- demesne
- gorgeous
- slough
- synecdoche (and even worse synecdochical)
- colonel
- mayor
- clerk
- melancholy
- naive
- hyperbole
- diaspora
- Worcestershire
- Melbourne (apparently... if you are USian. Think Melb'n or, if you must, Melburn.)
Any others?
22 May 2009
Words that are just about impossible to pronounce properly if you've only ever seen them written, never heard them
Any others?
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15 comments:
All Irish personal names :)
Banal.
Antique.
Foreign.
Catastrophe.
Invalid
Segue
As a younger hereandnow, I had terrible and embarrassing trouble with:
cognac
gunwales (as in 'loaded to the')
boatswain
gaol
annihilation
Anonymous 1 - Yes! Irish names. Siobhan - I mean really. Welsh names too - like the exceptionally handsome Ioan Gruffudd. (Otherwise known as Horatio Hornblower.)
Kate - Banal is a good one becuase it's so, well, banal. It looks deceptively as though it would present no problems at all. Same goes for'invalid'- Anonymous 2 - but what a change of meaning!
hereandnow - Oh yes! And we could add coxswain to the list. Boating terms are terrible. (Although they would not present any problems to Horatio Hornblower AKA Ioan Gruffudd AKA 'YO-an Griffith'.)
--Susannah
Samuel Pepys.
I was tricked by Penelope for years. But surely the winner is Horatio-related... the yacht.
e
Bearsden and Milngavie (Glaswegian place names: pronunced Beersden and Mulguy respectively)
vehement
My dad was born in Cirencester, which the old-timers pronounce "Sizziter."
Two that I have encountered in the last week.
Antigone and the WA town of - Canarvon.
ssissors
fuhrer
I guess... Tomb, vehicle, yacht, diaphragm, facsimile. Trust me, I'm a foreigner, I know.
All of the above words are very easy to pronounce for English natives speakers. If you can´t pronounce them then you´re not very bright. Non-native speakers are excused, of course! Some names are excusable, just about. The surname Ruthven for example, should be pronounced ´Rivven´, and Mainwaring should be pronounced ´Manering´as in Dad´s Army.
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