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Word Fugitive
Guest
1
2008/01/13 - 3:39pm

I need a word to describe a phenomenon in which my son often uses words which he has read, but not heard, and consequently mispronounces them, even though he understands their meanings and usage. Examples just from today include pronouncing 'sieve' as 'seeve', 'clergy' as 'clerGy' with a hard 'g' and 'rhesus' as 'rehus'. I'm tempted to call this dyslalia, but is there a recognised term for this form of mispronunciation?

Chris

Grant Barrett
San Diego, California
1532 Posts
(Offline)
2
2008/01/13 - 5:55pm

Chris, it's called spelling pronunciation.

Martha Barnette
San Diego, CA
820 Posts
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3
2008/01/13 - 9:17pm

Not to be confused with pronunciation spelling! Or eye dialect.

Boy, spelling pronunciation brings back memories of fourth grade, when I was reading a story about someone named Penelope and kept mentally pronouncing her name so that it sort of rhymed with "envelope."

And I think I was in high school before I realized "epitome" had more than three syllables.

What about the rest of you? What words did you learn from reading and mentally mispronounce?

Guest
4
2008/01/14 - 3:29am

Thank you! Eye dialect sounds like what was once known as 'Mummerset' in the writing world.

Chris

Martha Barnette
San Diego, CA
820 Posts
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5
2008/01/14 - 7:01am

Wait, "Mummerset"? What's the story on that, Chris?

Guest
6
2008/01/14 - 8:22am

"Mummerset" is fake west country English. Full of "Ooh Argh" and mangle-wurzels. I have a translation of Madame Bovary in which the translator's notes describe his decision to represent the rural yokels' French as Mummerset English to give the right impression to an English reader of their incorrect and unsophisticated French.

Chris

Guest
7
2008/01/14 - 6:36pm

martha said:

What about the rest of you? What words did you learn from reading and mentally mispronounce?


"Ennui" comes to mind. Also "trough."

Monica Sandor
8
2008/01/22 - 12:57am

And I always thought "aisle" was pronounced like the German word for donkey, Ezel, whereas I reserved the "isle" pronunciation for small bodies of land surrounded by water!

Rob
9
2008/01/25 - 10:02am

I can't remember any myself but I know my dad did a science project on centrie-FYOO-gul force (rather than centrifugal). Another time, I cousin did a social studies report on the African country Nigeria, only he pronounced a short i and a hard g ... do it in your head!

Guest
10
2008/03/08 - 3:55pm

When my mother first saw the word “nowhere” she read it as “now-here”!

When I was in third grade, I stayed up in bed reading a book (with no information about pronunciation) about moal-kyools only to find out the next day that we were being taught about molecules! This was sheer coincidence, as our teacher hadn't mentioned anything about them before, nor was mention given to them in any class assignments heretofore! Believe it or not! (Sorry about the corniness…)

Garrison Keillor tells of how, when he young, he encountered the word Egyptian and applied it to a mummy that he had seen by calling him (the mummy) Gippy (with a hard ‘g'). He later said that readers aquire alot of mispronunciations and speakers aquire alot of mispellings.

Oh, I just love English (and language in general), don't you?

Guest
11
2008/05/25 - 1:39am

I had a girlfriend who read a lot of comic books with those great $25 words when I was younger. She still talks about the ahm-nee-poe-tent forces in the world...

CheveuxGris
12
2008/05/25 - 8:26pm

As a child, it took me awhile to figure out that "chaos" didn't rhyme with "tacos."

fourteenhours
13
2008/05/31 - 9:24pm

I have definitely mentally mispronounced my share of words. One word that I don't think I'll ever stop mentally screwing up is "hyperbole." I always have to double check myself before saying that one.

Morninglori
14
2008/06/04 - 9:09am

I was an avid reader growing up, so my reading vocabululary was WAY higher than my speaking vocabulary. I remember being corrected on “ethereal” (ethe -real). I was in college before I was corrected on “facade” (fa-cade). After I took Spanish, I always seemed to be emphasizing the wrong syllable on words I didn't know how to pronounce. Esoteric was one (es - AH- teric) as well as analogous (AN a LOG us).

After taking German, I got even worse, because then I was always trying to pronounce unknown words with German language rules. (ie. always pronounce the second vowell of a dipthong). Needless to say, that didn't work out either. (aka. New York's Mr. StiEnbrenner)

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