My mother always pronounced the word Nelson as Neltson. We teased her about it, and the only way she could say it right was if she did it very slowly and forced her tongue not to make the T sound. She had no idea where she learned to pronounce it that way.

Erythromycin is the one I always stumble over for no good reason.

It's not mispronunciation per se, but up here everyone emphasizes the wrong last syllables of words like elementary and documentary, so it comes out doc-u-men-TARY. Drives me right up the wall.

On "This Old House," they all say "a-sem-bah-lee" for assembly and "mason-air-y" for "masonry". Must be a New England thing?

Thanks for reminding me, Scrappy. They start renovating a Brooklyn brownstone on TOH this week. I have to put that on my DVR.

Erythromycin is the one I always stumble over for no good reason.

That's the one I'm allergic to.

My mother, cannot, for the life of her, pronounce "tweezers." I mean, the woman has a better command of the English language than most native speakers, but perhaps it's because of the "z" followed by the "r" sound or whatever, but "tweezers" always comes out as "tweezles."

Drove me bats for years.

to this day, my Mother says "Specific Ocean". There are others. But now that she lives in CA, she really needs to learn how to say it. Although, when I'm tired/stressed/hungry, my words get all discombobulated coming out of the mouth. In the head, works perfect. Not so much past the lips.

My dad also can't say "Mitsubishi." I think the -sh in the last syllable trips him up and his brain (or tongue) makes it "MiSHubishi."

And the thing is, I know that correcting people makes me sound like a dick. And my reasoning of, "Well, *I'd* want to know if I was pronouncing something wrong," has ALSO been labelled as me being a rude, presumptuous dick. (Because, apparently, people are okay with mispronouncing words?)

So I try not to correct people, but it KILLS me.

So I try not to correct people, but it KILLS me.

Hee! This is why I learned long ago to restrict my correction to immediate family members and to back off when my sister gets growly about the issue.

My vocabulary has always driven her around the bend, even when we were kids. I was obnoxious about it, using really big words properly when I was only six or so, and she'd just grind her teeth because I was showing off.

I was so tickled by a common southern (mis)pronunciation of words like UMbrella and INsurance when I lived there that I have trouble sometimes dropping them.

I stumble over words when I'm tired or anxious too and it's really embarassing when someone makes fun of me for it. I mean, I'm a professional word person!