pronounciation of common words

Aye but Geordies call that kind of beer the "broon" stuff.

So how do I say piz bruin, tricia, that's not much help. lol.
Us geordies use the word piss often but Icant think of its relevance to suncream except that's its a similar colour.

Mischievious instead of mischievous: even Princess Diana used to say it.

Ethel - like Newcastle Brown !
Granjura should know as I've just looked it up and it's the name of a mountain in Switzerland.
Perhaps Piz means peak?

while on the subject can anyone tell me how to say 'Piz Buin' the popular suncream. I said piss broon and got laughed at.(embarrassed)

I am absolutely with you, acanthus in respect of 'uninterested' and 'disinterested'.

I also have huge problems with 'convince' being used as a synonym for 'persuade' and 'enormity' instead of 'immensity'.

On the other hand, the OED will tell me that these are now acceptable usages. It doesn't stop them grating

Well English pronunciation is not easy, is it - read it aloud (and imagine doing it as a foreigner):

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through.
Well don't! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth as in mother
Nor both as in bother, nor broth as in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart,
Come, come! I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful Language? Why man alive!
I learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.

Is that the lady know as 'Laura-Norah'?

"lor and ohdah" is particularly irritating. There is no "R" in law and there are two "R"s in order.

And just to show that I can be as annoying as the next person when it comes to pronunciation, my daughters always snigger when I say 'aah-nvelope' instead of their 'en-velope'. It's a habit I got into from my time in France as a teenager. But at least I don't go the whole hog with 'aah-nvelop'.

I once knew a grand and rather exotic lady who always said 'saandvidge' for sandwich. Lovely.

As a former teacher of English grammar I have many bêtes-noires but am not too bothered by regional variations of pronunciation. What gets my goat is the fact that people are too lazy or uninterested in finding out how a word is pronounced correctly. I do wonder sometimes if it's an auditory thing - perhaps some people just don't have a very developed aural memory in order to reproduce a particular sound.

However while we're at it, here are two of my little irritations:

Pronouncing 'comparable' as 'com-para-bl' - I was always taught to say 'compra-bl'. I'm sure it doesn't really matter, but it always grates.

The other is a vocabulary issue: saying 'disinterested' when 'uninterested' should be used. 'Disinterested' means having no financial or other beneficial advantage; 'uninterested' means having no interest in a subject.

Right, that's me and me barra's outside....

perhaps life is a little too short for getting so upset about pronunciation of words? As a french speaker, I was more than amused about the pronunciation of 'genre', 'cul-de-sac' 'ménage à trois' etc, and the total misuse of 'ménage' for manége', etc. And in English about the unusual use of grammar on the edge of the Danelaw (I were, you was, etc)- and things like 'prostrate' for 'prostate', and so many more.

Always remember my first week of teaching, when on youngster from Braunstone, a oft 'challenged' part of Leicester, asked in the broadest of Leicester (Lesta) accent 'but Miiiis, why can't you speak proper like what we do?'. Indeed, Abigail, indeed...

Some of my neighours here in rural Switzerland, and on the other side in France, do have a really strange accent and pronunciation, and their grammar and spelling are really wobbly- but their are very talented and kind in many other ways- so a bit of tolerance is really 'de rigueur'- and they are very tolerant of OH's efforts to speak French and do try very hard not to ask me 'qu'est-ce qu'y dit' (what's he saying). Honestly.

My DD will pronounce 'ate' to rhyme with 'get' unless she is reading something out, and then her brain can't seem to ignore the phonetics, and she pronounces it to rhyme with gate

Wander - rhymes with "yonder", wonder rhymes with "thunder"...

@Gagamarnie : I would agree with you about Grammar Schools, but must confess that at mine nobody ever mentioned the "it's" v. "its" problem. I was in my twenties before somebody straightened me out on that one. So much for Grammar school!

"It's a cat, and its fur is black."

And surely it should be e.g. '...he scored 6 for his starter during the week' not '...he scored 6 for his starter in the week' as I've heard so often on The Great British Menu lately?

Yes, that drives me mad too Wilf!

Dear Mary Berry - wild animals live in "lairs", cakes have "LAYERS" ... with a Y! Last week I was actually yelling at the TV by the end of the programme!

Prof. Henry Higgins asked, "why can't the English teach their children how to speak". I had an awful job getting my DD to use then and than correctly. She still confuses them, eg. " rather you then me". I have learned not to let it bother me, but I do feel like a bit of a failure.

Should be Poggle. Sorry. Need new reading glasses. Primark, here I come

poggie. I don't get that

Another frequent mispronunciation is island for Ireland. Not too difficult to say, surely ?

I agree, H has the harder sound.

Wonder and wander annoy me too. It's all too common now to hear their respective pronunciations reversed!

I love to go a-wundering
Along the mountain track

I wonder as I wunder .....

I wundered lonely as a cloud

Or

Wunderbar, wunderbar!
There's our favorite star above
What a bright, shining star
Like our love it's wunderbar!

etc etc

Oh - do you mean she pronunced it 'wunder'?

How are you supposed to pronounce 'wander' then Gagamarnie?

I say 'wonder' too (to rhyme with 'yonder').

Surely you don't mean it should be 'wander' to rhyme with 'gander'?