Too bad some papers are moving to mostly or all-digital distribution. Generations of kids won’t have the joy of news ink all over their hands.
Image found on Kidscoop.

Reading John Brummett’s Tuesday column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on his lifelong connection to newspapers in the midst of the change to digital delivery, I couldn’t help but laugh as I was reminded of all the words children (and some adults) have the tendency to mispronounce, sometimes in embarrassing but hilarious ways.

I also read many of the sports articles and revered the bylines. I could figure out from the context the meaning of words even as I mangled their pronunciation.

A rookie had made his major-league “de butt.” That meant his first game, his “debut.”

In a player’s contract dispute, one guy accused another of having “my-zuld” him. That meant telling him something that wasn’t so. It was spelled “misled.”

Last week I talked about words that are a pleasure to say. This week, let’s go for the pain.

Anyone with kids, or who has spent a lot of time around them, probably has stories of funny mispronunciations that go beyond “pasketti and meat bulbs,” many of which probably would not be publishable in a family newspaper.

I know of one mom whose son, a toddler at the time, had a problem with the word “firetruck” … which was rather unfortunate one day in church.

But is he an old man who’s kinda creepy? If so, that would be entirely appropriate.
Screenshot from Tom Reagan’s Hat’s Twitter page.

For a time when I was a kid, I couldn’t pronounce the “r” in “world.” I don’t recall having issues with other words, but I do remember saying “wold” an awful lot. I was cute then and could get away with it. Now I’d probably be called a dunce if I still pronounced it that way. Or maybe “President.”

Then there are the words constantly mispronounced that drive some of us more nuts than we already are, especially when someone adds syllables, or tries to pronounce all the letters when some are silent. I often blame George W. Bush for the NOO-cue-lur pronunciation of “nuclear,” though he was far from the first to do that. Likewise, “realty” is pronounced REEL-tee. If it were pronounced REEL-uh-tee, it would be spelled “reality,” which is an entirely different word … and a completely different reality for some.

Other words look far more complicated than they are, like Worcestershire (ignore the “rce”; think “Wooster” and “sure”). And who can forget the French taunters in The Holy Grail and “kaniggits”?

Is it any wonder that people learning English as a second language—especially the American version—have so much trouble? And that’s before introducing common idioms and regional pronunciations. (They probably think PEE-cans and puh-CAHNS are different nuts.)

Because we’re Americans and we can, Avril.
Image found on FluentU.

Bookworms like me who learned to read early by sounding out the words without having heard them before probably are a bit more guilty of this (I quickly tired of my brothers’ old primers, so moved on to other books in the house). But hey … it’s not our fault when words aren’t pronounced how they’re spelled. I’ll never forgive the word “blackguard” (BLA-gerd), for example. And you can just imagine how I pronounced many of the names in Greek mythology, which I was obsessed with for several years. Poor PEN-ny-lope … but she was DEE-ter-mined to stay true to her husband ODD-ee-soos.

Yes, word nerds can have issues with words. Deal with it. Maybe that’s why we have such a fascination with them.

And then it says, “I came up with this all on my own! I’m a stable genius!”
Image found on Juxtapost.

But in our defense, English, which borrows heavily (OK, steals outright) from other languages, has the tendency at times to confuse even native speakers (see blackguard). Sometimes we change the spelling to reflect the actual pronunciation, such as “vittles” instead of “victuals.” And sometimes we leave the words as they are from the languages from which we swiped them, possibly as some sort of cosmic joke for kids who don’t realize it’s not “de butt.” Because “butt” is never not funny to a kid, and to more than a few grown people. (She said “butt.”) Hey, my mom loved “Titicaca” (as in the South American lake) to her dying day. If you listen really hard, you might still hear her chuckling over it.

Some of us never get over being 12. Hell, some of are still functionally toddlers and shouldn’t be left alone with sharp objects or expensive anything. And definitely not smartphones with a Twitter app.

I still have words that I won’t attempt to say in public because I’m afraid I’ll embarrass myself, but I know what they mean because I often read them in print. Ask me to say chiaroscuro (treatment of light and shade in art) and you may get a mumble or a stumbling pronunciation as I go through the syllables in my head, but I can use it in writing with no problem. Sure, I used to do public speaking in high school, but things have changed, especially since my stroke. If I tried to pronounce chiaroscuro now, someone might think I’m having another stroke.

So did I! Book-readers unite!
Screenshot from Valerie’s Twitter page.

Words like genre, faux, quay, and colonel can easily trip up readers if they’ve never heard them because they’ll sound them out according to the letters that are there. I always hear LeBeau from Hogan’s Heroes (which was on in the afternoon in syndication in my area) saying col-oo-NEL, because that’s how I thought colonel was pronounced when I first read it.

Now, with so much of our lives being lived online rather than in the real world, we may see even more of this. We have really got to get out more. Especially if we’ve been pronouncing “satin” as “Satan.”

Believe it or not, I didn’t write this comic.
Image found on xkcd.

Unless it’s on purpose to mess with fake evangelicals (they know who they are, and they have no sense of humor). I fully approve of that.

Having learned to read before I was school-age (because I had to be able to do whatever my brothers could do), I share a certain amount of empathy with mispronouncers. Most people learn from their mistakes and pronounce words properly once they’ve been corrected.

Most people.

Some, though, seem to take no small bit of glee in making people cringe by ordering ex-PRESS-oh or picking up their pur-SCRIP-shuns and engaging in HI-per-bowl. They probably also like to call in the Calvary.

Those people get no passes from me, but they will get a stony glare. And maybe a wedgie. Depends on my mood.