world's most annoying misspeaks

"that's a mute point" has to win

Please tell me more.  I'm on tenderhooks here. 

 

I'm not adverse to finding out more Malapropisms.

 

Perhaps we could all eat some choritso with jallapeenos whilst we wait.

Caitlin has a number of pronunciations, and as with most Irish names depends on the accent of the person saying it. 

It is also my daughter’s middle name, and we just use Caitlin knowing it’s not correct.

What Wang said

re Niall, I meant does Ferguson style himself as “Neil” - I have a cousin Niall (as indeed I have a cousin when it comes to most Irish names). 

Caitlin can also be something like Coytleen

Again - from the OED:  "There are two possible pronunciations of the word controversy: one puts the stress on the con- and the other puts it on the -trov-. The former pronunciation is the more traditional, but the latter is now more widespread in British English.".

 

I'd use the traditional formulation. 

ZG/LF: I think what Kimmy has in mind is that "six" is pronouned "siks". But the second s seems to drop out when certain people say "sixth"--"sikth" rather than "siks-th".

Trafal-GAR is another irritant

As is Roe- boe for robot 

Both by highly educated individuals, probably showing off 

Also people who insist on using data as a plural- the data are etc

Do you say 'today's agenda are ' you fcking pendants?

We don't know much about how the Romans prounced their Latin.  But we do know that the "c" letter in the Roman alphabet was always sounded hard, like a modern "k" and did not have the duality of the English "c" which can be hard "k" or soft "s" depending on the circumstances.  

Overeducated pendants with teaching jobs will take this too pacifically sometimes and insist on teaching prep school boys to say "kirka" instead of "sirca" so as to be more like the Romans.  The fact that Latin has been used for 1800 years since those days and has changed quite a lot doesn't matter to them.  

Some people never mentally leave Prep school and so go on saying "kirka" all their lives in order to be more korreck.  

There's a whole thing with stresses on syllables varying from place to place. Having lived for a long time in both the Antipodes and Blighty, my pronunciation is all over the place. PRO - ject is what they MOSTLY say in the southern colonies. Not everyone. And I agree it's wrong. There's also garage, which some in the UK pronounce gar-idge, as opposed to gar-arge. 

Data is an interesting one. So in the UK they tend to say day-ta. In southern colonies dar-ta. It doesn't really matter what the Yanks say because they've butchered the language beyond recognition (see "transition" as a verb as a starter for 10), and so have relinquished all moral authority to express an authoritative view on the matter. Anyhoo, I say the former - day-ta. My mother, who was a latin teacher having done it at school and university, has taken great delight for some years pointing out that it's from the latin datum and is properly pronounced dar-ta, according to the proper latin rules. I'm holding strong. And it massively annoys my colleagues. Result.

I have read (forget where) that US pronunciation (tomayto not tomahto etc) are likely to be closer to english as was in the 16/1700s.  Boffins think language in isolated populations change slowly whereas in mother britain it would have evolved at a fast pace.  Might have been Stephen Pinker

Whilst intensely irritating ,one can have sympathy with Ocker pronunciation of PRO - ject

I PROject this image

I reJECT this REject 

I read when I am tired. Yesterday I read a book

Wang, I read a couple of years back that (some) academics think that the Kiwi pronunciation is likely to be fairly close to ye olde English. But that thought is, naturally, intolerable and must be resisted.

Always remember my managing partner telling me to be sure to greet Mr Moran of Dublin as MorAN and under no circumstances Moran

Good day Mr MorAN 

The name's MORan. MORan 

Similar to the Irish RM

Good morning Mrs CaDUGan

The name's Cay de gawn

Not quite the same thing but... my American mate Dave heard a song lyric which related to steaming 45 degrees.  He spoke thusly "what? I mean that's not even warm!".  Ah the joy of trying to explain Celsius to a Californian....

 

"elemental" cheese.

"deben-TURE" >< "de-BEN-ture"

"I" when "me" is correct and vyca versa

"money-grabbing" >< "money-grubbing"

... I work with a load of ill-educated shermans.  I could go on [i]ad nauseum[/i] (>< [i]ad nauseam[/i]"

If you can't use it correctly, don't even try.

Much like my little fella.

 

Stixta15 Feb 19 16:42

 

Niall is pronounced Niall

Neil is pronounced Neel

HTH

That's what I thought... we have a chap working here who introduces himself as Neil... and it's spelt Niall!

It annoys me, but it seems a bit presumptuous to tell someone how to pronounce their own name...

I had to fill out an insurance form this week which asked the question, who was responsible for the mishap, to which the suggested answer was “eg myself”

Ffs.