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One Hundred
Most Commonly
Mispronounced
English Words
by

Jakub Marian
Second Edition, March 2015
The PDF version has no associated ISBN
The image of the head on the front cover is copyrighted by
Andrey Ospishchev and licensed from fotolia
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BEFORE YOU START
READING

If you have found this book freely available on
the Internet (from an illegal source), please consider obtaining a legal version at
http://jakubmarian
...

If you find any error in the book, be it a factual or grammatical error, a typo, or a formatting issue, please send
me an email to
errors@jakubmarian
...

I have selected 100 words from the original book
that I consider to be the most important ones and
compiled them here in alphabetical order so that
my readers can easily review them
...

Pronunciation is denoted using a simplified version of IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet; the
notation used in the aforementioned book is a bit
more sophisticated)
...
If you want to learn more
about the IPA, there is an appendix explaining all IPA
symbols at the very end of the book
...
3
What to expect from this book
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6
The list
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32
Vowels
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37

Alphabetical Index
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The characters you have to remember are:
[ə] is pronounced as “a” in “a book” (i
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as the indefinite article)
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If you
sometimes think that there’s an “ə” used in a place
where you would expect “i” as in “pit” (or conversely), don’t worry; these two sounds are often
interchangeable
...
The symbol is used to
remind you that English “a” (as in “cat” = “kæt”,
“bad” = “bæd”, “sad” = “sæd” etc
...

[ʌ] is the sound of “u” in “but” (bʌt) and “o” in
“come” (kʌm)
...

In case you are interested: “aw” is pronounced
as in “law”, “oo” as in “cool”, “oo” (italicised) as in
“good” (the same as “u” in “put”), “ ee” (italicised)
is used to denote the same sound as in “see” but
short, and “oh” is used to denote [oʊ] which is how
Americans pronounce “oh”; in British English,
“oh” is pronounced as “əu”
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The stressed part is bold
...
For example “recipe” is denoted as
“res-ip-ee”, although the syllables are in fact “res-ipee”, but this would mislead some people to pronounce the “i” as “aay”
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THE LIST
There is not much more to say; I hope you will enjoy
the process of reading and learning something new
...

albeit [ɔ:lˈbi:ɪt] (aw’l-bee-it); this fairly formal word,
meaning “although”, is not used much in
speech, but is still quite common in literature
...

alien [ˈeɪliən] (ei-li-ən); a lion would certainly be an
unwelcome alien at your home, but don’t pronounce them the same
...

angel [ˈeɪndʒəl] (eyn-dzhəl); unlike many other
words beginning with “ang-”, “angel” is pronounced with [eɪndʒ] (eyndzh) at the beginning
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Arkansas [ˈɑ:kənˌsɔ:] (aak-ən-saw) UK, [ˈɑ:rkənˌsɔ:]
(aark-ən-saw) US; the name of one of the US
states sounds like a symbol for a new religious
movement: “ark and saw”
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ballet [ˈbæleɪ] (bæ-lei) UK, [bæˈleɪ] (bæ-lei) US;
somewhat surprisingly, the final “t” remains silent in English
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The “g” is
pronounced the same as in “massage”
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This word is
perhaps even more confusing than the others in
that it also exists in most other languages in the
same written form but with the “b” pronounced
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THE LIST

10

bull [bʊl] (bool, with short “u”); some people pronounce the “u” wrongly as [ʌ], as in “cut”, but it
is the same “u” as in “put”
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bury [ˈberi] (ber-ri); a burial [ˈberiəl] (ber-ri-əl) is a
sad and important event
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It is pronounced exactly the
same as “berry” (i
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there is no “uh” or “ ʌ”
sound)
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calm [kɑ:m] (kaam); English doesn’t seem to like
the combination “alm”, so the “l” remains silent
in most dialects (however, there are some American ones in which it is pronounced)
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11

100 COMMONLY MISPRONOUNCED WORDS

chaos [ˈkeɪos] (kei-oss)

UK,

[ˈkheɪɑ:s] (kei-aas) US;
the pronunciation of this word is actually quite
regular, but people tend to pronounce it as the
same word in their own language, which usually
differs from its English pronunciation
...
The word is borrowed from French and
retains the original pronunciation
...
This is true also for “climbing”
[ˈklaɪmɪŋ] (klaay-ming), “climbed” [ˈklaɪmd]
(klaaymd), and “climber” [ˈklaɪmə] (klaay-mə) UK,
[ˈklaɪmər] (klaay-mr) US
...

column [ˈkoləm] (koll-əm) UK, [ˈkɑ:ləm] (kaal-əm)
US; whether it is a column of text or a column in
architecture, the pronunciation still retains some
influence of its French origin
...


THE LIST

12

comb [kəʊm] (kəum) UK, [koʊm] (koh’m) US; the
toothed device used for styling hair is pronounced without the “b” at the end
...

comfortable [ˈkʌmfətəbl] (kʌm-fə-tə-bl) UK, in the
US also [ˈkʌmftəbl] (kʌm-ftə-bl); if you “come for a
table” to a furniture shop, it will hopefully be
comfortable, although it doesn’t rhyme with it
...
The same is true for
accompany [əˈkʌmpəni] (ə-kʌm-pə-nee)
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court [kɔ:t] (kaw’t) [kɔ:rt] (kaw’rt); hopefully you
will never have to deal with a court, but if you
do, remember to pronounce it with “aw”, not
with “oo”
...

debris [ˈdebri:] (deb-ree) UK, [dəˈbri:] (də-bree) US;
this word retained its original French pronunciation, so the final “s” is silent
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If you pronounce the “b”,
people will likely understand it as “dipped”
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The word “despisable” [dɪ
ˈspaɪzəbl] (dis-paay-zə-bl) (spelled with an “s”)
theoretically exists in some dictionaries, but noone really uses it in practice
...
Don’t con-

THE LIST

14

fuse it with desert [ˈdezət] (de-zət) UK, [ˈdezərt]
(de-zrt) US which is a large area of dry land
...
However, the word
“dove” is becoming increasingly widespread as
the past tense of “dive” (whose standard form is
“dived”), and in this sense it is pronounced
[dəʊv] (dəuv) UK, [doʊv] (doh’v) US
...

elite [ɪˈli:t] (ih-leet), sometimes also [eɪˈli:t] (ey-leet);
elite people are certainly not a “lite version” of
the population
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epitome [ɪˈpɪtəmi] (ih-pit-ə-mee); this somewhat
less common word means “someone who is a
prototypical example of a class of people”

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