March 19, 2011

Finangle? You Must Mean Finagle

It is funny how I hear certain words pronounced. Usually, what I hear is wrong, especially if it is a word I don't often hear people use or if I don't see it in print.
The other day I was talking to a friend about trying to plan to do something with her that day.

I said, "Maybe we can finangle something."

She laughed and said, "You mean finagle?"

"Oh, like bagel?" I replied. 

I don't even know if how I used the word made any sense.

For the longest time, I articulated the 's' sound of the word, Illinois. I did not know that the 's' is silent. I can't hear 's' sounds. Looking at how it is written, I assumed that one would sound out the 's'.

What are some words that you mispronounced for a long time, before someone finally corrected you?

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13 comments:

  1. back to the future was back to the furniture as an eight year old

    I'm sure there's many but I cannot remember them right now!

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  2. haha! I too have that problem! I usually only speak words that I actually heard and know how to pronounce. Sometimes I still pronounce them wrong. I also have issues with the high frequency sounds such as -s, -z, etc.

    In the past, words that I said wrong were "antique" or anything ending in -que. I would say it as anti-k-you. I didn't realize the -que was pronounced as a K.

    ~Janel

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  3. my big problem was always where to put the stress on the syllables. "Inventory" was always "In-VENT-ory"....I knew lots of words because I read a lot but I usually didn't know how to say them aloud.

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  4. I had the same problem as anything ending -que.... antique, unique, etc. I didn't know how to prounounce them and say them in a awkward way. When I read, I read like "hook on phonic" style (I learned my phonic though my speech teacher and spelling and language art)

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  5. I had a friend from England who always said "shedule" when talking about schedule. I finally corrected her, and I learned that that's the way English people pronounce it!

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  6. When I was younger and the movie Bewitched came out (I think it was a remake or based on an old TV series or something) I pronounced it bewitch-ed until my mom corrected me.

    My birthday is on the sixth of September, and when I had hearing aids I couldn't really hear any of the consonant sounds in the word sixth, and it was very difficult to lip-read. I pronounced it "sick-th", even though my family tried repeatedly to teach me how to say it. As I got older I resigned to just holding up 6 fingers :)

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  7. Jan Parlin PacelliMarch 20, 2011 8:41 AM

    As a child, the phrase "high chair" ran together and became (logically, I thought) "height chair". Same with "neck store" (next door), which didn't seem logical at all, but that's how I heard it.

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  8. "For all intents and purposes" = "For all intensive purposes." I said it the wrong way for YEARS until hubby corrected me one day.

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  9. LOL! These are all great! I especially like "neck store". :)

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  10. when i was a kid, i was really surprised to learn that post office was not "pose doffice"

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  11. Don't feel bad! I very rarely hear anyone pronounce "finagle" correctly. Everyone says "finangle" for the same reasons so many people say "for all intensive purposes." It's just words or syllables running together when we speak quickly. Finagle IS in fact a word and it looks to me like you were using it correctly, just not pronouncing it quite right :)

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  12. I remember starting to write "the smorning" when I was in grade 3. It was my first epiphany! I had never said "this morning", before:)

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  13. I have so many - usually from reading and not hearing them pronounced first. My worst was probably "misled" - I read it as my-zelled, rather than miss-led, and actually thought the two were synonyms, until reading aloud with my sister one day. I also thought "finangle" was a word (only realizing it was "finagle" when I couldn't find it in the dictionary one day).

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