Mind Your Pronunciation Please!

We tend to speak how exactly we read a particular word but we forget that ‘English is a funny language’ and end up mispronouncing some of the most common words used in our day to day life.

Check out if you were also not minding the Ps & Qs of your language….

Sania’s pick of top 11 ‘regularly mispronounced regular words’.

Lingerie – This is the first, foremost and the ultimate one. Believe me, 7 out of 10 people would pronounce it the way exactly how it is written – lin-ger-ie. May be because this term is not something everyone uses too often & openly (the object being a female undergarment).

Thanks to the movie Fashion, where Priyanka Chopra precisely corrects one of her friend to call it ‘laun-jer-ei’ and not lin-ger-ie!

Monotonous – Many a times you hear colleagues cribbing aloud “Yaar work is getting too ‘moo-noo-to-nus’. While you may agree to the statement with the core of your heart, don’t forget to tell them politely that the correct pronunciation is ‘mo-not-nus’.

Jalapeno –In restaurants, you may find people enthusiastically ordering pizza toppings as capsicum, mushroom and chicken with Jalapenos. Noooo… it’s called ‘Hal-eh-pee-no’. Next time when you are about to order a dish with this exotic chilli, sound polished and appear Mr/Ms ‘know-it-all’ by replacing the ‘J’ with ‘H’. Now order aloud!

Cache – ‘Clear the cach-ay’…that’s what you are often told when there is trouble opening a webpage on system or an application on mobile. Kindly ditch the last ‘e’ and pronounce it as ‘cash’ (yes, the money wala cash).

Nokia – Now get the surprise of your life. The brand name you live, sleep and eat with day and night is ‘NO-kya’ not Noo-kia. Say it like ‘Knock-ya’.

Bury – Even though the circumstance for which this word is used is not appropriate to indulge in grammar and pronunciation correction but only for FYI, the correct pronunciation of this word is ‘bery’ and the same rules goes with ‘burial’ which should be spoken as ‘be-rial’.

Athlete – Milkha Singh was a great ‘eth–leet’. That’s how you thought when you saw the movie ‘Bhag Milka Bhag? Nope. Sorry Again. It’s ‘ath – leet’, pronounced exactly how it is written.

Schedule: This one is a classic. Most of the over-enthusiastic, corporate executives pronounce it incorrectly. The meetings are ‘shed-uled’ not ‘sked-uled’.

Suite – Heard this word in reference with hotels & resorts like the ‘Maharaja Suite’ or the ‘Presidential Suite’? Now, even though the word has a ‘u’, there is no sound of that vowel at all! The word is pronounced as ‘sweet’ not ‘suit’.

Wednesday – This one is a curious case of silent letters. ‘D’ is silent and not pronounced while speaking the word. It is ‘Wens-day’. Skip the ‘d’ while saying it.

Pronunciation – Last but not the least. The irony of the whole subject is that the word, which is the point of the whole discussion is itself mispronounced quite often. You may hear people saying ‘pro-noun-cia-tion’, while actually it is ‘pro-nun-ciation’, an exception that it should be spoken exactly how it is written.

Article By Sania Siddiqui