I recently stumbled across an article about some of the words that are currently being mispronounced by many or most Americans. The list came from the people at the U.S. Captioning Company, which provides subtitles for real-time TV events. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I can mangle as many words as anybody else, just ask Mrs. Word Guy).
But then the mispronunciation of words having spellings that seem a little strange to us is far from a new phenomenon. So that’s what we’ll be looking at this time, mispronounced words, beginning with some of the more recent ones.
First up is “cheugy,” an internet neologism created by Generation Z around 2013 to poke fun at the aesthetics of millennials and other older people. And, according to those young enough to know such things, its correct pronunciation is “CHOO-gee.”
The last name of pop singer Billie Eilish (EYE-lish) is another one of those words that often trips people up. Those familiar with German vowels — especially those who order bier or wein in a bar — will find her name easier to say.
Dogecoin (DOJH-coin) is another word I’d never heard of since the whole cryptocurrency thing sounds dodgy to me.
By now we’ve all heard of the omicron valiant of the COVID virus. The only good thing about it is that it gives us a couple of pronunciation options: “Oh-mee-krann” or “AH-muh-krann.”
I understand that the Chipotle (chih-POHT-lay) restaurant chain once challenged us Baby Boomers to correctly pronounce their name. (I actually knew how to say it even though I’m way too cheugy ever to have eaten there.)
Among the words that have troubled me for a lot longer is when a news anchor says “nucular” instead of “nuclear.” This type of mispronunciation is called “metathesis,” which is the transposition of letters or sounds when pronouncing a word. And then there’s the reporter who continues to refer to those high-tech windmills as “turbans” instead of “turbines.”
Some other gaffs news anchors make are when they talk about “pundents” instead of “pundits,” and their “tenants” (renters) instead of “tenets” (doctrines) before they segue (pronounced “segway,”same as the scooter) into a commercial.
But if you really want to find words that are tough to pronounce, you need look no further than the names of some of the products we’re constantly being urged to buy. For example, you might be wearing clothing from Nike (ni-key) and Adidas (ah-DEE-das) while you use your Miele (meal-ah) vacuum cleaner. Afterward, you might relax with a cold Stella Artois (stell-ah ar-twa) beer.
Yet another source of confusion are the eponymous car companies. Probably no one needs to be told how to pronounce “Chevrolet,” but how about the vehicles of the Renault (ren-oh) brothers or those of Ferdinand Porsche (por-sha), which is pronounced the same as the name of Shakespeare’s heroine, Portia, in “The Merchant of Venice.”
Korean car maker Hyundai reminds us from time to time that its name “rhymes with Sunday,” much as inventor Robert Moog had to tell us that the name of his synthesizer “rhymes with vogue” years before.
My personal pet peeve continues to be when people pronounce the journalism awards named for Joseph Pulitzer as “PEW-lit-sir.” Frequently asked question 24 at pulitzer.org clearly states that the correct pronunciation of his name is “PULL-it-sir.”
Pew — I mean phew, now that’s over with.
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at Jlwitherell19@gmail.com.
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