I read the word heroism exactly the same way, five times, in two different sessions. Only when I played it back did I realize that the way I pronounced it: Hee-ro-ism, was wrong. I had to check in with Merriam-Webster, but sadly, I was right about being wrong. It’s pronounced “hair-o-ism.”
<sigh>
- I know the right way to pronounce heroism, so I’m miffed at myself for messing it up… FIVE TIMES!
- I hate it when narrators mispronounce words. (A personal pet peeve of mine…)
- Now I have to re-record that whole section.
I guess that’s what you get when you go budget and work without a sound engineer!
(Fess up time: I originally wrote this post on July 8th, but I didn’t publish it right away because I REALLY didn’t want to go back and redo that whole paragraph, just to fix that one little word. Getting everything to sound consistent is such a huge pain. And of course I couldn’t blog about the mistake and not fix it, so I pushed “save” instead of “publish”. Eventually, I went back and re-recorded it, so now I can post this with my head held high! )
Mark Pennington said,
August 2, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Anything in print or on the air should have a higher standard. I, too, have been shocked at what I see and hear on a daily basis. Check out these Top 40 Pronunciation Pet Peeves, but warning… you may cringe on a few that you mispronounce.
Leanne said,
August 3, 2009 at 12:40 am
Mark, I have to thank you. You just scratched an itch I didn’t know I had. I’ve always wondered about mischievous, and I was TOTALLY wrong about niche. I’m very glad you shared this with me. Sometimes you think you know how to pronounce something, only to find out very publically that you don’t. The author deserves better than that. Especially here.
Now all I have to do is check everything I’ve done so far for the words I was mispronouncing on that list, rerecord those sections, edit them, and I’m good.
Come to think of it, I may have to rethink how glad I am that you shared this!