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Updated: June 23, 2025
It was all part of the superficial smallness of that world where arbitrary form ruled, where to send a wedding invitation printed and not engraved, or to mispronounce the name of a visiting Italian tenor or Russian dancer, would mark the noblest woman in the world as hopelessly "not belonging."
"True, aunt; but you are a wilful wanderer, who should be forced back into the right path." "Spare me, I entreat you," replied Aunt Margaret. "You remember the Gaelic song, though I dare say I mispronounce the words
Good reading aloud is almost a lost accomplishment now. It is little thought of in the schools. It is disused at home. It is rare to find any one who can read, even from the newspaper, well. Reading is so universal, even with the uncultivated, that it is common to hear people mispronounce words that you did not suppose they had ever seen.
He wore the covers off the first two booklets, then became disgusted, and devoted himself instead to a small handbook entitled "Words We Mispronounce." The branch of his education in which he was making least effort and most progress was in the customs and manners of polite society. He did not shine as yet, but he had ceased to offend, and that was a long step forward.
Whereas an Englishman's idea of slinging slang is to scoop up at random some inoffensive and well-meaning word that never did him any harm and apply it in the place of some other word, to which the first word is not related, even by marriage. And look how they deliberately mispronounce proper names. Everybody knows about Cholmondeley and St. John. But take the Scandinavian word fjord.
The South Island colonists mispronounce their beautiful Maori place-names murderously. Even in the North Island the average bushman will speak of the pukatea tree as "bucketeer," and not to call the poro-poro shrub "bull-a-bull" would be considered affectation. There is or was in the archives of the Taranaki Farmers' Club a patriotic song which rises to the notable lines
"Oh, do shut up, Eva, and don't be so bossy!" yelped the dear little old lady, in sudden and dismaying rage. "I'll talk if I want to. Have they been bullying you, Claire? Or your boy? I tell you, boy, these families are fierce. I was brought up in Brooklyn went through all the schools used to be able to misplay the piano and mispronounce French with the best of 'em.
I have had occasion, for example, to acquire their word for bread, which is "pain." As if that were not wild enough, they mispronounce it atrociously. Yet for years these people have been separated from us only by a narrow strip of water! By keeping close to our rooms, then, I had thought to evade what of evil might have been in store for me on this day.
I found an unexpected difficulty in writing them down, viz.: no matter how I pronounced them, old Weeso and Freesay, my informants, would say, "Yes, that is right." This, I learned, was out of politeness; no matter how you mispronounce their words it is good form to say, "That's it; now you have it exactly."
But enough instances have probably been adduced to exemplify fully the general principles at issue. I think it will be clear that the English conquerors did not usually change the names of Roman or Welsh towns, but simply mispronounced them about as much as we habitually mispronounce Llangollen or Llandudno.
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