Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.

Example:

In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.

  • tigeruppercut
    1·
    6 hours ago

    \NICH\ is the more common one and the older of the two pronunciations. It is the only pronunciation given for the word in all English dictionaries until the 20th century, when \NEESH\ was first listed as a pronunciation variant in Daniel Jones’s English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917). \NEESH\ wasn’t listed as a pronunciation in our dictionaries until our 1961 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and it wasn’t entered into our smaller Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary until 1993. Even then, it was marked in the Collegiate as a pronunciation that was in educated use but not considered acceptable until 2003.

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niche

    • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      2 hours ago

      It’s confusing because the way it’s spelled makes it look French, so if you read it in a book and didn’t hear other people say it, you might think it was “Neech” if you know French also.

      Just like “voila” you might think is said the French way, like it’s spelled, but a lot of English speakers say “walla”.

      • tigeruppercut
        3·
        2 hours ago

        I subscribe to the view that people mispronouncing things have read more stuff rather than heard things, so of course I’m not looking down on them for that. I didn’t realize until recently that quinoa wasn’t kwin-OH-ah for awhile, or even in my youthful fondness for Greek myths that the goddess wasn’t called ah-fro-DAIT.