What mis-stated phrases or words do you feel still need to be corrected (online or in person) in 2025?
Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across "back-petal", instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes".
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Niche is pronounced neesh and not nitch
I heard Nice things about France
I heard things about niche, France.
Neesh is actually the much newer pronunciation apparently, TIL.
What do you base that on?
According to the pronunciations on Wiktionary, nitch is Californian
\NICH\ is the more common one and the older of the two pronunciations. It is the only pronunciation given for the word in all English dictionaries until the 20th century, when \NEESH\ was first listed as a pronunciation variant in Daniel Jones's English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917). \NEESH\ wasn’t listed as a pronunciation in our dictionaries until our 1961 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and it wasn’t entered into our smaller Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary until 1993. Even then, it was marked in the Collegiate as a pronunciation that was in educated use but not considered acceptable until 2003.
It's confusing because the way it's spelled makes it look French, so if you read it in a book and didn't hear other people say it, you might think it was "Neech" if you know French also.
Just like "voila" you might think is said the French way, like it's spelled, but a lot of English speakers say "walla".
I subscribe to the view that people mispronouncing things have read more stuff rather than heard things, so of course I'm not looking down on them for that. I didn't realize until recently that quinoa wasn't kwin-OH-ah for awhile, or even in my youthful fondness for Greek myths that the goddess wasn't called ah-fro-DAIT.
Another big one is "conscience". How could that be read as anything but "con science?"
English pronunciation is completely all over the place, so much so that you frequently cannot predict how a word is supposed to be pronounced. I usually don't pay too much attention to pronunciation errors because of that.
Just like “voila” you might think is said the French way, like it’s spelled, but a lot of English speakers say “walla”.
Ugh, I can't agree with this one. I think a lot of English speakers say "walla" because they think it's spelled "walla".
Wat
I've heard this one like 3 times in the last month on youtube and it bothers me a lot
You should google the word "dialect" and see where it takes you.
To search results about the word dialect
You were supposed to keep clicking.
Instructions unclear. Am now enrolled in a course on pronunciation
It's a start. Hopefully it's not for Vietnamese.
Depends on the context IMO
How
If I had to take a guess I would venture that this person says "It's not my nitch." and "wow that product is very neesh."
I swear I've met someone like this now that I think about it
You got it, dialects are a widely varying thing!
I suppose, if the context is if you prefer to be correct or not?
Lol "being correct" in a language. Take a course in linguistics.