I think I may possibly have not ever mispronounced anything but some of the place names and St. John (totally Jane Eyre), but that's only because I really am morbidly shy and spent my entire childhood never talking enough to get caught out mispronouncing much of anything.
My grandfather did "warsh" for "wash," for reasons that nobody ever understood as he was a born-and-raised Oakland son of Oakland natives. My poor grandmother embarrassed herself horribly writing a post-wedding thank you note to their East Coast cousins the Warshers but addressing it to the Washers, thinking she was fixing his weird language glitch.
But I still don't understand why Oregon has the towns of Bend and North Bend, and North Bend is many miles southwest of Bend.
Right, and then you've got Key West, which really is to the West but the name actually derives from Cayo Hueso, or Island of the Bones.
My grandma's from Illinois...she says "warsh"
And "pap" for "pop"
and "Earika"
(Phoenix has the most transplanted Chicagoans outside of Chicago.)
So it makes me laugh when in romance novels we all talk like...prospectors or something.)
In small towns, maybe.
My grandfather said "warsh," and he was from east Texas. But my grandmother doesn't, I don't think, and she's from the same place.
Misled is my word. How the fuck I got to university thinking "misle" was a verb--I should be ashamed of myself.
I did that with 'naked'. Not quite for so long, but still.
I mispronounced 'segue' until very recently - I thought it was derived from French, not Italian. And my mother always told the story, we had a family friend called Judy Murphy who was a preschool teacher. When I was three I'd sometimes tag along when M had things to do, and during storytime I'd park myself at her shoulder and read along. And occasionally correct her. "That word's not 'mare', Jude-a-Murph, it's 'may-or'."
Apparently I've been mansplaining since I was a toddler.
My BiL is really into Taoism, which he pronounces T aoism. I tried to convince him he was wrong, but finally gave up. Perhaps I'm the one who is wrong? Isn't it pronounced D aoism? At least, that's what my high school religions teacher taught me.
It's derived from the Chinese for "The Way", which in Mandarin is pronounced "Dao", so yes.
St. John (totally Jane Eyre)
So this!
In this region of the midwest we have Milan: pronounced MY-lan, Cairo: pronounced Kay-roh, Nevada: pronounced neh-VAY-dah, Delhi: pronounced DELL-hie, I could go on, but it's painful!
Albeit always got me.
Even now I had to check the spelling. Stupid word.
My favorite mispronunciation comes from when I was working at a press clipping service, listening to a broadcast out of New York that was reading the papers for the blind. It took me the darnedest time to figure out that the MO-jayv Desert they were referring to was that big place to the south of me, the Mojave. It's been so long since I've been in an area that isn't saturated with Spanish influence that I forgot people don't know how to pronounce Spanish words. I have also met women whose names are spelled Wanita.
When I was three I'd sometimes tag along when M had things to do, and during storytime I'd park myself at her shoulder and read along. And occasionally correct her. "That word's not 'mare', Jude-a-Murph, it's 'may-or'."
I am completely charmed by Jude-a-Murph as a name.
