Eggcorn Forum

DT, that reminds me of those who think there might be a femalestrom.

I was pleased to find that another word I mispronounced in my mind, back when I loved reading pirate stories: ague. I thought it rhymed with vague. Like a vague ache. Come to think of it, even earlier, I didn’t have a solid lock on the pronunciation of vague, thinking it rhymed with bag. And so now I stumble whenever I have to pronounce it in French, where it does, vaguely. I think.

I only learned that ague doesn’t rhyme with vague in rereading that poem, that’s be circulating for years, about the quirks of English pronunciation.

I heard recently that the metathesis of ask /æksis considerably older than many of us assume – it is not a malady of recent youthful undifference, but many generations old and probably should be accepted more as a patois than a (newly made) mistake or laziness. This is no different from “awry”, genuinely pronounced AW-ree in the jive sense of “He gonna be awry [alright]”

The metathesis of spaghetti, pasketti, basketti I think is very interesting. I do like the theory that this example comes through shortening to “sketty” first, then trying to add back in the missing syllable.
Note the very similar switch of sounds in words such as spectacles and spectrum vs telescope and episcopal where the SP and C sounds are reversed, despite all these words having a common original root word. At some point the sounds simply switched (long before all those derivations came about in modern usage of course, they had not at that point invented spectrometers and microscopes).

I have heard dour as both dower and door, usually split between English / Scottish speakers, although I notice many English speakers choosing the “correct” door pronunciation, usually with regard to an adjective applied to a Scot (notably Gordon Brown seems forever tarred with this epithet). I also note that in Scotland there is far more distinction in speech between endings ”-ore” and ”-oor” generally.
“There are far more [MOR] grouse on the moor [MOO-er] this year than last…”
I think dour tends towards the latter of these, so this two-syllable sound is quite close to “dower” really.

Came across this confession on Facebook:

Started reading John Grisham books as 11 (only 3 were out at that point) . I think the subject matter was a little above my head when I had to ask my parents why “man’s laughter” (manslaughter) was so bad.

I read “belied” as “bellied.” As if one fact could push up against another fact with its belly and thus contradict it.

For years, I pronounced awry as awe-ree. I was in my 30’s or 40’s before I learned it was pronounced uh-rye.

Duh.

Dixon Wragg wrote:

Years ago when I saw Ray Davies of the Kinks doing his excellent storytelling/music show, he repeatedly pronounced his last name “Davis”. I’m not arguing with him

********************

Is Ray Davies Welsh? Welsh actor John Rhys-Davies pronounces his name “Davis”, too.

Bruce

Last edited by yanogator (2016-04-24 06:34:20)

I recall my saying MUNTZ-uh-ple for “municipal.” This was immediately corrected by my dad thus: “It’s myoo-NISS-ih-ple, you idiot!”
Then there was HY-po-tennis for “hypotenuse.” Fortunately, I learned how to say that before uttering anything.
I still experience this regularly—words that I read one way but are pronounced another way. Dictionaries and the Internet have been my salvation.

David B’s recent post on ‘sheer muslims’ reminded me of a relatively recent misinterpretation. From childhood I’ve been familiar with the word denier relating to the relative transparency of ladies’ stockings and tights. A stocking pulled over the head was an essential prop for bank robbers and the like, providing they had the wit to choose sheer rather than a more opaque variety, which they sometimes didn’t. An intermittently enthusiastic gardener, I’ve long utilised my wife’s old tights for tying back fruit bushes, supporting ageing boughs etc. So when I came across an article which mentioned ‘Holocaust deniers’ I was only momentarily stumped, immediately positing a set of unusual distinctions, with various deniers perhaps hiding detail in order to reveal, for example, some architectural feature otherwise imperceptible. Several paragraphs later the prosaic reality became depressingly clear, but ever since I remain unable, when faced with the word denier, to shake off this glimpse of a series of subtle gradations of perception which could be deliberately triggered in order to see more by sometimes seeing less.

I remember my parents laughed a lot when I pronounced Egypt as Eggy-pit though I was still pre-school at the time. And pharaoh tripped me up for a long time, always wanted to pronounce it in 3 syllables, though not, oddly enough fer-a-oh, but fer-oh-a.

David Bird wrote:

A report on the discovery of colonial bryozoans in a pond in Vancouver, B.C., included the pronunciation of don to rhyme with lone (here, at 6 seconds). Does she make a connection to donate, maybe?

According to Dictionary.com, it can be pronounced that way when it is a shortened form of “donec”, which it says means “until”. There doesn’t seem to be any connection between the two dons, though, since the verb is just a contraction of “do on”. Maybe she uses it to mean donec regularly, so just naturally pronounces it that way.

David Bird wrote:

A report on the discovery of colonial bryozoans in a pond in Vancouver, B.C., included the pronunciation of don to rhyme with lone (here, at 6 seconds).

She also pronounces bryozoan as “byrozoan” (at about 13 seconds in). Maybe she thinks the organism was named after Lord Byron?

I suspect we are just hearing an idiomatic rendering of how someone thinks “don” is pronounced.

How have I gotten this far in life without realizing that the verb “don” is a contraction of “do on?”