Everyone keeps telling you that you should be a writer and that you’re an ace at literature. It gets to your head. You start believing your own hype. And that’s the moment that somebody tells you that you’ve been completely mispronouncing some of the words you’ve learned from reading. Embarrassing? Yup! Something that’s happened to a lot of us? Double yup!
When Andree Lau asked Twitter to share some of the words they’ve been mispronouncing the entire time, people responded with gusto. And their answers are amazing and bound to make you giggle. Scroll on down and upvote your fave pronunciations, dear Pandas. If you feel up for sharing, let us know what words you’ve been saying wrong in the comment section (personally, I’d been saying ‘Hermione’ like Victor Krum until Book 4 of HP).
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Before you start feeling bad about making mistakes when it comes to English, it’s best to remember that the language has errrr ‘some’ irregularities when it comes to spelling and pronunciation. That’s why just reading or just watching English TV shows is never enough!
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The poem ‘The Chaos’ by Dutch writer, traveler, and teacher Gerard Nolst Trenité (aka Charivarius) perfectly illustrates the disconnect between spelling and pronunciation.
The poem includes around 800 examples of irregular spelling and you can read it right here. Better yet, declaim it out loud for everyone to hear! But be careful not to break off your tongue, native speaker or not.
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English words mainly derive from old German and Norman French. While pronunciations of all 3 languages have changed enormously since 1066, it’s English that stands out with its unreliable pronunciation and very varied spellings for identical sounds.
According to The English Spelling Society, the consistency of English spelling started getting corrupted after it was reinstated as the official language of England in the 15th century.
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The bible wars of the following century also meant that English consistency was thrown off course even more by foreign printers. Allegedly, there hasn’t been a coordinated attempt to try and remove all the corruptions in the English language. This is why some foreign students still find English to be a chaotic and beautiful headache.
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Source: boredpanda.com