I've heard a few doozies that were either just too cute to correct, or I didn't mind the particular person making an arse of themselves every time they said it.
One I've heard a few say is Heightth, I guess because we tack 'th' on to say width and depth they think it applies to height as well.
One had a problem with applying the past and present tense of ring and rung. A time honoured practice of clearing scrub is to ring-bark a tree and let it die, get eaten out by borers and termintes and fall over eventually of it's own accord. A rural Aunt would announce she was going down to "ring-bark that stand down the gully" and when she got back she would tell us that she had rung-barked them. No, I wasn't going to correct her while she still carried the axe.
It was a family thing, I met her brother once and he used the same term. (None of them were well known in the schoolyard, they lived a long way out of town when they lived in a house at all, and travelled with their parents following work around the country for most of their school age years so they had a good excuse. They also had some really strange turns of phrase.
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Pronunciation is a lost cause these days as there is such a mix of accents and overlapping languages that it's becoming a matter of make your own arrangements and if people still understand what you said you're in front.
If you want to get into pronunciation problems try talking to a Kiwi for an hour. When you recover from learning that six is pronounced 'correctly' as "sex" then you'll realise that they switch all the vowels around to make themselves talk funny. (Fern is busy loading
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Who are we to judge when we have towns like Goonoo Goonoo which is pronounced Gunnergunoo? Or Wauchope which is Warhope in NSW and Walkup in the NT? Even many of the old established words have differing 'correct' pronunciations in different places. I used to care but I'm about over it.
Many take offence at being corrected too and you end up with the grammarnazi tag. siiiiigh.
If they ask fine, if it's going to cause them severe embarrassment in future then it's worth the risk, but otherwise I let it pass.
e.g.... yeah can't 'elp meself...
Mum was a stickler for manners and decorum but had the quirk of never saying "knife and fork or just cutlery". Her youngest brother couldn't contain the smirk any longer and one day when she said "could you bring me a fork 'n knife please?" He asked did she want "a fork 'n spoon too?" We were all propped on walls laughing uncontrollably while she sat there in total bewilderment.
When everyone had gone she demanded to know what we were laughing at. So I explained. Was she embarrassed? Nooooo. I was told off in no uncertain terms for even thinking she would mean such a thing. She just didn't understand that it was the fact that she didn't mean it that made it so funny.
We came from different planets Mum and I.
Just thought of one which flashes a person's IQ in neon on their forehead. "Arksed" instead of asked. ... and of course there's Dubya's iconic mispronunciation of nuclear. I've even heard professional TV journos say "nukula". That one makes my ears hurt.
The 'new' words. I gradually got used to them, and now fully appreciate that they are usually a great improvement to the ability of the language to cover complex situations simply, aptly and conveniently.
Jane Austin would have taken a chapter to cover "clusterf***" and 7 paragraphs to explain an 'aha moment'. I won't use it to replace epiphany though, that remains a favourite.
Cartoonists did it best when the light bulb was pictured over a character's head. It was a brilliant innovation in 'sight' language and perhaps the birth of the emoticon?
Anyone else see emoticons as a mighty fine replacement for words when used thoughtfully?
Maybe in the future the English language will be written like heiroglyphs. Full circle.