Comments
British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)
I don't really see that as the same thing as what the article was pointing out. Those are shibboleths that only an insider would know. You have to get the pronunciation of Cholmondeley or Couch "right" to pass for an insider.
The random misspellings, missing spaces, sloppy grammar, etc in the examples in the article seem different to me. Misspelling "en route" as "enriewu" doesn't show, "look, I know the secret country club spelling for en route". It simply shows that you don't have to care about your mistakes. You write something that approximates what you mean, and you're too important to spend time revising. The mistake could be "enrout" or "n route" or on any other word. But you're not going to be a try-hard who edits and frets over their messages, you're blessing someone with 10 seconds of your attention and they're lucky to receive your correspondence, typos and all.
By farisa_lives 2026-03-1118:24 It's absolutely a power move, but it's also what happens when people are surrounded by sycophants who never correct them and will take time to decipher what they mean.
And over years, sloppy typing (forgivable) evolves into sloppy thinking.
Or its a simple signifier that the author was human, and that a real person is trying to convince you of something. I've experimented with putting minor grammar mistakes into my work of the sort that would be frowned upon, but are not strictly invalid. The existence of any kind of mistake makes the work sound "human".
By coldtea 2026-03-1122:29 Don't know about that as a general rule, since spam messages have had typos and mistakes in them since forever, and its precisely what marks them as not trustworthy.
By robhlt 2026-03-121:15 More like signaling that a specific human wrote it themselves instead of one of their human assistants. The article is mostly about emails from the Epstein files so non-human authorship wasn't really a possibility at the time they were written.
By MichaelZuo 2026-03-1120:24 Who said signalling would be limited to just 1 thing at a time?
By tracker1 2026-03-1118:58 I don't necessarily think it's that... it's just a matter of a rush to respond/send quickly and not take a lot of time. It's pretty easy to either fat-finger when typing on a keyboard, or gesture input on a phone to get the wrong word and you hit send before realizing.
Sometimes I'll notice right after, delete and re-reply (social media) other times I'll just let it be... It's pedantic busy bodies that will single you out for a typo as opposed to discussing the idea at hand.
The "enriewu" thing wasn't a misspelling of "en route", it was someone's name who had arrived in Miami with Jean-Luc and Peggy. It's probably a misspelling of Henry pronounced in French.
By cluckindan 2026-03-120:16 Henry Wu is the Jurassic Park character who figured out how to produce viable hybrid embryos.
By andai 2026-03-1119:04 >It simply shows that you don't have to care about your mistakes.
Interesting, is that the equivalent of billionaires wearing sweatpants?
By jbl0ndie 2026-03-1122:09 You could also blame the constant negative press covfefe
By gabrielsroka 2026-03-1118:031 reply > misstake
I see what you did there. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
By fractallyte 2026-03-1118:33 A smelling pistake
But Houston Street is older than Sam Houston, and was always pronounced that way.
By adi_kurian 2026-03-122:48 My Scottish mate with the surname Houston would side with the Texans, on this one.
By steveklabnik 2026-03-1119:001 reply And likewise, Austin has a bunch of names that are pronounced oddly.
By jasondigitized 2026-03-1119:41 Manchaca checking in
That's just centuries of change without updating spelling, a la Leicester or Worcester.
By happymellon 2026-03-1120:28 Pronunciation inconsistency is due to all the invasions.
You should watch Map Men.
By strotter 2026-03-1120:33 In case you're wondering, Couch St. in Portland, Oregon, USA is pronounced "Cooch." It's named for 19th century ship captain and early businessman John H. Couch. It's the "C" street in the so-called Alphabet District north of Burnside, which is the "B" street. There are, or were, other landmarks named after Capt. Couch, but I'm not sure if any still exist.
By anonymousiam 2026-03-1120:57 There's also St. John, which for some odd reason is pronounced as sinjin.
https://old.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/12i3n9o/why_is_sain...
There's also the British penchant for deliberately mispronouncing French words. I have heard "renaissance" pronounced "reh-NAY-sance", "fillet" pronounced "fill-it", "valet" as "val-it" and so on. I think it's a national point of pride to pronounce the words of their neighbor incorrectly.
By jpfromlondon 2026-03-1116:374 reply America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift.
As to fillet and valet, they joined english before the contemporary french pronunciation, and are much closer to the middle-french.
I'm always amused by some mispronunciations that stray farther away from the original than necessary.
My favorite is probably crepe, which Americans pronounce like an almost diphthong-y craype (or crape like grape I guess) when crep (like step) would do just fine and be closer to the original.
But as a native French and basically-native American speaker, I also couldn't really care less about it, or about things like Americans pronouncing the t in croissant, or French people being unable to say the.
The plural is what gets me though crepes (just sounds weird as krehps vs krayps).
By rkomorn 2026-03-1119:38 I kinda get it, but you can say step and stehps, not stayps, so why not krehps?
I say it the American way when I speak English anyway because that's just how it is. :)
>America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift.
See also: Cairo, IL or Versailles, KY...
By teachrdan 2026-03-1117:55 Is the Illinois one the same pronunciation as "KAY-ro", Georgia?
By tigerlily 2026-03-1118:09 Notre Dame, IN
By nobody9999 2026-03-1117:471 reply Or Wilkes-Barre, PA
By sanswork 2026-03-1119:32 Delhi, Ca -> Del-High
Fontainebleau State Park -> Fountain Blue State Park
These were two off the ones that really stood out from my travels.
By unzadunza 2026-03-1119:37 Or Pueblo, Salida and Buena Vista CO
By canucker2016 2026-03-120:46 Detroit, MI
By _0ffh 2026-03-1120:11 Birmingham, AL
By dogmatism 2026-03-1119:36 Calais, ME
By dhosek 2026-03-1120:46 I’ve always said that one key difference between British English and American English is that a British speaker will intentionally mispronounce a foreign word, while an American will attempt to pronounce it correctly but get it wrong anyway.
By hnuser123456 2026-03-1117:30 Apparently, workers on the Gemini space program pronounced it "Jeh-mih-nee" back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gemini#Pronunciation
"Valet" and "cadet" is an interesting pair: they rhyme in French (/va.lɛ/ and /ka.dɛ/), but rhyming them in English would be ... unusual.
If there were just French words pronounced in a French way and English words which came from French and are now pronounced in an English way that would be bad enough but in fact we have a whole spectrum of bastardisation.
By sebzim4500 2026-03-1119:46 Interestingly in British english valet would rhyme with cadet if you were referring to a servant and not to someone who will park your car.
By OJFord 2026-03-1118:07 Those are the standard British pronunciations, if you meant 'I have heard' as though it might be a niche or occasional occurrence. ('fill-ay' et al. are AmE pronunciations.)
It's not always that way though, consider 'niche': it's AmE that decided it's 'nitch'!
Yep. And try "lieutenant" or "herb" on for size. (Edit: I guess "herb" is a bit of a complex one... originally from Latin's "herba" where the H was pronounced, but from UK it came most immediately from French's "herbe" with no H sound. So UK did somehow shortcut back to a more original sound.)
By klondike_klive 2026-03-120:16 Surely the American way of saying "REN-uh-saunce" is further from the French than the British pronunciation?
By gib444 2026-03-1119:22 It's a national past time for us Brits to annoy the French. Kind of how two cousins who don't like each other would behave at a family gathering
By mattmanser 2026-03-1117:41 So this isn't the British being deliberate obtuse, foreigners pronounce English words wrong all the time and we don't accuse them of doing it on purpose. They do it because that's how they would pronounce those words in their language.
Fillet/valet are mis-pronounced because of mallet, pallet, etc. Renaissance? Nail, snail, tail, etc.
It really is that simple, we're just pronouncing them as if they were an English word.
By coldtea 2026-03-1122:35 Well, I wouldn't piss on the British for that, when Louisville is pronounced "LOO-vul" and not "Lou-iss-ville".
And don't get me started on Des Moines, Boise, La Jolla (at least that has an excuse), Spokane, Versailles, Tucson, Willamette, ...
And the worst of all: Arkansas.
By loloquwowndueo 2026-03-1118:503 reply Plymouth -> plee-mooth not ply-mouth
Outsider! :-)
More like PLIM-uth. I guess there is no way to write it unambiguously in English
By loloquwowndueo 2026-03-1120:56 Not outsider - non-native speaker.
By coldtea 2026-03-1122:36 maybe "Pleemuth"?
I hope you aren't talking about the one in Massachusetts which is not pronounced either of those ways
By loloquwowndueo 2026-03-1120:55 No, im talking about this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_(software)
Here in Toronto area city of Vaughan pronounced as (/vɔːn/ or /vɑːn/) like in "dawn" or "gone"
Imaging me fresh from USSR asking someone how do I get to ... and getting blank stare
That's great. What's also amusing is how you felt it necessary to provide the diacritical pronunciation guide for "Vaughan"... because I think to most native English speakers we can't imagine any other pronunciation!
I think native English speaker who had never heard of Vaughan (sure we can find some of those) would likely to pronounce it like "Vog-un" - /ˈvɒɡən/ or "Vog-han" - /ˈvɑːɡən/
By trollierworm 2026-03-1119:26 This sent me down a mental rabbit hole, I think it's one of those interesting nuances that are rules that native speakers follow without being able to name it, or know it. I'm a native speaker, and also thought `vawn` was the most obvious pronounciation. I'm guessing it's because `augh` is perceived as a recognizable vowel cluster where `gh` tends to be silent (daughter, caught, naught, taught). The interesting twist for me is that `laugh` is in obvious counter example, until I realized that gh in final position (laugh, rough, enough) is almost always \f\. And further, in words like laughter, roughness, we immediately distinguish a modified root word from the lexical position.
Maybe there's also an interesting thread to pull on in that the pattern may be more pronounced for names (e.g. Hughes). Just ruminating here though, I don't have a source for any of this.
By b40d-48b2-979e 2026-03-1118:05 No, I don't think they would. I've never heard of Vaughan and assumed one syllable like the parent commenter.
By SoftTalker 2026-03-1118:042 reply No, "gh" is usually silent in English spelling.
augh is not as common as ough, but either one can make any sound in the whole syllabary.
How about Sequim, WA. Guess how to pronounciate that.
Or Puyallup, WA. Those two are definite shibboleth tests in the PNW.
By canucker2016 2026-03-120:49 and for our eastern neighbours: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (and Boise too)
My years of french class steered me wrong there.
There are a handful of neighborhood and street names used in Toronto (not necessarily from Toronto) that have unusual pronunciations. Here I'll give some triples of (English spelling, actual pronunciation (IPA), a naive pronunciation (IPA)):
(Yonge, [jʌŋ], [jɑndʒ]); (Strachan, [sdʒɹɑn], [ˈsdʒɹa.tʃæn]); (Tecumseth, [tə.ˈkʌm.zi], [ˈti.kəm.sɛθ]); (Markham, [ˈmɑr.kʌm], [ˈmɑrk.hæm]), (Etobicoke, [ɛ.ˈtoʊ.bɪ.koʊ], [ɛ.ˈtoʊ.bɪ.koʊk]).
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2cyg6bFeRc , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PmeDWvwD8M
By glitchc 2026-03-1119:37 That's because some are Indigenous names phoneticized for English speakers (Yonge and Markham on the other hand are entirely English names):
Etobicoke. From Adobigok [1]
Tecumseh (or Tecumseth). From tecumtha or takhamehse [2]
Mississauga. From Misi-zaagiing [3]
[1] https://www.etobicokehistorical.com/brief-history-of-etobico...
As a non-native English speaker I wonder if Leicester is naturally pronounced right for the natives, or has to be explicitly taught.
By sanswork 2026-03-1119:34 It has to be taught. Most english native speakers will say Lie-chester by default.
By loloquwowndueo 2026-03-1118:513 reply Typical in Toronto - remember there’s only one T in “Toronto”
By madcaptenor 2026-03-1119:43 There's also only one T in "Atlanta". (For some people there are none.)
By canucker2016 2026-03-1119:21 ...and the first o is silent, and the remaining o's are pronounced 'a'.
But the TV news reporters enunciate every letter in Toronto.
By FpUser 2026-03-1119:13 ROFL. I ignore this sacred rule
By broken-kebab 2026-03-1121:09 Did they? The article[1] seem to be in contradiction to the claim. For centuries it was rather easy to distinguish aristocracy without lingustic conspiracies. I'm really not an expert in British surnames however I know for sure that pop history is full of invented "fun facts" which are not true but persist cause they sound cool.
By jrflowers 2026-03-1119:29 Note that you only pronounce Couch that way in Portland when talking about the street. You wouldn’t maintain the pronunciation when saying eg “Sorry for spilling wine on your couch”
In New Orleans, protesters against outsiders acquiring and developing real estate hold up signs that read "Say Tchoupitoulas" (/ˌtʃɑp ə ˈtuː ləs/). I give my wife lots of hassle about the pronunciations of Louisiana place names like Tchoupitoulas, Natchitoches (/ˈnæk ə ˌdɪʃ/, really!), etc. especially when she complains about northeastern place names like "Leominster".
By gbacon 2026-03-1123:28 Nackadish!
By therein 2026-03-1119:31 > in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St
That explains why many years ago when I visited Portland, a homeless guy corrected my pronunciation of that while we were walking past him.
By stackghost 2026-03-1116:491 reply >Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider.
This is a monstrous crime against language.
By throwaway94275 2026-03-1119:352 reply well how do you say Newfoundland? Soon it will be said "Noovlan"
By stackghost 2026-03-1120:161 reply People from there generally pronounce it "New-fund-LAND", people from the rest of (english) Canada tend pronounce it "NEW-fund-land".
It's still got three syllables.
By ChoGGi 2026-03-1122:12 I tend to go with "Newfn-lan".
By howlingfantods 2026-03-1116:233 reply Grammar at its best promotes clear communication but more often is used as a social tool of control and exclusion. When you are already talking to people within your in-group, that impulse isn’t necessary.
By PaulHoule 2026-03-1116:30 On some level. Thing is it is visible and everybody knows what the standards are, social mobility is possible under the sign of grammar.
If the game is wearing a $20k watch or understanding the covert signs of status that you might find in a particular community, that's something different.
Everyone uses grammar. What you're describing is elitism and elevating one particular dialect above all others.
According to the wide definition of grammar, everyone uses some grammar, but nevertheless it's not a category error to say "*this sentence got grammar mistake".
When we speak about the grammar for a language/dialect we imply a prescribed "correct" grammar for a particular community of speakers.
By ninalanyon 2026-03-1122:231 reply > speak about the grammar for a language/dialect we imply a prescribed "correct" grammar
Not prescribed, rather observed. At least in English where there is no language authority and dictionaries present usage.
The situation is even stranger in Norway where there is a prescribed form but where dialects have essentially equal rights so that the prescription really applies only to formal written Norwegian.
By falcor84 2026-03-1123:40 From what I experienced, "proper" English grammar is absolutely prescribed at schools, and "poor grammar" will consistently and very predictably get you point deductions, regardless of whether linguists would accept your grammar as valid.
By ekjhgkejhgk 2026-03-1117:481 reply [flagged]
people aren’t saying “aks” to make a public statement against you for whatever reason. they’re saying it because that’s how they learned to speak and the dialect of speakers who they were surrounded with.
yeah, people code switch, but i have come across many many people who just say things differently from the majority pronunciation. they’re not misunderstood and they can communicate just fine (see nucular vs nuclear). that’s just how language works, right
By ekjhgkejhgk 2026-03-1118:38 That IS how language works. However, people notice language a choose how to use language.
I hear people say "ask" and people say "aks". I hear both, and I see there's a difference. In your mind people who say "aks" can't see there's two variants. Why not? You're being patronising. I think they do and they make a choice, like I do. I COULD start saying "aks" and choose not to.
What next, are you going to argue that people who wear their pants down by their knees don't know that's not how you use pants? I think they know there's alternatives, and that's what they choose to do.
By j_seigh 2026-03-1120:24 It seems almost nobody can spell lose correctly anymore. I assume it's deliberate.
