'Phenomenon' is the most mispronounced word

[Sweetpea]

The word came first in a study of terms that are tricky to get your tongue around, with most people mixing up the letters M and N on a regular basis.
'Anaesthetist' came second because of quickly moving between the TH to the letters T at the end.
In third place was 'remuneration', which is often mispronounced as 'renumeration'.
With the numbers of Ts and Ss in the word, the fourth most difficult to pronounce was 'statistics' and 'ethnicity' was in fifth place.
Almost half of the 3,000 people surveyed admitted they often correct someone if they say something in the wrong way and a quarter of people said they thought mispronunciation showed a lack of intelligence.
But suprisingly in the list of admissions, Britons admitted that February was the 12th hardest word to spit out.
A spokesman for Spinvox, a voicemail to text message service, which carried out the research, said: "Many words are difficult to say and when we struggle to pronounce a word correctly it makes us self-conscious about the way we speak.
"Phenomenon is very hard to say because of the structure of the word.
"There are some real tongue-twisters in the list and it's understandable how many people can get confused when pronouncing certain words.
"A word one person finds easy to say, maybe difficult for the next person. Although it's worrying that some people find basic words such as February difficult to say."
The company found that other difficult words to feature in the poll include 'regularly' at 11, 'particularly' at 13 and 'prejudice' at 17.
More than a third of people even say they avoid using words they know they struggle with altogether so they do not end up looking stupid.

Top 20 mispronounced words:
1. Phenomenon (fi-nom-uh-non)
2. Anaesthetist (uh-nes-thi-tist)
3. Remuneration (ri-myoo - nuh-reyshun)
4. Statistics (stuh-tis-tiks)
5. Ethnicity (eth-nis-i-tee)
6. Philosophical (fil-uh-sof-i-kuhl)
7. Provocatively (pruh-vok-uh-tiv)
8. Anonymous (uh-non-uh-muhs)
9. Thesaurus (thi-sawr-uhs)
10. Aluminium (al-yuh-min-ee-uhm)
11. Regularly (reg-yuh-ler-lee)
12. February (feb-roo-er-ee)
13. Particularly (per-tik-yuh-ler-lee)
14. Hereditary (huh-red-i-ter-ee)
15. Prioritising (prah-awr-i-tahyz-ing)
16. Pronunciation (pruh-nuhn-see-ey-shuhn)
17. Prejudice (prej-uh-dis)
18. Facilitate (fuh-sil-i-teyt)
19. Hospitable (hos-pi-tuh-buhl)
20. Onomatopoeia (on-uh-mat-uh-pee-uh)

'Phenomenon' is the most mispronounced word - Telegraph


Mines not it there. I have trouble with 'Vocabulary'.

OK, what's you're word hang-up

[Churchill]

What about Guv-ern-ment? Most people say 'guvvament'.

[Sweetpea]

Or Envi-ron-ment. Most say 'enviroment'. Spell it that way too.

[emmylou]

and specific..... it annoys me when people say pacific instead...

[Churchill]

or "Eck-set-ra" instead of "et-set-ara" (etc) or people who talk up their accents and think it's posh to say "choklit" instead of "choco-let".

The list is mind-bogglingly endless.

[emmylou]

some people cant even manage to say 'isn't it' (innit?) so theres no hope for them

i dont know if its a regional thing but theres a few people up here that boil a kekkle get milk from bokkles and smoke comes out of their chimley,thats annoying

[Sweetpea]

Pacific instead of Specific!

[Sweetpea]

One that pisses me off royally:

Aks instead of bloody ASK!!!!

[emmylou]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

One that pisses me off royally:

Aks instead of bloody ASK!!!!

i was trying to explain that one to a friend and i cant say aks.lol

[Churchill]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

One that pisses me off royally:

Aks instead of bloody ASK!!!!

Poor orthodontry I balme, or just an inability to grow out of baby-speak.