Mispronunciations That Drive You Nuts

[ixchel]

Car-dee-ya-zem.

It's car-di-zem. Or dil-ti-ya-zem.

Cardiazem isn't a real thing.

Can I get an amen?!

[KeepItRealRN, BSN, RN]

I hate when people pronounce mature as maTOUR .

I have no idea if this is the correct or not but my psychology professor said this word a lot and it drove me mad.

That is probably the correct way to say it but we are used to hearing it pronounced as

Mature = Mu Churr (lazy)

Mature = Ma TOUR (probably correct)

It is like the word water. I was speaking to nurse who was originally from South America about learning English and she gave me this example.

"When I learned English, the liquid that comes out of the tap and that you can buy in bottles for drinking is called water."

wa - TER

When I came to America they pronounced this word "wa-DER".

I asked what is this word "wa DER"?

To her ears wa-DER and wa-TER were two totally different words. And the correct pronunciation is wa-TER. But in most of America we say it the lazy way with a "D" that is not there.

[ixchel]

In middle school, I was in choir, and one of the first things we were told was that pop artists pronounce Ts followed by the word 'you' as 'ch'.

As in, "I can't live, if living is withou-choo."

Now I can't unhear it.

I'm annoyed by the name Martin as well. It's commonly pronounced all "Britishy", Mar'in.

I just now heard my daughter say "ea'en", as in, eaten.

The letter T is dying a terrible and painful death. This gives me a sad.

[KeepItRealRN, BSN, RN]

The "t" has been dead in the word "often" for quiet some time. In fact so long that the pronunciation

off - fen

and

off - ten

are both in Websters dictionary as acceptable pronunciations.

[shirokuma]

Work-related:

Orientate

Check the dictionary on orient vs orientate. Interchangeable...

[shirokuma]

Someone mentioned metoprolol....I've always wondered how it's supposed to be pronounced as I hear it both ways all the time.

So is it:

met-oh-pro-lol

OR

meh-tope-pro-lol

As long as it's not "metroprolol"

[canigraduate]

Some of these are hilarious. I was raised in the South, where many of these "mispronunciations" are the dialect.

My daddy still says "warsh", we "cut" on and off everything from the lights to the car, my grandma calls a soda pop a "dope", and every nurse I ran across who had been practicing for more than 20 years said "sontimeters of water" instead of "centimeters of suction".

I had to be reeducated on my "pronunciation" every time I moved!

Thank you all for your examples, they brought back good memories of the people who used them.

[Canucker2014]

Pretty much all basic grammatical errors drive me crazy. Also, the misuse of the word "literal" or "literally".

I'm pretty sure you didn't literally tear someone apart, when you yelled at them.

[celiza9]

YES, but there is a difference between putting the emPHASis on the wrong syllABLE and omitting/adding entire letters and syllables. Even if you encounter a word while reading, it's simply lazy not to sound it out and apply basic pronunciation rules.

[silverbat]

I had a patient once who was a frequent flier, so that is why this has stuck with me. Instead of Darvocet, he would say darcevet.

[canigraduate]

My husband says oh-MEZ-a-prole instead of oh-MEP-ra-zole. I think it's cute when he does it, but it drives me nuts when other nurses say it.

[nrsang97, BSN, RN]

My mom says darbacet for Darvocet. Drove me nuts. She also says neato natal icu for neonatal icu.

[LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN]

Heard this gem: conjection for congestion. Just