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Pronunciation Advice

I am hardly an authority on correct pronunciation, but I have noticed some pronunciations that jar.

I have two motivations in developing this page. In an ideal world, perhaps pronunciation shouldn't matter if your meaning is clear. But in the real world it does. Further, I conjecture that an increased sensitivity for language will also help in writing better.

Below, I list some words that seem to cause trouble for many people. I won't presume to tell you how to pronounce them, but if you are curious, you can check for yourself. I often look up dictionary.com. If you are sure about something and the online sources seem to disagree, it helps to look up another dictionary -- one of the old hardcopy variety.

Tricky Words

Quite Common

  1. LaTeX
  2. Wednesday
  3. academic and academy
  4. adhere
  5. adieu
  6. affect and effect
  7. allow
  8. assume and assumption
  9. author
  10. authoring
  11. axiom
  12. career
  13. compilation
  14. debt
  15. determine
  16. equivalence
  17. etc.
  18. expertise
  19. generic
  20. incumbent
  21. indices
  22. infinite and finite
  23. Internet
  24. intuition (also tuition)
  25. iterate (also iteration and iterative)
  26. listen
  27. manipulate
  28. mathematics
  29. methodology
  30. Mississippi
  31. morale
  32. necessary (also necessity)
  33. occur
  34. oracle
  35. overarching
  36. paradigm and paradigmatic
  37. phenomenon
  38. possible
  39. premise and surmise
  40. prerogative
  41. prevalence
  42. pronunciation
  43. rationale
  44. referral
  45. rumor
  46. sphere (dictionary.com seems to be wrong on this one)
  47. swap
  48. technology
  49. tier
  50. world
  51. yield

Somewhat Rare

  1. Antarctica
  2. Arctic
  3. Galois
  4. accept
  5. adobe
  6. amphitheater
  7. arbiter
  8. architecture
  9. baccalaureate
  10. breakfast
  11. cabal
  12. causal
  13. chase
  14. contract
  15. courteous
  16. definitely
  17. delay and defense
  18. desideratum and desiderata
  19. expand
  20. feasible
  21. fiery
  22. genre
  23. hazard
  24. lethargy
  25. library
  26. litigious
  27. longitude
  28. lose versus loose
  29. maximum
  30. mortgage
  31. onion
  32. only
  33. oven
  34. plan
  35. police
  36. psyche (noun versus verb)
  37. quality
  38. question
  39. realtor
  40. renege
  41. respite
  42. rete
  43. sigma
  44. significant
  45. spaghetti
  46. spurious
  47. success
  48. succinct
  49. target
  50. tether
  51. threshold
  52. vignette
  53. widget
  54. where (also while)
  55. wizard