Fun & Famous

ENGLISH WORDS WE ALL MISPRONOUNCE

Obviously, I am the right person within Amayzine to take care of this subject. Long story short, if you meet me, you will meet someone who was born in London, has quite an American accent, but is still really a full blooded Dutchman. Complicated? No. I'd rather call it an advantage. (Or #blessed, but I think it was banned from the Amayzine dictionary).

The only downside to this advantage is that I am quite a grammar Nazi (for lack of a better word, sorry) when it comes to the English language. Because I'm actually quite bad at Dutch grammar. You're/your, their/they're/there... Really, you don't get away with it with me if you use them wrong. Same story when it comes to pronouncing words. So herewith, a list of words that are pretty much are always pronounced incorrectly. Or being misused. Come they.

Grafitti (Gruh-fee-tee)

Always, but really always, I hear people say graff-i-tee. We're talking about wall spray here, guys, not gravity. Irritation number one.

Analysis (uh-nal-uh-sis)

When I was a student, this one came along a little too often (incorrectly) in school. Funniest variant: anna-lie-sis. Or no wait, I even heard anal-eye-sis passed by once. Well uh, it just depends where your mind is....

Greenwich (Gren-ich)

OK, I understand this one somewhat. I'm sure I also mispronounced it once before I had been to New York myself. Most pronounce this almost exactly as it is written: Green-which. Error, error.

Houston (hyoo-stun)

Houston, we have a problem. Everyone is mispronouncing the name of our city. So it's not ‘house-tun’, it's ‘hyooo-stun’. Get it? But then again, the neighbourhood in New York is called Houston with an ‘au’ sound so.

Adjacent (uh-jay-sunt)

Not necessarily a word often used, unless perhaps you are trying to give directions to a tourist. So that one street is not ‘atja-cent’ but ‘uhhh-jay-sunt’. And that means parallel, by the way.

Divorce/Parting

Are both not so much mispronounced, rather misused. If you are talking about the parting in your hair, you use ‘parting’. Unless there is is a trend in beautyland who I don't know called divorce. Joss?

Dates (-rd, -th, -st)

How many times have I seen ‘1th’ (pronounced: fir-th) go by instead of ‘1st’. Or ‘3th’ (pronounced thir-th) instead of ‘3rd’. Maybe a bit harder to master for a while, but just read it out loud. It helps, promise.

‘It's okay, though’

I don't know why, but the Dutch tend to always put the word ‘hoor’ at the end of the sentence. Remember: if you are English, you understand the word ‘whore’ and uh, let that not be the most friendly thing you can call someone.

‘Can you make a picture?’

My answer would be: ‘Yeah, I know how to make pictures.’ With this, you are basically just asking someone if they know how to take a picture themselves at all, rather than if they want to take and picture for you. Just replace ‘make’ with ‘take’. It only makes a difference of one letter and at least you will have the photo you want.

Psycho

So you pronounce this as saiko, not psaiko... Just so you know?

And uh, in the words of Louis van Gaal: it's not so difficult though, English. Did I forget something (I'm sure you did)? Let us know. We might come up with a second edition soon.