Sunday, August 18, 2013

Grammar Goof Confessions

Oh, dear; I thought I spoke proper English, until I learned recently that I've been pronouncing "prerogative" incorrectly for years. I saw Ten Common Words You May Be Mispronouncing on Facebook and checked it out, assuming that I'd do fairly well. I'm embarrassed to tell you that I pronounce half of the words on the list incorrectly; mischievous, prerogative, often, bruschetta, and Seuss.

Curious, this led me to a further search, landing on 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English, which cracked me up at times. I actually did laugh out loud. Really? Do people really say...

A blessing in the skies
It's a doggy-dog world

These are on my pet peeve list, so I wasn't surprised to see them on the list:
expresso
excape
excetera
expecially

but I was surprised that "flustrated" didn't make the list. Don't feel bad if you are an offender, though, as I make too many errors to count on that list and would likely drive you crazy with a few of my own.  Still, as a teacher and lover of the English language, I do feel a little dumb about my own offenses, which include too many to count. Here's a sample:

snuck (Turns out it's not a word, actually.)
prescription (I usually say perscription.)
miniature (I say miniture.)

Oh, well...Like Oprah says, "When you know better, you do better." Fortunately, I'm not fancy enough to even use some of the words on that list, so I'll be removing those before I make a list for myself with which to practice.

How about you? Care to fess up to your own grammar goofs?

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