What did you suddenly realize you'd been pronouncing wrong?

[DaveAgain]

I used to think that gaol (UK spelling of USA jail), was pronounced goal, and was an archaic word, no longer in use, rather than being an alternate spelling.

[MrsStarez]

Most of my native language.

​Me too, according to my husband. He's from the south of England, I'm from the midlands. This means that he elongates the vowels in words like "bath", "grass", etc, whereas I, a northerner, in his eyes, pronounce all of these words wrongly - flattened vowels.

My argument is that people don't say they are learning "marths", they say they are learning "maths" and that there's only one "r" in "grass".

He will never be convinced.​ It's interesting to see what our 4yo son is picking up, living in a "mixed vowel" household. Actually, I have no idea what the norm is for people where we live, as pretty much all of our friends have moved here for university or work. So far, our son is taking after daddy.

[Skynet]

When I was in the third grade, I was entered into a seventh grade reading competition in which I had to orate from a randomly chosen book. The book chosen was Susan Cooper's The Grey King, which had the word picturesque, which I pronounced picture-skew instead of picture-resk.

[Speakeasy]

When I was in the third grade … reading competition … the word picturesque, which I pronounced picture-skew ...

Did you manage to convince the judges that your pronunciation correct thereby justifying your First Place placement in the competition?

[Skynet]

When I was in the third grade … reading competition … the word picturesque, which I pronounced picture-skew ...

Did you manage to convince the judges that your pronunciation correct thereby justifying your First Place placement in the competition?

Whilst I am flattered that you thought that I came first (I actually did), I was just eight and wanted to get as far away from the pre-pubescent monsters as possible.

[Speakeasy]

… I came first (I actually did), I was just eight and wanted to get as far away from the pre-pubescent monsters as possible.

Belated congratulations! High School must have seemed like a death sentence to you (quite seriously!) … some of the monsters regress, they are particularly nasty to “egg-heads”, and the socialization process never kicks in.

[Querneus]

I cannot recall ever finding out I was mispronouncing a word in Spanish. Not a single time. I guess that's the benefit of having a shallow orthography that allows you to predict pronunciation pretty well. Okay, there are some words I pronounce in a non-standard way, but that's because that is the normal way, the de facto standard way, of pronouncing them in El Salvador. Examples would be displicente, which Salvadorans pronounce desplicente, or enantes, which Salvadorans pronounce anantes.

English pronunciation has been a huge pain to acquire in contrast, of course, and not only because it's not a language I speak natively... Most recently both a guy who is a native speaker that I hang out with and I learned that "deictic" (a term from linguistics) is pronounced /ˈdaɪktɪk/ DIKE-tick, instead of */diˈɪktɪk/ *dee-ICK-tick which is what we had wrongly assumed all this time. In Spanish, I would've never pronounced deíctico with anything other than the standard /de.ˈiktiko/.

This one is from my native language. I always thought "milk" was actually pronounced "melk". When I was a kid I just thought it was a particularity of the English language (like just about every other word that isn't pronounced as it's spelled). Someone pointed it out to me after I moved out of my parents house.

Also... epitome. I learned this word through reading, so I didn't know its correct pronunciation. Of course, I pronounced it "epi-tome". Whenever I see the word I'm tempted to pronounce it incorrectly, but if I use the word in everyday conversations then I don't have a problem with it.

That's a normal thing among a minority of North American speakers. Such speakers often have "pellow" for "pillow" as well.

Most of my native language.

​Me too, according to my husband. He's from the south of England, I'm from the midlands. This means that he elongates the vowels in words like "bath", "grass", etc, whereas I, a northerner, in his eyes, pronounce all of these words wrongly - flattened vowels.

My argument is that people don't say they are learning "marths", they say they are learning "maths" and that there's only one "r" in "grass".

He will never be convinced.​ It's interesting to see what our 4yo son is picking up, living in a "mixed vowel" household. Actually, I have no idea what the norm is for people where we live, as pretty much all of our friends have moved here for university or work. So far, our son is taking after daddy.

For what it's worth, your husband's way of speaking is what people from outside the UK normally think of when they imagine "British English".

[Iversen]

Finnish. I thought that the letter ä was pronounced as in English 'bear' because that's how it is pronounced in German, but then I saw that it should be pronounced rather more like the vowel in 'bad'. And thus my whole conception of how Finnish sounds was undermined in one fell swoop...

[kanewai]

There are a few words in English that I avoid: pomade, jalopy, and pasty/pastie. I can never remember what syllable the accent goes on, or what vowels are long or short, for pomade and jalopy. I've pronounced them wrong in my head for so long that now any variation sounds right, and I don't know off hand what the actual right version is.

As for pasty, pronounce it one way and it's something you eat in Michigan. Pronounce it a different way and it's something strippers wear. I can't keep straight which is which.

[chove]

Quite a few words that I read in a book somewhere and either didn't hear spoken or didn't connect to the spoken word for whatever reason. "Panache" for instace I thought was "panash" and the word I kept reading was said "pan-ache" (a bit like "panic"). That's what happens when you read a lot as a child, I suppose!

And I was about 12 before I realised that the name "Siobahn" was the one I thought was "Shavonne". To be fair to me that's not an English name, but still it's a bit shaming.

Oh, and for about a week I was pronoucing Spanish "ch" as in "loch" which I think must have been me confusing it with German.