How good is your pronounciation?

My daughter when aged about four asked if we could go to visit Hampt Courton. We go quite often and it retains that name.

In a similar way I have been known to visit Crystal Alice!

My mothers was malapropisms! Could be embarrassing or hilarious depending on company!

That very pretentious chap on Bargain Hunt, Tim somebody, (looks like Terry Thomas but with country clobber) pronounced Gloucester - "Glorster" the other day. I nearly choked on my sconns

Not an easy one for a 'furiner' like me- but I've just about cracked it and use this 'poem' with my Proficiency students. Quite daunting

What a lot of cousins we all have!

Bags You must be related too.

Par Cark.

Rings and Woundabouts.

A choc of boxlets?

Elegran - was your father related to mine? His forte was spoonerisms - like 'roaring with pain' for 'pouring with rain'.

And my father was strong on deliberate Malapropisms - eg monotony for monogamy. I once used that in quite the wrong circumstances.

Annobel when our three children were small, I made them hooded anoraks from stretch towelling, in different colours. The smallest had one in vivid green. He looked just like Kermit the frog, so anoraks became Kermits from that day on.

elegran, our family did that too. Within our four walls, meringues were always phonetically pronounced and picturesque was pictureskew. Childish versions remained, such as ambadade for marmalade. One of my sisters used to refer to the shreds in marmalade as 'marmles' which was, obviously, adopted by the rest of the family and I still privately call them that.

When I was very small my parents had a friend named Cyril and he was always, in my mind, Uncle Squirrel. I think I was about 14 when I realised he wasn't, but then I am always a bit slow on the uptake!

Talking of American pronunciation reminds me of when I went to visit some friends in Los Angeles. The hispanic-looking man who checked me through at the airport asked me why I was there. I'm visiting some friends, I said.
"Where do they live?" he asked.
Me: San Pedro (spoken as Spaniards say it; I had learned Spanish for a few years).

At that point he gave me a really sharp look. I was puzzled and must have looked it.

He then said: "You're from England, aren't you?" (Obviously! He had my passport open in his hand!)

I nodded.

I was waved through still feeling puzzled about the sharp look. Oh well! Foreign country and all that.

I met up with my friends and we drove to their house. They commented on places we went through and eventually told me we were near San Peedro!

Ah! Hispanic chappie probably thought I was being insulting. Sigh! Thank goodness my Englishness saved me from being arrested on the spot!

Bags Vehicle is pronounced like that in American English.

All my dictionaries (I seem to collect them) give the pronunciation of plover as pluvver. Plohver sounds very Margaret Thatcher trying to get rid of her lower middle class vowels. Do you remember how she used to say invohlved?

The first time I noticed the word "vehicle" on a sign, I read it as veehickle. I was about eight at the time. I still say veehickle to myself.

Well, it's all to do with how it's written, isn't it? The English language is a strange and wonderful thing indeed!

Anagram Perhaps you knew my friend, his mernigue sounds a lot like your pictureskew?? (Note to self: read the threads properly before posting, I always think of something else to add after I've already posted!!

Elegran you have just reminded me that a friend of ours once asked in a restaurant for 'lemon mernigue pie' pronouncing mernigue to rhyme with chew. We still refer to it as 'lemon mernigue' and have received some very odd looks at times

My embarrassing moment happened when we were reading Jane Eyre in the second year of grammar school so I would have been about 12. I was reading aloud the passage where Rochester asks Jane to marry him (so already squirming over the passionate dialogue) and I came to the bit where he says: 'little sceptic, you shall be convinced' except that I pronounced it septic, thus completely destroying the romance!! Oh the shame!!

It was a family joke in our house to pronounce things wrong deliberately (in private) Sometimes we forgot that there were visitors and got some funny looks.

My embarrassing moment was saying depot which I said like teapot! I was still at infant school so about 7 and the milk depot was at the end of the road. So upset when my error pointed out to me!

I remember pronouncing 'picturesque' as 'pictureskew' when I was young, because I'd only ever read it, never heard it said!

I still cringe with private embarrassment when I recall pronouncing 'misled' as "myseld".
I once had a very pretentious client who was reluctant to pronounce 'wood' or 'would' in the normal way, so used to say 'wod'. He thought he was disguising his North Midland accent this way. Listening to him was rather like hearing the tortured vowels used in 'Allo 'Allo!