One of Lifehacker’s unofficial mottos is /”accuracy matters”. Usually this is a reference to the written word, but pronunciation is just as important. In the following video, John Green of Mental Floss name-checks 79 commonly mispronounced words — find out how many you’ve been getting wrong.
How Many Of These 79 Words Can You Pronounce Correctly? [Video]
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6 responses to “How Many Of These 79 Words Can You Pronounce Correctly? [Video]”
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Dan ZammellIf you intend to nit-pick formally (eg. in a video like this), make sure you have your bases covered.
There is no such word as “gunna” or “gonna” (at 00:22). To add to that, “gonna” is supposedly the contraction of “going to”. I’m not sure the presenter was going anywhere when he said “gonna”.
There were a few pronunciations I disagreed with,
1. mauve (according to several sources) is pronounced “mow-vuh” or “mow-vh”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE3xVpVa-aY
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mauve2. crepe is pronounced cre-peh (like Cartman saying crappy) OR cray-puh (like grape), depending on the accent used (eg. Brazillian pronunciation is more like “grape”, but French pronunciation is more like “crappy”, Cartman style)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%AApeIt’s easy to misuse English. For a long time, I was mis-using (rather than mis-pronouncing) “I” vs “me”. I always thought you used “John and I”, or “Mary, John and I” … but, it depends on the position of the verb. If the verb comes first, then use “me”, otherwise, use “I”. If you say “Looking around the shops is something John and me enjoy” v/s “John and I enjoy looking around the shops”. Both sentences are correct … but it’s incorrect to say “Looking around the shops is something John and I enjoy”. I cringe when I hear “… and me”, even if it’s correctly used.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/i-or-me
Ok, my nerd-fest is over for the day.
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Jon KDan,
I don’t think your last paragraph about the use of “I” vs “Me” is correct. The usage of either pronoun doesn’t necessarily depend on the location of the verb, but whether the pronoun is the subject or the object of the sentence.
So “Looking around the shops is something John and me enjoy” is incorrect – the usage should be “I”. As per your source, an easy way to check is to remove the additional pronoun. Saying “Looking around the shops is something me enjoy” is incorrect.
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dman“Going to” isn’t restricted to the sense of literally going somewhere, e.g. “I’m going to send you the files today”, “Are you going to be OK?”.
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smithy_dllI see your merriam webster’s dictionary, and raise you a Cambridge learners.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/crepe_1?q=crepeThe two different sounds for “A” are both correct, though American English only acknowledges one of them.
According to wikipedia he is wrong about Gotye (pronounced /ˈɡɔːti.eɪ/ gaw-tee-ay).
Forte depends on UK/US so forté is correct. Infact there are a fair few US/UK difference in there such as mauve, prescription, and gnocchi.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/forte?q=forteThe big mistake is not acknowledging the difference between standardised US English, and non-standardised international English. People from difference regions are biased to different vowel sounds in different words.
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99livesI once corrected my primary school teacher on her pronunciation of ‘pentagonal’, she said she said penta-gonal, (like pentagon).
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rob327cgod forbid i goto the US and pronounce ‘gnocchi’ wrong, because here it is a short ‘o’ like ocular, not a long one like ‘oval’
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