which makes life easier. Given that in a typical day I will be speaking with people from 5-6 different nations, it pays to be easily heard.

At home I still from time to time quarrel with my partner over what the correct pronunciation of certain words is (Midland English vs Northern English), and truth be told I doubt you ever get agreement between a random sample of Englishmen over what is the right pronunciation of broad swathes of words. The only consensus being that any english pronunciation is 'more right' that 'Americanisms'.

To answer the OP though, the name Hermione (of Harry Potter fame), not that I ever had cause to have to speak it (outside of my head) ahead of discovering I had it wrong.

[99Problems]

For whatever reason speaking is a thing of pride for me, not saying I am great at it though. So I doubt I have ever mispronounced a word wrong for more than a week or two.

[stigmatica]

Goto was gahtoh.
Gosub was gahsub.
Linux was lighnex.
And when I was really young antelope was cantelope. When told to look at the antelope out the car window I could never spot them as I was looking for a cantelope with legs and horns.

[mthomps]

I thought Vi was v-eye for a while. Apperently its pronounced vee.

When I was a little kid segue was sehgew.

[Ptah]

"dénouement" comes to mind (I didn't catch its French origin at first, which led to me saying: deh-noo-ment, at first )

Generally, any word I encounter first (and for a time only) in print is one that I run a risk of mispronouncing.

[Dot]

plaid (played)
superfluous (superfloos)
bag (bayg)
interesting (instring)

[Senseye]

Linux was lighnex.

I'm still uncertain about this one. IMO if Linus Torvalds pronounces his name like the Peanuts character, then "lighnex" is correct. If he pronounces it like lynn, then I'm ok with it.

My big pet peeve is with hydrogenated.

Say oxygen, say oxygenated.
Say carbon, say carbonated.
Say hydrogen, say hydrogenated. Did you turn into a retard and invent an element called "hydroj"? Many people do.

[Charde]

I still screw up pronouncing "hover, " I can never remember whether it's "HUH-ver" or "HOE-ver."
When I was in fifth grade, I was calling Frodo "FRAHD-jo" instead of "FROH-doh."

I honestly can't remember all the words I've garbled in my life. The problem is that I learned them through reading books, not hearing them used IRL, so sometimes I wouldn't even recognize a certain word I heard as a word I had read, if it were pronounced differently than I expected. I could read them, I could spell them, I knew what they meant... but I did not know how to pronounce them all accurately.

I tend to screw up shorter words, the longer ones sometimes have only one obvious pronunciation.

Megamind always cracks me up; I consider him a kindred spirit, especially when he refers to "Me-TRAH-sit-tee" instead of "Metro City."

I also get a kick out of foreign words in English, which look nothing like their actual pronounciation:
- Hors d'oeuvre
- C'est la vie
- Voila!
- Denouement

etc