Does it annoy you when....?

Question

...people mispronounce things?
I hate it when I hear people pronounce CRISPS as CRIPS its onomataepaeic for goodness sakes!
Or when people say PACIFIC instead of SPECIFIC!
It really bugs me-does anyone else feel the same?What are the ones that make you cringe and want to correct people?

Answer 1

Nukular for Nuclear,Turrism for terrorism and many other Bushisms.

The Fact that Colin Powell can't even pronounce his own first name.

The Americans' affectation of saying 'erbs for herbs where the 'e' makes a 'u' sound. If you're going to try to pronounce the word as the French do then at least get it right.

Seketry for secretary - much favoured by regional newsreaders.

Bath, path, grass etc etc with a long a as in bawth rather than the nice, crisp, short a as in ham.

And, finally, British people are not and never will be Brits - they are Britons. OK?

Answer 2

Oddly enough, 'ax' for 'ask' is ironic, because the word was originally pronounced 'aks' anyway, and not 'ask'. It is one of a number of words whose pronunciation has changed over the centuries through transposition of letters. Other examples are bird (was brid), third (was thrid), nostril (was nosthirl, thirl=hole, hence nosehole).

Whilst most mispronunciations don't result in misunderstandings, misspellings can cause confusion. A great many people confuse 'affect' and 'effect'; when used as a verb, 'affect' means 'to have an influence on', but 'effect' means 'to cause to happen'.

Some misspellings, I have to confess it, do irritate. I so often want to say to people 'there's no 'a' in 'definite', and 'separate' is not spelled 'seperate', and 'there's no 'e' in 'blatant'.

I'm not a great fan of abbreviations, and dislike them in particular when they're reproduced in lower case letters. 'LOL' is one of those expressions that are virtually devoid of meaning.

For some reason, over the last ten or twenty years, there's been an epidemic of useless apostrophes, usually used to signal a plural, but increasingly often just used because the writer thinks he has to. Thus we have ludicrous things like

apple's and pears
doe's (for does)
want's

The rules for apostrophes are really simple. First, in virtually no case does an apostrophe ever indicate a plural. Just add an 's' without an apostrophe. An apostrophe is only used to indicate a missing letter or letters. That's it!

Answer 3

It doesn't bother me when people mispronounce or confuse their words. It usually means they're rushing through their thought process and eventually they'll figure it out. What bugs me is when people replace intelligent dialog with profanity. I love a good cuss word like anyone else, but I use them sparingly. I know a few people that cuss so often it seems that every other word out of their mouth is "F" this or that. How do you carry a conversation with someone like that? Now that's aggravating!

Answer 4

As long as I pronounce my words properly it dont bother me. If people want to be lazy them so be it.
But I hate this type of talk. It was left on my mates mates facebook, by someone I no. Gee wizz how awful
hmmm nufin realy i am a qualified nursery nurse now but dnt work in a nursery lol.
lmao yer ur rite der it was funny we used 2 take da piss da boys remind me who day was i fink it was nicky chris cant memba who else lol, but yer was so funny

How dreadful is that!

Answer 5

I try not to mispronounce words but when people do I kinda like it cuz you can always make fun of them and have fun.

Answer 6

An uncle who recently passed used to say obvuos instead of obvious and igorant instead of ignorant. Other annoying sayings are when someone in conversation then says "blah, blah, blah"

Answer 7

Don' know where you are but in England I absolutely hate it when people drop the letter 't' out of a word. They are usually the younger generation and it doesn't help when all the soap actors do it. So you get things like.

"I went to a par'y with Pe'e. It was grea'. We'd been to watch Uni'ed play first. It was ge''in' cold though so we wen' for a ho' drink."

Answer 8

i say pacific instead of specific because for some unknown reason i just cannot prounounce specific correctly at normal speed. i can sound it out real slowly but i can't just say it in normal conversation.

Answer 9

I hate it when people "axe" a question instead of "asking" a question.

Answer 10

None of these things bug me. It's not that important. I dispronounce things all the time!