Quotes About Pronunciation

Say 'Kenmore Square', I insist. Kenmaw Sqway-ah. Say 'Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina.' Nothing could be finah than to be in Caroliner.' You're doing that on purpose. I'm not. I sway-ah.

Roland G. Fryer Jr., while discussing his names research on a radio show, took a call from a black woman who was upset with the name just given to her baby niece. It was pronounced shuh-TEED but was in fact spelled "Shithead."*

Most adults never master a foreign language, especially the phonology—hence the ubiquitous foreign accent.

Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

It's hard to learn an American accent. Some of the Rs at the ends of words are incredibly hard.

When I first went to Japan, I was wrestling under my real name. The Japanese people have a great amount of difficulty with the letters f, r and l. So three out of the six letters in my first name they couldn't say. It was a bit of a mouthful for those guys.

Let me be the first to welcome you to Shiz, Glinda. This is your first year? Please, it is Galinda. The proper old Gigllikinese pronunciation, if you don't mind.

Club4. Sujet d'exaspération pour les conservateurs. Embarras et discussion sur la prononciation de ce mot

Her name was Marroca, probably her maiden name, and she pronounced it as though it had fifteen r's in it.

They spell it da Vinci and pronounce it da Vinchy. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

That's a Z," I corrected, making sure to pronounce it "zee." "I'm afraid that's a zed," she counter-corrected

In hotels, every time I make a reservation and they never find my name, they never can pronounce it; it's so long, and sometimes they confuse.

It makes me insane when people say 'Ossies.' It's Ozzies. Ozzies!

I am learning English and even try to talk in English with people. I don't care if people are laughing at me. I always look at the Internet for the correct pronunciation and play word games.

I was pretty dreadful on my first night as an announcer as back in those days the scorecards were written in a very strange way so that didn't help and some of the fighter's names were unpronounceable.

Sometimes it's Tune-berg, sometimes Thunn-berg. I mean, I think it's funny that everyone pronounces it differently. So, that is just - I don't mind anyone pronouncing it wrong. There's no wrong way to pronounce it. Everyone pronounces it in their own way.

It's spelled, like, S-E-R-G. I always thought it would be funny if I called my son 'Sir.' Like calling your daughter 'Ma'am,' or something like that.

I love Russian, because it's delicious to speak like that. If you have to speak French, you can also do that, because it's not difficult. Accents are a cool thing to do. And I love doing them.

Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.

If you want to say that a word has a circumflex on its penultimate syllable, without saying flat out that it has a circumflex there, there is a word for it: properispomenon.

Before the shift house was pronounced "hoose" (it still is in Scotland), mode was pronounced "mood," and home rhymed with "gloom," which is why Domesday Book is pronounced and sometimes called Doomsday. (The word has nothing to do with the modern word doom, incidentally. It is related to the domes- in domestic.)

Sometimes the pronunciation changed, as between bath and bathe and as with the "s" in house becoming a "z" in houses. And sometimes, to the eternal confusion of non-English speakers, these things happened all together, so that we have not only the spelling doublet life/lives but also the pronunciation doublet "l?ves" and "l?ves" as in "a cat with nine lives lives next door.

As Mario Pei has noted, no two people in any language speak the same sounds in precisely the same way. That is of course what enables us to recognize a person by his voice. In short, we each have our own dialect.

In Baltimore (pronounced Balamer), an eagle is an "iggle," a tiger is a "tagger," water is "wooder," a power mower is a "paramour," a store is a "stewer," clothes are "clays," orange juice is "arnjoos," a bureau is a "beero," and the Orals are of course the local baseball team.