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The word "Column" is usually pronounced "COLL-em." but many pronounce it "COLL-yume."
It's not uncommon for two words to be pronounced as though they rhyme, when they don't. Column does not rhyme with vacuum, but often people learn to pronounce words as soon as they hear them for the first time, and often you hear words spoken by people who don't or can't read, and they disregard the spelling of words. Like, when I was a child, the first time I heard the expression, it was "Take it for Granite".
My 2 cents here: people who insist on pronouncing foreign words which are constantly written/used incorrectly so the pronunciation/usage will most likely be wrong as well.
I am quite picky regarding languages and try not to make such mistakes at all costs. It is terribly tacky when one wants to say certain things but makes a trivial mistake like one of these:
proscIUtto: proscUItto
maSCARpone: maRSCApone
and the ubiquitous "one biscotti/one panini, please": biscotti and panini are plural forms, therefore one cannot ask for "one biscuits/one sandwiches"
also, very constantly used, it is a "chaise loNGUe", not a "chaise loUNGe"
My favorite is "16 Bestial Virgins" from "Whiter Shade of Pale". I have a lot of trouble with virgin references. Having myself once said "The Disney virgin of Snow White" on the radio.
There was apparently a hymn with the words "gladly the cross I'd bear" and kids who sang it thought it was "Gladly: the cross-eyed bear." Anyone know the name of the hymn?
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through.
Well don't! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth as in mother
Nor both as in bother, nor broth as in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart,
Come, come! I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful Language? Why man alive!
I learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.
Wear a boot upon your foot.
Root can never rhyme with soot.
In muscle, sc is s,
In muscular, it's sk, yes!
Choir must always rhyme with wire,
That again will rhyme with liar.
Then remember it's address.
With an accent like possess.
G in sign must silent be,
In signature, pronounce the g.
Please remember, say towards
Just as if it rhymed with boards.
Weight's like wait, but not like height.
Which should always rhyme with might.
Sew is just the same as so,
Tie a ribbon in a bow.
When You meet the queen you bow,
Which again must rhyme with how.
In perfect English make a start.
Learn this little rhyme by heart.
My favorite is "16 Bestial Virgins" from "Whiter Shade of Pale". I have a lot of trouble with virgin references. Having myself once said "The Disney virgin of Snow White" on the radio.
OMG - I was just thinking about kissthisguy.com earlier today! Haven't visited there for a few years, but used to love going there. It is hilarious! I think my all-time favorite was someone who thought the second verse of "Away In A Manger" started out, "The cattle are blowing the baby away." (For those who may not know, it's actually, "The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes.")
Pronunciation is perhaps the antithesis of "Writing", the topic of this forum, but we don't have an erudite "Talking" forum, so here goes.
Do you subscribe to the theory that every word has a single correct pronunciation? If not, where are the boundaries.
Do prouniciations stem from spelling, or does spelling stem from pronunciation?
Here's some food for thought. "Cartesian" is from the name of the originator, Rene DeCartes. "Keynesian" is, similarly, from John Maynard Keynes. But the pronunciations are /car-TEE-zhun/ and /KAYN-zee-un/. Why not /kee-NEE-zhun/?
Who was the authority who had to power to decide, in the late 1930s, how to correctly pronounce "Keynesian"?
"Diamond" have two syllables or three? I've heard both. If you had a rodeo on Rodeo Drive, which time would you be saying it wrong (the first, probably).
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