Common mispronunciations – do you make them?

WordSpin’s recent article about misspellings got readers’ attention. We’re glad you liked it. Now here’s a far more complicated topic: mispronunciations.

Danish is easy to pronounce
Just kidding. Foreigners in Denmark fear “rødgrød med fløde,” and so we just don’t say it. But we can hardly avoid “rugbrød,” so we choke on it (the word, that is) regularly.

In one way, Danish really is easier to pronounce than English. Because there’s only one* Danish-speaking country, the number of accents is limited.

But with more than 50 English-speaking countries spread across the hemispheres, the number of possible pronunciations is close to endless. South Africans, South Carolinians, New Zealanders, New Englanders, Londoners (from Ontario, Canada) and Londoners (from England) all have a different set of “correct” pronunciations. Po-TAY-to or po-TAH-to, to-MAY-to or tow-MAH-to? Who’s to say what’s right?

When you’re wrong you’re wrong
There is no one right way. Many English speakers from the same country cannot understand each other. But there are some very definite wrong ways.

Nuclear. Many people, including the current President of the United States, cannot pronounce the word ‘nuclear’. They say NUKE-yu-lar. The vowel sounds are wrong and the consonant ‘l’ is in the wrong place. It should be NEW-klee-ar.
Mow. Danes often have a problem with the English w and v sounds. You “mow” (rhymes with “go”) the lawn – you never “move” it.

Duck and dog. Both the vowel and the final consonant sound in these two words are hard for some native Danish-speakers to pronounce. Imagine what happens to the appetite of your annual meeting lunch guests when they hear they are being served “roast dog.” This is also a problem when discussing the weather. Watch out for those gs when declaring that the windows are all “fogged” up.

Ask yourself (or better, ask others)
Can people understand what you are saying? Are your presentations as effective as they can be? Can you get your point across on the phone? Sad but true, mispronunciation can have an impact on your bottom line if it weakens your credibility. When you meet with clients, investors, partners or the press – you just can’t afford for them to misunderstand.

What to do?
Practice the words. Does it sound crazy that you could come so far in life and still have to practice something so basic? It isn’t. People do it all the time.

Practice the words you will actually use – not some frustrating tongue twister like “The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick.” Practice the basic words you actually use. Out loud. Slowly. Syllable by syllable.

If you’re going to the US, practice pronouncing the letter r in “pharma.” Work on that first v in “vessels and rigs”, or the ws in “wound care” and “wind power.”

Get a coach. Most of us don’t like to correct other people while they speak for fear of offending. So if you really want to know what you’re doing wrong, ask a native English-speaking friend or colleague to be your coach. You can agree that he or she can interrupt or take you aside after a meeting or meet you for coffee once a week to work on what’s hard for you.

Of course, you can hire a professional coach for a single session or a series, for individuals or groups. (We recommend www.eye-for-image.com!)

And if you’re headed Down Under, there’s a company in Sydney that can coach you on their own, most peculiar, way of speaking.

Everybody does it
Just to make you feel better, here’s a list of mistakes that natives of the US make in their own language (from donnayoung.org):

1. accidentally [al is often omitted]
2. athletic [e is often wrongly added- atheletic]
3. arctic [the first c is often omitted]
4. boundary [a is often omitted]
5. candidate [the first d is often omitted]
6. children [re is often reversed- childern]
7. disastrous [e is often wrongly added- disasterous]
8. everybody [the first y is often omitted]
9. generally [the second e is often omitted]
10. government [the first n is often omitted]
11. hundred [re is often reversed- hunderd]
12. words ending in -ing such as working [g is often omitted]
13. history [o is often omitted]
14. laboratory [o is often omitted]
15. liable [a is often omitted]
16. library [the first r is often omitted]
17. literature [a is often omitted]
18. mischievous [long-e is often wrongly added- mischievEEous ]
19. occasionally [al is often omitted]
20. prefer [re is often reversed- perfer]
21. preserve [re is often reversed- perserve]
22. probably [ba is often omitted]
23. strictly [t is often omitted]
24. surprise [the first r is often omitted]
25. temperature [a is often omitted]
26. usually [the second u is often omitted]

 

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* Gotcha – Greenland makes two Danish-speaking countries!