reading before hearing

[kalmn]

things i have learned today: eid is pronounced eed. doh.

(i have a long list of words that i made up a pronunciation for because i read them before i heard them pronounced by other people. i am adding this one to the list.)

Comments

[quadong]

First six times I read that I thought you were saying that it was pronounced "eed-doh", which I thought was rather unusual and made me wonder what language it could be.

[maize]

Out of curiosity, how were you pronouncing it before?

Eid wasn't a word like that for me, having grown up Muslim, but as a voracious childhood reader my stock of words like that is vast. I heard just yesterday an audiobook reader pronounce "chitin" as "CHIT-in", whereas I was pronouncing it all this time as "KITE-in".

[eub.livejournal.com]

My family still likes to remind me now and then that I read "geography" with the accent on the first syllable.

I am not sure whether you gave "chitin" as on of those words for you or for the audiobook reader, but I would say the audiobook reader.

[matthewdaly]

It's certainly KITE-in south of the border. But it could be one of those English words that the people of England routinely mispronounce.

As far as Eid, my first instinct would have been to pronounce it "Ide". But my deeper instinct is that whoever transliterated Arabic into the Roman alphabet is no friend of me or my intuition, so I'd have stuck with pronouncing it "the end of Ramadan" until I was quadruply certain.

[hobbitbabe]

Well, I thought the greeting was pronounced like "I'd moo-Barack." with the emphasis on the first and third syllables. (I'm really not meaning to be disrespectful to Muslims or anyone, just trying to think of words that people pronounce.)

[kalmn]

i was pronouncing it ide.

i have pronounced chitin as kite-in for years, and refuse to stop.

[eub.livejournal.com]

I can't be convinced to say /flaxid/ for "flaccid". Just can't. I can be convinced to say /zoh-ology/, but I'm sure I forget to.

(Are there any words starting with Greek chi that have ended up with a /ch/ as in "chew"? Not coming up with any... Christianity, chemistry, chiral, chiton... Oh, I hear "chalazion" with /sh/.)

[ailbhe]

Here it's often pronounced Eh-eed, two syllables. Or maybe one and a half.

[aedifica]

I once read my mom a book about wonDEERful an-EYE-mals. Also, I thought the state of extreme happiness was es-cat-y, which made sense to me because I liked cats.

[heyfoureyes]

omg this is my whole life!

even now at 35 I discover daily mispronounciations that I have carried my whole life. because I learned English from a Spanish-speaking mother, and because SO SO much of my vocabulary came from reading.