# Spelling-pronunciation mismatches



## Dymn

Are there any words in your language which meet the following criteria:

There is a usual (not necessarily majoritary but quite frequent) way to pronounce them in colloquial language (maybe even in formal language as well) which doesn't match the standard spelling.
This mismatch is not a consistent, regular phenomenon.
In (Central) *Catalan*, probably as a result of a late standardization, we have many of those cases:

Sometimes schwa is elided between a consonant and an r: _berenar > b'renar _"afternoon snack", _però > p'rò _"but", _taronja > t'ronja _"orange", _veritat > v'ritat _"truth"
The initial vowel of a deictic is sometimes elided when combined with _per_:_ per això > per'xò _"for this", _per allò > per'llò _"for that", _per aquí > per'quí _"around here", _per allà > per'llà _"around there"
The initial _a _in conjugations of the verb _anar _is often elided: _anem > 'nem _"let's go"
Other cases:_ aquest > aquet _"this", _doncs > dons _"so"
*English *has many many more but it's a whole 'nother story 

What about your language(s)?


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## elroy

I may have misunderstood your question, but it seems this probably exists in most if not all languages.


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## Armas

Finnish:

_ruoka_ "food", genitive _ruoan_ is pronounced ruuan
_vuoka_ "baking mold", genitive _vuoan_ is pronounced vuuan

I think this happens to avoid the awkward uoa. However, the spelling with two u's is now accepted as well.


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## Dymn

elroy said:


> I may have misunderstood your question, but it seems this probably exists in most if not all languages.


Well, that's the point I guess, since we're in the All Languages forum, to share examples from a language you know


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## Ghabi

You mean you want a list of words in a language which don't match their spellings? Do you think the list would be too long to be meaningful in some languages?


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## merquiades

Well, _Poêle _is pronounced /pwal/ in French as if it should have been written "poille". The past participle _eu _is /y/ and doesn't rhyme with _eux_ as most learners expect. The e serves no role here.


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## Ghabi

And _femme_ and _sept_?


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## apmoy70

Modern Greek has a few, we have retained historical orthography although the ancient diphthongs have (at least since the 9th-10th c. CE) become monophthongs (a few examples):

-Classical Greek *«εἶδος»* [ˈei̯.dos] (neut.) > Modern Greek *«είδος»* [ˈi.ðɔs] (neut.) --> _kind, species, (pl.) goods, wares_, from PIE *weyd-.

-Classical Greek *«οἶκος»* [ˈoi̯.kos] (masc.) > Modern Greek *«οίκος»* [ˈi.kɔs] (masc.) --> _house, household_ from PIE *weyḱ-.

-Classical Greek *«αἷμα»* [ˈhai̯.ma] (neut.) > Modern Greek *«αίμα»* [ˈe.ma] (neut.) --> _blood_ (of unclear etymology, the older view of a possible IE root *sei̯- _to drip_ cognate with Welsh hufen, German Seim has been abandoned).


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## Dymn

Ghabi said:


> Do you think the list would be too long to be meaningful in some languages?


I'm not asking for an exhaustive list, just the most striking and frequent examples.



apmoy70 said:


> Modern Greek has a few, we have retained historical orthography although the ancient diphthongs have (at least since the 9th-10th c. CE) become monophthongs (a few examples):


But these spelled diphthongs are consistently pronounced that way in all words, right?


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## Lorenc

Dymn said:


> Are there any words in your language which meet the following criteria:
> 
> There is a usual [...] way to pronounce them [...] which doesn't match the standard spelling.
> This mismatch is not a consistent, regular phenomenon



Maybe I haven't given it enough thought, but I don't think Italian has any of these. Mispronunciations in Italian usually are due:
1) uncertainties as to the position of the word stress; e.g., the word edile ('building', as an adjective) "should" be pronounced edìle but often people say èdile. But anyway word stress is not indicated in the spelling, so both pronunciations are compatible with it.
2) mispronunciation due to unfamiliarity with a specific word (but these are not 'usual mispronunciations').
3) mispronunciations due to regional accents, e.g. pronouncing t, s, p as /d/, /z/, /b/ after the consonant n and in some other situations (eg in the words 'penso', 'pronto') which is typical of some Southern accents. But these _are _a regular phenomenon.
4) With respect to the traditional Tuscan model of Italian there are regional variations concerning s, z, e, o and the way to treat consonant doubling in some cases, but again these variations are a regular phenomenon and in any case they are not considered mistakes.

Perhaps I can mention that the word 'niente' (=nothing) /ˈnjɛnte/ is sometimes (especially in fast speech) pronounced as if it were written gniente, i. g. /ˈŋɛnte/ (or /ˈnjente/ v. /ˈŋɛnte/ depending on your region), but it's a very minor thing.


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## Lorenc

Lorenc said:


> Maybe I haven't given it enough thought, but I don't think Italian has any of these.



I've found this thread in which there are two curious examples which may just be what you're looking for. The first is the word _collutorio _'mouthwash' which is (often? usually? always?) pronounced 'colluttorio' (i.e., with a double t). The second is the word _subacqueo_ 'underwater, subaqueous' which is (often? usually? always?) pronounced 'subaqueo' (i.e., with a single /k/ sound). I also pronunce these words in the 'wrong' way. In fact, it seems very possible to me that these 'wrong' pronunciations are used much more often than the official 'spelling' pronunciations. Hard to tell for sure, though.


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## bearded

Lorenc said:


> two curious examples


I would  add  some more Italian examples:
_aeroporto _(airport) and _aeroplano _(airplane), often pronounced as _areoporto _and _areoplano _(at least in Northern Italy),
_meteorologo _(meteorologist) and _meteorologia _(meteorology), often pron. _metereologo / metereologia _(  '' ),
_aerazione _(ventilation), often pronounced _areazione,
accelerare _(to accelerate), often pronounced with double L _(accellerare),
essiccazione _(drying/desiccation), often pronounced/written with one c: _essicazione
...._


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## TheCrociato91

Lorenc said:


> The first is the word _collutorio _'mouthwash' which is (often? usually? always?) pronounced 'colluttorio' (i.e., with a double t). The second is the word _subacqueo_ 'underwater, subaqueous' which is (often? usually? always?) pronounced 'subaqueo' (i.e., with a single /k/ sound)


Well, shame on me. I also pronounce them the wrong way. 



bearded said:


> _aeroporto _(airport) and _aeroplano _(airplane), often pronounced as _areoporto _and _areoplano _(at least in Northern Italy),
> _meteorologo _(meteorologist) and _meteorologia _(meteorology), often pron. _metereologo / metereologia _( '' ),
> _aerazione _(ventilation), often pronounced _areazione,
> accelerare _(to accelerate), often pronounced with double L _(accellerare),
> essiccazione _(drying/desiccation), often pronounced/written with one c: _essicazione_


Agreed. Especially with number 1, 2 and 5, which are the ones I'm most familiar with.


One more Italian example that comes to mind: _proprio_ pronounced as _propio_.
As far as I know this occurs especially in casual, fast everyday speech, where the "standard" Italian trill /r/ is often reduced to a tap [ɾ] in intervocalic position and word-internally, which may be further reduced to a complete drop. Outside of casual discourse, however, this is often labeled as a trait of uneducated speech.


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## apmoy70

Dymn said:


> ...
> But these spelled diphthongs are consistently pronounced that way in all words, right?


Indeed they are, if you're interested in dialectal variations within MoGr, in the NW dialects -Thessalian mostly- (i) the vowel between two consonants is omitted, (ii) often the suffixal vowel in also omitted, (iii) /ɔ/ is pronounced /u/:

-SMG (Standard Modern Greek) *«γυναίκα»* [ʝiˈne.ka] (fem. nom. sing.) --> _woman_ which is the accusative of the Classical *«γυνή» gŭnḗ* (PIE *gʷḗn) > Thessalian pronunciation [ˈɣne.ka]

-Thessalian *«γομάρι»* (neut. nom. sing.) --> _donkey, horse, mule_, which is the Byzantine Greek neuter diminutive *«γομάρι(ο)ν» gomári(o)n* --> init. _cargo, freight_, later, _the working animal used to carry cargo_ < Classical masc. *«γόμος» gómŏs* --> _cargo, freight_ (of unclear etymology); in the SMG lamguage, this rare noun is pronounced [ɣɔˈma.ɾi], in the Thessalian regiolect (used quite often) it's [ˈɣmar] or [ɣuˈmar]

-SMG *«ψωμί»* [p͜sɔˈmi] (neut. nom. sing.) --> _bread_ < Βyz. Greek neut. diminutive *«ψωμί(ο)ν» p͜sōmí(o)n* --> _morsel, bit_, later, _bread_ (it was so common to eat a morsel of bread when hungry, that it eventually replaced «ἄρτος» in everyday speech), an ω- vocalism of Classical v. *«ψῆν» p͜sên* (found only in Present infinitive) --> _to rub, grate, scratch, stroke, wipe_ (probably Pre-Greek).
In the NW dialects it's pronounced [p͜suˈmi]


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## bearded

Dymn said:


> colloquial language


We definitely differentiate between 'colloquial language/colloquial accents' and dialects. The  examples mentioned in #10 to 13 are in Italian colloquial language, as requested by the OP.  If we had to deal with dialects, regionlal variations would be innumerable, since It. dialects are quite different and 'warped' with respect to the standard language.
An example from Bologna:
Italian standard: _sono sèmpre tutti così (all are always like this)_
Bolognese colloquial accent: _son sémpre tutti così_
Bolognese dialect: _ién samper tótt acsé _(s pronounced almost as sh).


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## Dymn

Lorenc said:


> The second is the word _subacqueo_ 'underwater, subaqueous' which is (often? usually? always?) pronounced 'subaqueo' (i.e., with a single /k/ sound).


And why is that? This comes from _acqua _so I'd expect the double consonant to be applied to derivatives as well. Is there any word in Italian related to Latin _aqua _which is spelled and pronounced with an only /k/ sound?



bearded said:


> _aeroporto _(airport) and _aeroplano _(airplane), often pronounced as _areoporto _and _areoplano _(at least in Northern Italy),


In Catalan we distort these words in a different way, we'd say _airoport _instead of _aeroport_, adapting this diphthong to a more native one. Even the Japanese cartoon _Doraemon _gets pronounced _Doraimon_.



TheCrociato91 said:


> One more Italian example that comes to mind: _proprio_ pronounced as _propio_.


Just like Spanish (and therefore Catalan, and I've checked... Galician too), where it has become the official spelling. It also reminds me of _prendre _("to take") in Catalan, and derivatives like _aprendre _("to learn"), which are pronounced _pendre _and _apendre _in verb forms which feature this _-ndr- _cluster.



Dymn said:


> The initial vowel of a deictic is sometimes elided when combined with _per_:_ per això > per'xò _"for this", _per allò > per'llò _"for that", _per aquí > per'quí _"around here", _per allà > per'llà _"around there"


I should also add _per'vui_ instead of _per avui _"for today"


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## merquiades

@Dymn   It's funny, normally contractions are made to make pronunciation easier.   These reductions with _per _make it harder, no?   Is the r pronounced in _per?   _Is it _pabui, pallò, paxò?_


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## Dymn

merquiades said:


> These reductions with _per _make it harder, no? Is the r pronounced in _per? _Is it _pabui, pallò, paxò?_


Yes, it's /pəɾˈβui̯/, /pəɾˈʎɔ/, /pəɾˈʃɔ/, etc. And it's not like it's making it harder, all of these clusters appear in other words.



merquiades said:


> It's funny, normally contractions are made to make pronunciation easier.


No, reductions take place indistinctly with either consonants or vowels because of fast-spoken language. Some languages have a tendency for one of those, which is probably due to syllable- vs. stress-timed languages (more on the matter). Stress-timed languages trigger vowel reduction which often means the elision of vowels. Look at European Portuguese. Unstressed /ɨ/'s and /u/'s are elided, for example _hipótese _is pronounced /iˈpɔts/. EP is a strongly stressed-timed language. Genuine Catalan is also stressed-timed, although this is rapidly changing since prosody is the phonological aspect which is being more and more Castilianized. On the other hand Spanish is strongly syllable-timed, I once asked the Sólo Español form for examples of vowel reduction or elision (here) and I was given really weak phenomena.

There's like the idea that sound changes strive for "easiness", and this means vowels are preserved while consonants are not, but this is far from true. There are so many counterexamples that it's not even an exception. Yes, it's easier to pronounce _porto _than _port_, but _port _is shorter and more laid-back. That's why it happened. In French and Catalan. Now in Portuguese. Language "shrinks" getting rid of redundancies through phonological change and "stretches" avoiding ambiguities through morphological methods. In the end, so many years of language evolution must mean we have reached an overall equilibrium. The same goes for those who think the natural path of languages is to "simplify", like we've been dropping grammatical cases since the beginning of times without ever creating new ones.


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## Awwal12

Dymn said:


> What about your language(s)?


Russian orthography is not phonemic. Although with an extensive list of rules and exceptions you largely can decipher the pronunciation, IF you know the stressed syllable as well (but the stress is usually marked only in dictionaries and in ambiguous cases).
However, since the orthography does not consistently oppose hard (velarized) and soft (palatalized) paired consonants before /e/ phoneme (native words have only soft consonants there, but the amount of loanwords is obviously huge), the pronunciation in this position is a mess. Generally the loanwords, originally having hard phonemes before /e/, tend to acquire soft consonants there instead, particularly in unstressed syllables. So, for example, while most people pronounce "секс" (seks, i.e. sex) as [sɛks], for some speakers it's [sʲɛks], and with "сексуальный" (seksuál'nyi) the variation is even more arbitrary.

Many frequent words undergo changes similar to English "gonna", "wanna", "gimme" etc. in casual speech. That includes, but is not limited to, "kogdá" (when) > "kodá", "togdá" (then, at that moment) > "todá", "čegó" (of what) > "čo", "čelovék" (human, person) > "ček", "tebé" (to you) > "te", "seyčás" (now) > "sčas", "tól'ko" (only) > "tóko", etc. (I won't bother you with actual pronunciations of these, considering the first statement in my post - and that Russian has an extensive reduction of vowels on phonetic level to the top of it.)

Even more than one millennium after the Slavic mutations in the /TorT/ and /TolT/ combinations, liquids still create some sort of pronunciation inconsistences in Russian. For instance, "próvoloka" (wire) most of the time is pronounced as if it was written either "próvolka" (you can even hear that in songs) or "próvloka", with one syllable less either way. "Mladénets" (toddler; a Church Slavonic loanword), on the other hand, is often pronounced as if it was written "molodénets" (that may be influenced by the native Russian adjective "molodóy" - "young", but still). A complete mess.


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## Lorenc

Dymn said:


> And why is that? This comes from _acqua _so I'd expect the double consonant to be applied to derivatives as well. Is there any word in Italian related to Latin _aqua _which is spelled and pronounced with an only /k/ sound?



You are right, according to the spelling it should be pronounced with a 'double /k/' sound, I don't know why I (as many others) would pronounce it with a single /k/ sound. By the way, I think I'd also pronounce the adjective 'acqueo' with a single /k/ sound, for example in the expression 'vapore acqueo' (water vapour). In any case my dictionary reports only 5 Italian words using the a(c)queo root: acqueo, sopracqueo, sottacqueo, subacqueo,  terracqueo/terraqueo (both versions are reported). Personally I'd pronounce with a single /k/ acqueo, subaqueo, terraqueo (a very rare word, anyway). I don't know why but I'd probably pronounce sopracqueo/sottacqueo with the double /k/ , although these words are so rare that I don't think I've ever uttered them in all my life.


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## Red Arrow

Dutch bijzonder is pronounched bizonder, and ambt is pronounced amt. I can't think of any other words.


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## Stoggler

Red Arrow said:


> Dutch bijzonder is pronounched bizonder, and ambt is pronounced amt. I can't think of any other words.



Any word with the element -en ...?


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## sound shift

Red Arrow said:


> Dutch bijzonder is pronounched bizonder, and ambt is pronounced amt. I can't think of any other words.


"Lelijk" and "vrolijk" come to mind.


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## Red Arrow

But if the suffixes -lijk, -isch and -en count, then Merquiades should mention almost all French verb endings!

Also, not all people drop final N, but most do. (I sure do)


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