Friday, August 17, 2007

Idiosyncratic pronunciations

Everyone's entitled to a few: I pronounce Norbert Elias's last name the same as Patrik Elias's. Then there's that bicycle part which is acceptably called in English a "derailer" or by its French name "derailleur" (pron. de-rie-ehrr). And I continue to call by the bastardized pronunciation of "dee-ra-lure."

And the sandal companies: Chaco and Teva. They want to rhyme with "taco" and "B-F-4eva" but for god's sakes, they're freaking sandals. Chaco rhymes with Waco, Teva with beaver (show your New Jersey roots!).

I used to think that bedraggled was the condition one was in when one arose from bed, hence "bed-raggled" (a pronunciation I still occasionally use, particularly when I can use that word to describe myself). A case of a false etymology leading to a wrong pronunciation.

Pony up with yours in the comments.

4 comments:

Feiertag said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Feiertag said...

hors d'oeuvres = horsey doovers

true story. and I had to fix the first comment because apparently I still can't spell it.

Dingbat said...

I used to think 'horz duvorz' and 'orderves' were two different things!

bats left, looks right said...

colonel (koll-o-nell) used to get me