The things you learn: inexorable

[pne]

Ah, the perils of learning words from reading only.

All this time, I've been pronouncing "inexorable" in my head as "in-ig-ZOR-a-bal", when apparently, it's "in-EKS-er-a-bal".

The clue was seeing it written in the Shaw Alphabet Edition of Androcles and the Lion, which uses phonemic (more or less) spelling.

It did make me check the dictionary, though, to see whether my pronunciation was simply wrong or an alternative. Nope, apparently it's just wrong. Who knew.

Comments

[chasy]

i have learned a LOT of the words i know from reading books. for the longest time, i'd snicker in my head when my mom pronounced "confidant" as "con-fih-dawnt" because i was SO SURE it was pronounced "confide-ant". *LOL* i was VEEERY ashamed when i finally figured out that SHE was the one pronouncing it RIGHT.

also, it wasn't until i was around 10 years old that i figured out "misfortune" is not pronounced "miss-for-toon". know how i found out? watching Wheel Of Fortune!! i just realized one day that fortune and misfortune were related and based on how they pronounced "fortune", i was pronouncing "misfortune" wrong.

i recently discovered that "waft" is pronounced "woft" not "waaft". i like "waaft" better so when i'm around friends and family, that's how i say it. ;p

sorry! i didn't mean to ramble on so!! :D

[pne]

Don't worry about rambling, especially about language! I find the topic fascinating.

A fun misinterpretation of a word that I've heard some people have is they take the word "misled", as in "I was misled to believe that..." and pronounce it as "myzled" as if it were the past tense of "to misle" (rhymes with "my eyes'll") :)

[kake]

"Misled" is exactly the word I was going to comment to reference! (Though, I can't remember if I've told you that before.)

[pne]

I can't remember whether you were one of the people who mentioned it to me, either.

[chasy]

ha ha! that's funny! i've never heard that before.

and yes, i find language/words fascinating as well! <3

[leora]

Sometimes people I know will deliberately pronounce sundried as in sundried tomatoes (sun dried tomatoes) sundried with a long e sound at the end like it came from sundry. If I could write phonetically this would make more sense.

Also deliberately mispronouncing coincidence as kawinkidink is something I've come across. Mainly because some people do get it wrong like that when learning to read.

But it's victuals that most people I know just stare at and go... what? It took me ages to realize it is pronounced vittles. I thought they were two words for the same thing and one was simple archaic or rarely used. I bet you will hear victuals pronounced phonectically floating around.

[pne]

I bet you will hear victuals pronounced phonectically floating around.

Oh yes, there are a number of spelling pronunciations floating around, some of them quite common and accepted (e.g. "forehead" sounding like "fore head" rather than like "forrid").

I think the general tendency is for unusual pronunciations to be discarded in favour of regular ones -- so that while "waistcoat" used to be "weskit" (at least for some), I think that pronunciation is pretty rare these days even in the areas where the non-spelling pronunciation was previously the rule.