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Do you mispronounce the words you read?

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My father is an avid reader (which is presumably where I got it from). And my grandma loves to tell stories about how he was always mispronouncing words he’d read in books.

“I’d like some soo-ed (suede) shoes for Christmas.”

“Lisa was in my room and now it’s in chay-ose (chaos)!”

We always laugh at these stories. But then a few weeks ago, I was talking about this place I used to visit in college, called Purgatory Chasm. And yes, I pronounced it with the “ch”. Everyone laughed. I swore never to do it again.

Then yesterday I said something about a myriad of choices. And I pronounced it “my-rade”.

I’ve been reading that word for years. And apparently never paid attention to the fact that the i comes before the a (I’m not dyslexic, either).

I don’t think it makes me stupid, just in possession of such a large vocabulary some trivial things (such as pronunciation) tend to slip from time to time.

Do you ever mispronounce words you read in books?

Posted on Wednesday, 14 May 2014

Filed under Blog, Reading

Tagged: , ,

2 responses to “Do you mispronounce the words you read?”

  1. wanderlynn says:

    My dad is also a notorious mis-pronouncer [ie facist comes out “face-ist”]. Biopic is one I bungled several times – without correction – until I heard it on NPR. Oops!

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