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

[Soclydeza]

Not so much mispronunciation as using the wrong vowel, but after not practicing speaking German for a while I would add in "ich bin ein bisschen eingerüstet" (when I really should have been saying "eingerostet", meaning "rusty") when speaking with people. Either the Germans knew my mistake or they legitimately thought "I was a bit scaffolded".

[Sizen]

The entire Japanese language? Learning about pitch accent late in the game because basically no ressources mention it and then hoping you just pick it up naturally like the rest of the language when you do learn about it isn't the optimal strategy, it would seem. Months of work is starting to pay off, though, and now I notice how bad my pitch accent was before. To think I used to fool myself into thinking my accent was all over the place because I spent time in both Osaka and Tokyo.

In French, I also somehow convinced myself that you do actually pronounce the 'g' in amygdale since the 'g' is pronounced in words like paradigme. Honestly, not a terrible thing because it's not a word I use often, but the one time it did come up, my dad gave me a funny look and now I don't make that mistake anymore.

As for English, I had a hard time with the word "political" for a long time. In theory, I knew how to say it. I could imagine its pronunciation in my minds ear clear as anything. But as soon as I tried to say it, hello "poli-TIckle".

[Jaleel10]

The Spanish double LL

I blame the English language. We pronounce tortilla as tortía

It's even like this in the Wikipedia article lol

tortilla (English: /tɔːrˈtiːə/, Spanish: [toɾˈtiʎa])

[Jim]

I made it to my twenties before I discovered in conversation with a colleague that hyperbole is not pronounced “hyper-bowl”. Quite embarrassing at the time.

In French I always struggle with bureaucratie and in fact anything ending -cratie.

[garyb]

I'll be honest: the correct pronunciation of hyperbole is news to me! I'm sure I've heard others pronounce it like "bowl" too. Fortunately it's not a word I use much in conversation.

[Random Review]

I'll need to swing briefly off topic for a couple of paragraphs, but you'll see why when I get back on.

This thread reminds me of something I noticed when teaching phonics. The two main target accents people choose, at least in China, are RP (think Queen of England) and GA (General American). According to my older students in their teens, both these standards are acceptable to the Chinese exam system; but any deviation from them or mixing of the two will be penalised. I tend to believe them about this, Chinese local teachers were always asking foreign teachers if such and such a pronunciation was "standard".

I realised that as far as the Chinese exam system is concerned, all British teachers in the centre mispronounced many words, because not one of us spoke RP. This made things tough when teaching phonics or pronunciation, and some of us had to work hard to modify our pronunciation in these classes (others didn't think it is important and perhaps they were right).

So, back on topic: the teacher from Yorkshire and the teacher from the English Midlands didn't make a distinction between /ʌ/ and
/ʊ/, pronouncing both as [ʊ], thus for them "book" and "buck" (for example) were homophones. I lived in Yorkshire for 14 years and never noticed them doing this until I started teaching English, but they do! At least these two teachers had spelling as an aid to help them in the classroom, my situation was much worse.

In Scotland, we don't distinguish between /ʊ/ and /u:/, we pronounce both like our "long u" (which is not the standard [u:] and [ju:] either, I should add!*1). So for me, "foot' and "root" rhyme and "pool" and "pull" are homophones.The first few times I taught this, I actually took in a piece of paper with IPA to refer to, because otherwise I had no way of knowing which words were pronounced which way. Obviously after a while I learned all the common /ʊ/ words by heart and eventually developed a feel for it.

The interesting thing here is that I was aware of this phoneme and could reproduce it due to learning German (it is their "short u"), but in spite of this and of living in England at the time I was studying German, I had never noticed that English and American people make this distinction! I first became aware of it in Spain, when a student asked me the rules for "long u": when do you use /u:/ and when /ju:/. I said I would look it up and get back to them. Imagine my consternation when one of the first rules I read was that "long u" is always /ju:/ after /b/. I thought this was utter nonsense! "Just off the top of my head, what about 'bull'", I thought! An hour down a Google rabbit hole later on and things were starting to become clearer.

My other problem is my other phonemes are all over the place from the point of view of the bipolar standard of GA or RP.
My "short a" is /a/ as in RP not /æ/ as in GA *2.
My "long o" is /oʊ/ is in GA, not /əʊ/ is in RP
My "long i" is all over the place (see below)
My accent is rhotic like GA and unlike RP
My "short o" is /ɒ/ like RP and not /ɑ/ like GA
Etc, etc, etc...so many more!
What the hell was I supposed to tell parents who asked if something was "standard"?

Teaching English is a great way to get more aware of your L1 phonology (and especially of your particular L1 dialect). It is such a surprising journey! Who knew that English people and most (but not all) Americans don't distinguish between /ɔr/ and /or/, for example pronouncing "for" and "fore" as homophones? I certainly never suspected it. In Scottish English we even have a few minimal pairs like "or-ore" and "for-fore", so the difference is phonemic for us (which is why I used slashes rather than square brackets above). I learned the truth when looking at the materials for a phonics lesson in which "sport" and "port" were grouped with other <or> words like "fork" and "born" and
not with the <ore> words (for me these two words and similar ones are pronounced /ort/ not /ɔrt/). What a misleading way to group the words, I thought, surely students will get confused! I mentioned it to an English colleague and was stunned when he had no idea what I was talking about. He said they were grouped logically by grapheme (<or> versus <ore>), because the phoneme is, he said, the same!!! I was even more shocked (as was the other Scottish guy) when a quick straw poll around the office revealed that we were the only ones that made this phonemic distinction.

We don't realise how much other native speakers rely on context to understand people who speak a different dialect. It shows up in place names and when there is an unclear context, though. In most of England, "poor" and "pour" are homophones but not in Scotland. Neither I nor they ever noticed this in normal speech; but it was noticed in place names. The pedestrian shopping street in Sheffield is called the Moor, which they pronounce like "door". I often got corrected for pronouncing it to rhyme with "lure". Similarly I once got sent by my boss to buy some Vegemite. This is not a well-known product in the UK. My dialect makes a vowel length distinction that isn't made in England, so for me, "side" and "sighed" don't rhyme (being /səɪd/ and /saɪd/ respectivly). AFAIR The first conversation I had went more or less as follows:

Me: Do you have any Vegemite ([vɛdʒeməɪʔ])?
Shop assistant: Vegemate ([vɛdʒɪmeɪt])? What's that?
Me: Not Vegemate. Vegemite.
Shop Assistant: I don't think so. I can ask. What is it?
Me: It's a bit like Marmite.
Shop assistant: Oh! Vegemite ([vɛdʒɪmaɪt]).
Me (laughing): OK. (best English accent) Vegemite ([vɛdʒɪmaɪt])

Whether this amounts to pronouncing it wrong, as per the thread topic, would be a political issue perhaps best not entered into; but I hope it was interesting enough to be considered relevant.

*1 According to Wikipedia, my "long u" should be either [ʉ] or [ʏ]. A little time playing around with this https://jbdowse.com/ipa/ wonderful site, convinces me that mine is closer to [ʉ].
*2 By convention the IPA for RP lists this vowel for "short a" as the phoneme /æ/. If you talk to British speakers, you will soon see that phonetically it is much closer to [a] than [æ] for most speakers. Similarly it lists "short e" as the phoneme /e/, when phonetically it is definitely [ɛ] not [e]. I don't know why they do that, but it must be very misleading for students!

[Deinonysus]

I'll need to swing briefly off topic for a couple of paragraphs, but you'll see why when I get back on.

This thread reminds me of something I noticed when teaching phonics. The two main target accents people choose, at least in China, are RP (think Queen of England) and GA (General American). According to my older students in their teens, both these standards are acceptable to the Chinese exam system; but any deviation from them or mixing of the two will be penalised. I tend to believe them about this, Chinese local teachers were always asking foreign teachers if such and such a pronunciation was "standard".

I realised that as far as the Chinese exam system is concerned, all British teachers in the centre mispronounced many words, because not one of us spoke RP. This made things tough when teaching phonics or pronunciation, and some of us had to work hard to modify our pronunciation in these classes (others didn't think it is important and perhaps they were right).

So, back on topic: the teacher from Yorkshire and the teacher from the English Midlands didn't make a distinction between /ʌ/ and /ʊ/, pronouncing both as /ʊ/, thus for them "book" and "buck" (for example) were homophones. I lived in Yorkshire for 14 years and never noticed them doing this until I started teaching English, but they do! At least these two teachers had spelling as an aid to help them in the classroom, my situation was much worse.

In Scotland, we don't distinguish between /ʊ/ and /u:/, we pronounce both like our "long u" (which is not the standard /u:/ and /ju:/ either, I should add!*1). So for me, "foot' and "root" rhyme and "pool" and "pull" are homophones.The first few times I taught this, I actually took in a piece of paper with IPA to refer to, because otherwise I had no way of knowing which words were pronounced which way. Obviously after a while I learned all the common /ʊ/ words by heart and eventually developed a feel for it.

The interesting thing here is that I was aware of this phoneme and could reproduce it due to learning German (it is their "short u"), but in spite of this and of living in England at the time I was studying German, I had never noticed that English and American people make this distinction! I first became aware of it in Spain, when a student asked me the rules for "long u": when do you use /u:/ and when /ju:/. I said I would look it up and get back to them. Imagine my consternation when one of the first rules I read was that "long u" is always /ju:/ after /b/. I thought this was utter nonsense! "Just off the top of my head, what about 'bull'", I thought! An hour down a Google rabbit hole later on and things were starting to become clearer.

My other problem is my other phonemes are all over the place from the point of view of the bipolar standard of GA or RP.
My "short a" is /a/ as in RP not /æ/ as in GA *2.
My "long o" is /oʊ/ is in GA, not /əʊ/ is in RP
My "long i" is all over the place (see below)
My accent is rhotic like GA and unlike RP
My "short o" is /ɒ/ like RP and not /ɑ/ like GA
Etc, etc, etc...so many more!
What the hell was I supposed to tell parents who asked if something was "standard"?

Teaching English is a great way to get more aware of your L1 phonology (and especially of your particular L1 dialect). It is such a surprising journey! Who knew that English people and most (but not all) Americans don't distinguish between /ɔr/ and /or/, for example pronouncing "for" and "fore" as homophones? I certainly never suspected it. In Scottish English we even have a few minimal pairs like "or-ore" and "for-fore", so the difference is phonemic for us (which is why I used slashes rather than square brackets above). I learned the truth when looking at the materials for a phonics lesson in which "sport" and "port" were grouped with other <or> words like "fork" and "born" and
not with the <ore> words (for me these two words and similar ones are pronounced /ort/ not /ɔrt/). What a misleading way to group the words, I thought, surely students will get confused! I mentioned it to an English colleague and was stunned when he had no idea what I was talking about. He said they were grouped logically by grapheme (<or> versus <ore>), because the phoneme is, he said, the same!!! I was even more shocked (as was the other Scottish guy) when a quick straw poll around the office revealed that we were the only ones that made this phonemic distinction.

We don't realise how much other native speakers rely on context to understand people who speak a different dialect. It shows up in place names and when there is an unclear context, though. In most of England, "poor" and "pour" are homophones but not in Scotland. Neither I nor they ever noticed this in normal speech; but it was noticed in place names. The pedestrian shopping street in Sheffield is called the Moor, which they pronounce like "door". I often got corrected for pronouncing it to rhyme with "lure". Similarly I once got sent by my boss to by some Vegemite. This is not a well-known product in the UK. My dialect makes a vowel length distinction that isn't made in England, so for me, "side" and "sighed" don't rhyme (being /səɪd/ and /saɪd/ respectivly). AFAIR The first conversation I had went more or less as follows:

Me: Do you have any Vegemite ([vɛdʒeməɪʔ])?
Shop assistant: Vegemate ([vɛdʒɪmeɪt])? What's that?
Me: Not Vegemate. Vegemite.
Shop Assistant: I don't think so. I can ask. What is it?
Me: It's a bit like Marmite.
Shop assistant: Oh! Vegemite ([vɛdʒɪmaɪt]).
Me (laughing): OK. (best English accent) Vegemite ([vɛdʒɪmaɪt])

Whether this amounts to pronouncing it wrong, as per the thread topic, would be a political issue perhaps best not entered into; but I hope it was interesting enough to be considered relevant.

*1 According to Wikipedia, my "long u" should be either [ʉ] or [ʏ]. A little time playing around with this https://jbdowse.com/ipa/ wonderful site, convinces me that mine is closer to [ʉ].
*2 By convention the IPA for RP lists this vowel for "short a" as the phoneme /æ/. If you talk to British speakers, you will soon see that phonetically it is much closer to [a] than [æ] for most speakers. Similarly it lists "short e" as the phoneme /e/, when phonetically it is definitely [ɛ] not [e]. I don't know why they do that, but it must be very misleading for students!

I agree completely. When I started this thread, my intention was to discuss foreign language words that you had not been mispronouncing, not words in your own language that you pronounce in a nonstandard way. But I never specified, so I can't fault some posters for going there.

I do think that words in your own language that don't conform to the standard spelling rules, and that you have never heard out loud, can be called true mispronunciations and aren't just a dialectical difference. "Hyperbole" is a good example that people have mentioned. If you have only ever seen it written, you would not know that it follows English's rules for pronouncing Greek words rather than standard English rules, and you will get "Hyper-bowl". I made the same mistake with the Greek goddess Persephone, and J. K. Rowling became so frustrated with people mispronouncing Hermione that she had her say it phonetically in Book 4. Another example for would be that I used to mispronounce "rendezvous" as renn-dezz-vuss because I didn't realize it was a French loanword.

Dialectical differences such as saying "hoose" instead of "house", "wourder" instead of "water" or "ax" instead of "ask" are clearly not mispronunciations and they are correct for that speaker.

[Djedida]

Placate. I always thought it was plas-ate, it's play-kate.

[Djedida]

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.

Similarly, I used to pronounce "grotesque" as graw-teh-skew when I was younger.

[eido]

I always have trouble pronouncing technical words in English. Since I read about languages most often in this context, I mess up a lot. The word "agglutinative" was an instant mess-up. I had to use it in a speech I was doing about East Asian languages, and before I looked it up, I was sub-vocalizing it as "aggloo-nihtihve". I find I mix up vowels and shorten words when things get too long or foreign. I guess I just need more patience and exposure to foreign words.

As for Spanish, sometimes I forget the stress patterns of the language if I haven't practiced in a while. I think this is because we never were taught explicitly the stress patterns in class. So while I'm fairly sure how to pronounce new words, sometimes I end up guessing, and guessing wrong. I know, I could just look up how to pronounce certain words or what the stress pattern is, but for some reason it's easier for me to intuit the process rather than memorize it.

The other day I forgot how to pronounce an important word - "estuvo" (was) - and spent 2 minutes trying to figure out if the stress fell on the U or the O. I finally decided it had to fall on the U because it's an irregular verb and conjugation, but damn if it didn't have me going there.