You’re talking about vegetables, specifically tomatoes. “Toe-may-toe,” you say. “Toe-mah-toe,” the next person says. Suddenly, you are now about to cut off that person’s throat because they pronounced a word differently. Now you’re talking to someone new about this. They hear you out and you thank them, using the name on their nametag. You mispronounced it wrong and now they hate you. Pronunciation is a weird thing and English allowed that to happen.

(Corey Burger / Flickr)

As a child, I watched Mister Maker, a British TV show about arts and crafts. Because some of the art projects involved scissors, Mister Maker would advise the children to get an adult to help them. Because it’s a British TV show, he would pronounce adult as “ah-dullt,” compared to the American or Canadian way, “uh-dult.” I pronounced it the British way for a long time before my sister corrected me to pronounce it the American way, which still doesn’t sound natural to me because of how long I said it the British way.

One word people often mispronounce is mischievous. A lot of people you know pronounce it “miss-chee-vee-us.” The correct way to pronounce it is “miss-chiv-us.” When you look at the word, you get why it’s supposed to be pronounced that way. “Vous” should only be one syllable, yet we use two. When you say it the correct way, something doesn’t feel right. You want to go back to the way you know because of how natural it sounds. You end up pronouncing it the wrong way only because of how much better it sounds.

Hyperboles are something you learn about in language arts. You would think it’s pronounced “hyper-bowl,” but as you learn during class, it’s pronounced, “hyper-bo-lee.” Nothing about that should make sense. You know the words “mole” and “hole” so why is -bole pronounced as “bo-lee?” We don’t even say mo-lee or ho-lee. 

There’s also quinoa. You look at the word for the first time, questioning who came up with that word. Kin-Noah? Quinn-no-eh? Nope. It’s pronounced keen-wah. While it is a word I’ve known since childhood, I’ve heard people struggle with it. 

(Luis Tamayo / Flickr)

Wednesday has always been a weird day of the week because of its spelling. If you break down the word, it should be pronounced Wed-ness-day. Nope. Instead, it’s pronounced Wens-day. Then why is the D before the N? Nothing about that makes sense. We really should just stick to calling it Humpday.

Coming from Vancouver, you’ve probably heard someone pronounce it as Vang-couver. You’re sounding it right now and it comes out as Vancouver. As you repeat it at a normal speed, you are now catching yourself including that silent G. That’s how you’ve been pronouncing it all long.

Potato and tomato are often pronounced differently. The last two syllables are pronounced either “ay-toe” or “ah-toe.” As far as the world is concerned, everyone but The United States and Canada says “ah” while it’s “ay” here. To be honest, I’ve never been bothered by any pronunciation of any of these words. Because we’ve been exposed to both pronunciations for most of our lives, we’ve become accustomed to accepting both, no matter how we say it. It’s not worth cutting someone’s throat over.

Syllables are also a weird thing. You probably have a smile on your face right now. A sm-ile. Wait, is that one or two syllables? Back in 4th grade, we had an assignment that involved knowing how many syllables are in each word. When it came to the word “smile,” we sounded it out and that’s when fights happened. If you said it quickly, it came out as one syllable. It may come out as two syllables if you sound it out slowly. Others like this include fire, every, and beautiful. While there are correct answers, the wrong answers do have a case for being right.

(Danila Mate

Names are even worse when it comes to mispronunciation. Take the name Stephen for example. I knew someone growing up who had it pronounced as “Stef-in.” However, he always got it pronounced as “Stee-fen” by people who didn’t know. Every time we had a substitute, they would always get it wrong. Hopefully, this mistake isn’t as prominent as it used to be in this age of Steph Curry.  

Growing up in Metro Vancouver, there’s a prominent Vietnamese community. One of the most common Vietnamese surnames is Nguyen. If you’re someone who didn’t have Vietnamese friends growing up, you were bound to mess this one up. You probably attempted to pronounce it “Na-goo-wen.” Out of every pronunciation, that one was probably the most wrong. As non-native speakers, we mostly say “New-in.” It’s the closest we will get to the correct pronunciation we will get. According to a few people, it’s pronounced “mmm.” “Mmm” is not how you should be pronouncing a word or name. That’s the sound you make after trying your friend’s mom’s freshly homemade apple crumble.

Another name that gets funky is Ng. You’re looking at this right now, trying to figure out how to pronounce it. There isn’t a single vowel in the name which makes figuring it out without looking it up impossible. My parents pronounced it “ing” which is popular, but incorrect. 

Without any real rules on how each letter is pronounced, people are bound to say things are wrong. It gets problematic when people become disrespectful when it comes to names. When people see a foreign name, they will go “I’m not saying that,” or ask the person if they have an English name they go by when they don’t. This leads to people trying to never be in a situation where they have to say the person’s name. This is wrong because the person feels like their name just means “don’t bother talking to me,” which isn’t fair to someone trying to do things in life.

Words will always have weird pronunciations. How it’s handled is up to you. Is it actually hard to pronounce or are you just not putting in the effort?