LOL one of my local news stations has errors almost daily. The ribbon running at the

bottom really takes a hit. I think this is where the Interns get their practice? LOL We

are still chuckling about one a couple of weeks ago. It was an announcement

for a local Apple Orchard and their "U Pick". It said, "Don't forget we now have

U Pick at both our local Applies Orchards." Not sure if we wanted to pick our

own "applies" or not.

A church I go into has a food pantry. One day I noticed that the signs outside had the word ”pantry” three times, but one occurrence actually read ”The panty is open (these hours)”. A couple of staff volunteers were walking by and I pointed it out, and they were of course shocked and amused! It took a few weeks to have new signs put up, but I noticed last week that all was well. The funny thing is, the incorrect signs had been up a long time and even I, who usually notice those things, hadn’t noticed.

I was in a Walmart a few years ago and I noticed the store manager standing nearby. I could not resist and told him that the word laxatives was spelled incorrectly on their overhead aisle sign. It was printed as "laxitives". He chuckled and said that it could not be as the signs were the same nationwide, throughout the chain. I told him to go in the aisle and check out the little boxes of the product. A few weeks later I noticed a printed piece of paper taped over the sign with the correct spelling.

Winning.

I worked for a company that just happened to have the same last name as me. To be fair, there are a few ways to spell the name, but it’s kind of a well-known name. (If you live in Canada, you know one of the alternative spellings well.) I was always correcting my coworkers on their spelling of the name. I always resorted to ”look at your paycheck” which had the name spelled correctly.

This reminded me of a funny segment Ellen DeGeneres did on her show..."What's Wrong With These Signs? Signs." Pretty crazy what you find!

My daughter was at a business where an employee read her name back to her off of her computer screen and mispronounced it. My daughter corrected her. The employee told her she was wrong it was pronounced "this way". DD just burst out laughing and left her there confused.

“Be Best”

This kind of stuff drives me crazy. Reading your posts I got whiplash shaking my head in agreement.

My last name starts with "N". Every time I spell it out, the person repeats back "M". I've taken to saying "N as in Nancy". Then I ended up with Nancy as my name. I can't win.

ETA going with floral's calling out

‘Whipplash’? 😉

We repeat people's emails, postal codes etc back phonetically in my job. I use the Alpha, Bravo, Charlie etc with a couple of changes. I use Llama and Susan and unicorn or umbrella. Just makes it easier for people to understand. And always use November for the n.

Darn bpath, you sure have me curious,

"I use Llama..."

Lima may be a better choice, that's what L is in the so-called NATO phonetic alphabet.

The correct pronunciation of llama is "yama".

I think it's highly entertaining and always has been. There used to be books devoted to bloopers, columns in newspapers devoted to bloopers, you could buy records of bloopers and there were film reels of bloopers. People make mistakes, and with language it's often amusing.

Happens here as well. I've seen plenty of typos/bloopers in topic titles and replies.

English is complicated. There are so many ways to mess up.

Need a free cousin? This was off a local FB sale page not long ago.

I once went to a shop in Austin that had a coffee bar with a chalkboard menu with the word "Expresso" on it. I pointed out to the young woman who worked there that this word was misspelled and that there is no "X" in standard Italian. She argued with me that her spelling was correct, and she told me that she could prove it because she had information from Italy for their machine. I said, "Fine. Go ahead and prove it." So she went to the back of the store to get the information from Italy and had to admit that she was wrong. She then corrected the spelling on the chalk board to "Espresso."

Speaking of Italian, I once went to a restaurant in Paso Robles that had previously been a Belgian restaurant with excellent breakfast and brunch food, but it had been converted to an Italian restaurant. I asked the woman at the front when the restaurant had been changed, and she told me that it had only been a few months. Then she wanted me to look at her menu, which I did.

On the menu, one item was described as "raviolis" and I told her that the word "ravioli" is already plural and that the final "s" was not necessary. She became rather indignant and sarcastic, and so I left the restaurant. I was not in the mood for Italian food anyway, and I especially was not in the mood for her attitude.

When I was in Italy, women (but not men) would correct me when I made mistakes while speaking Italian, and I was grateful for this. They seemed interested in helping me speak correct Italian. If I had made a lot of mistakes, they probably would not have bothered, but my Italian is reasonably good.

Is that L word pronounced LEE-mah or LIE-mah? 😉LOL

While watching a newscast recently, the reporter said that the person being interviewed by police was secretive. But he pronounced it as "see-CREET-ive " As if to secrete a body fluid. Cringe-worthy.

Lars, I'm with you. Misspelled or mispronounced foreign words on menus and signs in restaurants and other food establishments became annoying and not amusing for me long ago. Such weak efforts accomplish the opposite of what's intended - instead of appearing sophisticated and worldly, to me, misuse screams out "inept and ignorant".

An experience I may have shared before, one day I was having lunch at a French restaurant (one NOT run by someone of Francophone origin). When we were done eating and the plates cleared, the table server came to us and said "Would you be interested in dessert? Our special today is homemade "bay gun ettes". I thought hmm, never heard of that. "Could I see the menu please" I asked.

She came back with the list of the day's specials printed on a sheet of paper. There for desserts it said "Beignets au sucre". I said "Oh, I see. These are French sugared doughnuts, but it's pronounced Ben Yay." She smiled and said "I'll go check with the chef". She came back and reported "He said the right way to say it is Bay Gun Ettes". I declined, figuring, if he couldn't pronounce what he was making, he was less likely than otherwise to make it correctly. I haven't been back (not just because of this), I'm not sure if they're still open.

LOL!! It's really tough being perfect, isn't it?? I love that none of us seems capable of making a tiny mistake now and again. Heaven forbid!! 🥴

"Is that L word pronounced LEE-mah or LIE-mah?"

The first if referring to the city in Peru, the second if the town in Ohio or the bean. When I've heard it used for phonetic spelling, it was Lee ma.

Q is Quebec. Canadians, at least the Francophone ones, say Kay bec or Ka bec, unlike the American pronunciation that sticks in a W sound - Kwe bec.

FWIW, I just finished listening to this earlier. It's about how English words got their confusing spellings and pronunciations. The historical reasons and origin stories are fascinating, and Okrent relates how so many pronunciations have changed over time and why.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/corpse-corps-horse-and-worse/

"In 1920, a Dutch writer named Gerard Nolst Trenité published a poem in English titled The Chaos, designed to draw attention to English spelling and pronunciation — and all the confusion its absurdities have let loose upon the world. It begins “Dearest creature in creation; Studying English pronunciation; I will teach you in my verse; Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse” and ends: “Hiccough has the sound of ‘cup’…. My advice is—give it up!”

The absurdity of this poem works because, frankly, when it comes to English spelling and pronunciation, there is plenty of rhyme and very little reason. But what is the reason for that? Why among all European languages is English so uniquely chaotic today?

To help us answer that question, we spoke with linguist and longtime friend of the show, Arika Okrent, author of the new book Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme and Other Oddities of the English Language. In it, Arika explores the origins of those phonetic paradoxes, and it turns out some of the reasons for confusion are as counterintuitive as the words themselves."

And IMPO, judging people simply because of the way they pronounce words is very unkind.

If you're referring to my restaurant comment, I think you misunderstood what I said or I explained it poorly. Mispronouncing or misspelling a foreign word in that context is, in my view, a failed effort to be pretentious and appear worldly and I believe has the opposite impact. Customer facing staff need to be trained on how to speak to customers. The examples are too many, and I'm sure all have seen

Ceaser salad

Sole mueniere (or other mangling)

Raviolis as lars mentioned, same with cannolis

Reisling wine

Also mispronunciations of many wine varietals, the traditional ones of which are French in origin. I've heard Cabinet Sow vig non in a restaurant, as an example, also Pee nut no ire..

Elizabeth that's exactly why I use llama. I don't know whether it's rightly pronounced as Liema or Leema.

How about "L as in loony"? Especially well understood in Canada, eh?

Loonie is a Canadian coin.

Loony means crazy.

Looney Tunes has characters, some suffering from rhotacism.

🙂

Maybe they are Nigerian

I know, roxsol, I'm very aware of the two different words and their different spelling. This is for oral communication that jasdip was describing. Are the two words pronounced differently? If not, your comment adds nothing to my suggestion.

If someone said L as in …..I would go with Lama. 🙂

My favorite was (probably still exists) the warning on the side of the RR track over a viaduct near DS's HS, one of the top ten schools in the US: "Low Clarence". Worse, it took me two years to *notice* this -- probably since I knew without looking what it should say.

There used to be an office building in our area which housed a legal firm. They had a permanent sign affixed to the building, in elaborate writing. It said "Smith and Smith, Attorney's at Law."

Attorney's what?

It wasn't Smith and Smith. I don't remember the name.

Wrongly using an apostrophe for a plural, non-possessive word is all too common. It's seen frequently in this forum.

You'd expect lawyers to be a bit more on the ball with smarts, language and spelling but not all are. I've met some who were rather dim-witted, so there's a range that dips lower than you'd think. I wonder if they didn't notice it or were too cheap to pay for it to be fixed? Or something else?

I've a hunch those lawyers did not make their sign nor put it up either 😄

And calling/considering people one doesn't know 'pretentious' is being judgemental. I think it's a.k.a. 'prejudice'.

I would expect that the company fabricating the metal sign would see the error. Hahaha.

Many years ago, the plant manager of our company was leaving. A massive banner was professionally made, and all 400 employees would gather for a photo.

The facilities department was on our hall, and when the banner was delivered, they rolled it out in the hallway. It read "Goodby Bob!" When I pointed out that they left off an e, I was told that the sign was too short and the letters wouldn't fit. Uh-huh.

The official photo was taken with the spelling error.

A language group that I’m in is pretty much even,y divided between prescriptivists and descriptivists. I count myself in the middle. There are lengthy threads about pronunciation of non-English words and names. The point of contention arises when a foreign word is used in the local lexicon.

I recall that the Québec tourist board promoted the slogan ”Québec: say it with a French accent” or something like that. I just asked DH, a native of Ontario (with a sibling in Quebec) how he pronounces it. ”Kwebek” he says. No French accent there lol.

As for me, language and pronunciation change. Spellings are, for the most part, set.

When DH and I were dating 40 years ago, and Mexican restaurants were a new thing here, we overheard the people at the next table ordering "kweezadillos". We just about went cross eyed suppressing our amusement but it's a sad truth that Australians are generally very ignorant of other languages. But "kweezadillos" has become the family name for them :-)

I also had a discussion with a girl in an icecream shop which offered a flavour called "poissonberry". I pointed out that it should be spelled "Boysenberry". She was sure her sign was correct. I replied, first off, it's named after Chrles Boysen, who bred the first Boysenberry. Second, who would eat something called (if you assume it's a typo) "Poison berry"? Third, if you want to get really picky, "poisson" is French for fish, so back to point two, who would eat something called "fish berry"?

• Dewey, Cheatum and Howe, Attorney's at Law
• We do diligence

A local pizza parlor had pizza with ”muchrooms” on the menu. I don’t know if that was intentional, but I sure do like plenty of mushrooms on my pizza!

My father once worked with a guy who peppered his speech with ”per se.”

Maybe that’s what I’ll name my next boat.

We had friends in the early 70s who named their boat the Sakatume. Laugh-In had been a big hit.

When I managed a store one young lady decided to quit, so she left me a note, "I quite!"

Now that’s funny!

If you ever go to the Decorating or Home Building forums, you see the ”Dinning Room” from time to time, and pretty soon someone corrects it.

All of you interested might really enjoy The History of English podcast. Very thorough, very clear, many episodes.

I consider myself to have a better than average grasp of grammar and spelling -- but it's degraded over time. I read and re-read "sooth" in the OP and didn't see that it should have been "soothe" until vgkg's clever comment!

The fact that anyone can post anything on social media for all to see is a double-edged sword. Good that we hear from a wide range of people with a wide range of background, but bad that not everyone uses same spellings and punctuations as me (that's meant as humorous sarcasm, hope it worked!) -- LOL

Also autocorrect is the work of the Devil!

Spelling matters to me, it's a minor pet peeve. Plural vs possessive errors make me twitchy and that's endemic now. You'd think I'd be getting used to it.

However autocorrect has "helpfully" changed so many of my words into into the wrong form. It's humbling for me to read a post of mine and see the error after it's online. Thank God for the edit button!

I obsessively proofread my comments, and frequently hit that edit button multiple times, yet still find typos after submitting 🙃

I am forgiving of other's mistakes, since I don't expect very many people do the same as I do.

Laceyvail, History of English is a fascinating podcast. I'm only a few dozen episodes in. He has also been referencing his separate work on letters, is that also a podcast?

We have a local commercial here. It's a JEWELRY STORE. The speaker says jewlery six times during the presentation. GRRRR

yaya, if I understand what you're saying, I think jewl-ry (two syllables) is a common and accepted pronunciation alternative. Just as library is lie brer ee for some and lie-bree for others.

I see it all the time in news articles. It's annoying. I sometimes spell things wrong here when I first type them up or use the wrong word altogether, but I will go back and fix my mistakes later if I notice them, and I'm not a professional who should know how to spell and punctuate. If you're working at a news organization you should do it right. I also write a lot of run-on sentences, but again, I'm not a professional writer.

Working from home we have a list made every month for a tally sheet to keep track of calls we get. The person who made the list misspelled my very common last name this month. It annoys me every time I pull it up. My name is only 5 letters long.

Some folks say joo-ler-y, and some folks say noo-kew-ler and Feb-yew-ary, and my old supervisor always pronounced 'fiscal' as 'physical'.

I have no idea if those same people spell those words correctly. I have no reason to presume they don't.

Last night I was watching a video and the host pronounced Socrates 'sew-crates'.

P.S. Here's what my dictionary has to relate about the origin of word 'soothe':

Old English sōthian‘verify, show to be true,’ from sōth‘true’ (see sooth). In the 16th cent. the verb passed through the senses ‘corroborate (a statement),’‘humor (a person) by expressing assent’ and ‘flatter by one's assent,’ whence ‘mollify, appease’ (late 17th cent).