3 days ago
‘It's shed-ule, not sked-ule': The mispronunciations that annoy us the most
When Susie Dent, Countdown 's etymology guru, declared on Wednesday that the common mispronunciation of 'mischievous' as 'mischiev-i-ous' should now be considered acceptable, she caused a stir not just at the Hay Festival but among traditionalists across the country.
The reaction to her intervention highlights the extraordinary capacity of mispronounced words to irritate the listener – and how everyone has their own particular bugbears.
Here, Telegraph writers and editors identify the pronunciations that grate the most – and confess to some of their own errors.
'Haitch'
– Christopher Howse, assistant editor
In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the heroine is obliged by American Puritans to wear a big red A to show she has been caught in adultery. I'd like to see a capital H worn by anyone caught pronouncing it 'haitch'.
Admittedly 'aitch' is a funny name for a letter. Q and R are funny too, but you don't hear people saying 'rar' instead of 'ar'. 'Haitch', though, is a case of hypercorrection and genteelism. It's like saying 'to my wife and I' because it sounds more polite than 'to my wife and me'.
Children used to be told not to drop their aitches. The mistake is to think an aitch belongs at the beginning of 'aitch'. Last year I was impressed by the bravery of Amol Rajan, the Today presenter, who, after 40 years alive and a Cambridge degree in English, announced he was now going to start pronouncing 'aitch' correctly. Bravo.
In 1862, Punch, in its class-conscious way, mocked the aspiration of 'aitch': 'She could not bear hoysters until there was a haitch in the month.' But I'm afraid it's a class-marker still, and we condemn our children to a life of social degradation if we let them say 'haitch'.
Jeremy Butterfield, the editor of Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, thinks 'haitch' will prevail, 'unspeakably uncouth though it may appear'. Against this final assault by Chaos and Old Night, Amol and I will die in the last ditch, in which we may find room for you too.
'Wrath'
– , royal editor
The royal world is full of words ready to trip you up, from the lord lieutenants ('left-tenants', of course, rather than 'lew-tenants') to equerries. Even Princess Eugenie has to explain she is a 'YOO-jenny' with the handy comparison to 'use-your-knees'. That's before you even get to the aristocratic titles, names and homes. Cholmondeley pronounced 'chumley'; Belvoir Castle pronounced 'beaver'; Buckingham Palace without stressing the 'ham'.
Earl Spencer has largely given up the struggle for the traditional pronunciation of Princess Diana's childhood home Althorp. The old 'áwltrop' has now been overtaken by 'all-thorp', the version commonly (and understandably) used by visitors.
If you haven't grown up in that world, you haven't got a hope.
So I try not to be snooty about people getting things wrong, as I've done quite a few times myself. There is only really one word that I notice every time: wrath.
In 2004, when I was a bright-eyed young fresher, a clearly better educated young man at university corrected my misuse of 'wrath' in the middle of a story I was telling. I had said the American version, rhyming with 'Cath' or the northern UK pronunciation of 'bath', rather than the correct British version, 'roth'.
It has annoyed me ever since – mostly because he was right.
I always notice it in others and have been known to gently, privately point it out to spare others the same social embarrassment.
It's a good job I changed my ways. That fresher who corrected me? Reader, I married him.
'Harassment'
– Lisa Markwell, head of long reads
My mother has always had a lot to say about pronunciation – or rather, mispronunciations. It's definitely rubbed off on me.
In my youth, a boyfriend was quickly dispatched (by me, I should add, not her) because he said 'hyperbowl' rather than 'hi-per-bol-ee'; it was his second offence after 'epy-tome' rather than 'ep-it-o-mee'.
In adulthood, what I have trained myself to do is never to correct, but to try and use the word with the correct pronunciation as soon as possible in the conversation. It's kinder that way. It comes from an annoying waiter sneering at me ordering scallops. 'Do you mean scoll -ops?', he intoned, snootily.
But the creeping Americanisation of words really grinds my gears. The changing from noun to verb is now, appallingly, well established – but that's a rant for another day. The way in which words become their most base selves in the way they are spoken just feels wrong. Yes, British English (if we can call it that), is full of idiosyncrasies, but it's always been like that. Take lieutenant: who knows why it is pronounced 'left-tenant' but it very much is not 'lew-tenant'.
See also, 'har-ass-ment' when it should be 'harass-ment' – that's one of the words my mother still gets exercised about to this day. Then there's 'schedule' which, for the avoidance of any doubt, is 'shed-ule', not 'sked-ule'. Any number of YouTube videos and US dramas will not change my mind.
But if I'm honest, 'privacy' is the one that catches me out and I am furious that it turns out I've been getting it wrong all this time. It's 'prih-vacy', not 'pry-vacy'. Please respect my 'prih-vacy' at this difficult time.
'Espresso'
– Kamal Ahmed, The Daily T presenter and director of audio
An admission. I am a self-hating mispronouncer. And my big one is ' espresso ' – which I pronounce 'expresso'. Just like most other people. When it should of course be 'e-spresso', as there is no 'x' in the word – literally (a word I insert into sentences for no apparent reason, another bugbear). But if you do actually say 'espresso' with an Italian flare you sound a bit ridiculous. Like saying 'panino' in an Italian deli when you want one sandwich with prosciutto (try pronouncing that properly) and buffalo mozzarella. And no-one says Paris like they are French, do they? Unless they are, literally, French.
'Twenny'
– Poppy Coburn, acting deputy comment editor
The resurgence of the regional accent has a lot to answer for when it comes to linguistic bastardisation. Familiarity breeds contempt, and so I reserve my deepest distaste for the Essex drawl. Born in Southend and raised in Braintree, I experienced the full breadth of the cockney-ish interpretation of the English language, from 'shut uppp' to 'innit' to (oh God) 'reem'. Words would become needlessly elongated by a refusal to vocalise 'er', and so 'proper' became 'propaaa' and 'water' turned to 'wor-arrrrr'.
But by far the most objectionable trend was the dropping of consonants, with 'twenty' morphing into 'twenny'. I once made the mistake of saying 'twenny' to my grandmother, a Norfolk-born ex-headteacher who took great pride in her parents having arranged for her to take elocution lessons. I soon found myself an unwilling pupil in her pronunciation lessons.
My sister and I now have completely diametric accents and articulate words so differently that we often seem to be speaking other languages. I may have been mercilessly teased at school for sounding like the Queen, but I've come to appreciate my slightly posh voice. It certainly helps when I'm trying to be understood over the phone or talking to a non-native speaker.
'Archipelago'
– Mick Brown, features writer
A friend of mine has a singular way of pronouncing the word that describes a group or chain of islands within a body of water. As we all know, the word is 'archipelago' – pronounced 'arki-pel-ago'. She pronounces it as 'archie pel-ago', as if she's talking about a 1930s music hall act.
This is a result of pronouncing a word as you read it, not as you hear it said. I can understand that. Archipelago is not a word you hear in everyday speech. And who am I to correct her? For years I pronounced 'epitome' as 'epi-tome', rather than the correct pronunciation, 'e-pit-omee'. And I still struggle with the word hummus.
Although I don't think there is consensus over the correct 'British' pronunciation, I do know that Delia Smith and I are both wrong.
Delia was once caught on camera for a cookery show, standing at a supermarket shelf apparently buying something called 'who-moose', as if it were a subspecies of the large North American mammal. While, for some reason, I got it into my head a long time ago that it was pronounced 'hommus', and I still can't stop.
That's the problem with mispronunciations, they're like earworms. Once they're lodged in the brain it's almost impossible to get them out. I don't think I'm alone in stumbling over the word 'mispronunciation' itself.
A common complaint is that American pronunciations have infiltrated the English language. To hear Americans talking about 'erbs', with a silent 'h', is like fingernails screeching on a blackboard. And who is this famous artist they are constantly referring to as Van Go?
A friend in America recently sent me a list of the three hardest things for an American to say: 'I'm wrong', 'I need help' and 'Worcestershire'. Just keep them guessing.
What mispronunciations annoy you the most – and which are you guilty of? Let us know in the comments.
