Grammar: Pismronunciation

Confusing worms

A medieval monk substituted “mumpsimus” for “sumpsimus” in one prayer. When put straight, he replied that he had said it that way for 40 years and “I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus”.
 

advocado: avocado

Alexander Solzeernitskin, writer of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch: Solzhenitsyn

Andrew Sabitsky, Andrew Sabinsky: Sabisky

Artic, Antartic: Arctic, Antarctic

Baia, in Italy: Baiae (Bye-eh. Probably means "bays".)

Barnard’s Castle: Barnard Castle

Bayzhing, the Chinese capital: Beijing with a hard J

Beer-route: Beirut in Lebanon (Bay-root)

Bob Geldorf, musician and fund-raiser: Bob Geldof

Buchi Emencheta, the writer: Buchi Emecheta

Callagan: Prime Minister Jim Callaghan pronounced his name with an aspirate as in loch and Bach

Casa Pupa, the rug company: The labels clearly read “Casa Pupo”.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (in the US)

Colgate’s toothpaste: Colgate

Colibri, the font: Calibri (Colibri is a brand of cigarette lighter.)

Company House: Companies House

desoxyribose nucleic acid: DNA, or deoxyribose nucleic acid

grahtsy, Italian for thank you: grazie (grah-tsee-ay)

Epson salts: Epsom salts

Eric Hobsborn, the Marxist historian: Eric Hobsbawm (originally Obstbaum). See also "Somerset Maughan".

folage: foliage

Fortress Road in Kentish Town: Fortess Road

Hailey's comet: Halley's

homogenous: homogeneous

In Chester Cathedral: Winchester Cathedral (song by the Kinks)

jardinère: jardinière

Jeux sans Frontères/Frontiers: Jeux sans Frontières (It's front-ee-air, not front-ee-ay. Likewise Médecins sans Frontières, Doctors without Borders.)

Johann Sebastian Bark: Bach (Especially annoying when spoken by someone who can say “Loch Ness” perfectly well.)

John Hopkins University in the US: Johns Hopkins University (trips up many Americans)

Jungendstil: Jugendstil (Decorative style from the late 1800s.)

juvenalia: juvenilia

Last night I dreamed I went to Mandalay again (More often “Manderlay”.): The first line of Daphne du Maurier’s well-known novel Rebecca mentions the house where most of the action takes place – Manderley. Mandalay features in a poem by Rudyard Kipling.

lightening: lightning

lines of longtitude and latitude: longitude

long-gevity: lon-gevity

Mario Vargas Llosas, writer and politician: Vargas Llosa

Marleen Deartrick, actress and singer: Marlene Dietrich (Marlayna Dee-trich)

marshmellow: marshmallow

Mars tricked, with the accent on the "tricked": Maastricht

mischievious: mischievous

Miss Haversham, character in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations: Miss Havisham (And some think Heathcliff has a final e.)

Miss Marples, Agatha Christie’s genteel detective: Miss Marple

National Institute of Health in the US: National Institutes of Health 

Nora Desmond, character in the film Sunset Boulevard: Norma Desmond

nucular, nuculus: nuclear, nucleus

portères, curtains over doors: portières

protruberant: protuberant (Protuberant eyes protrude.)

Rekkavik, Iceland’s capital: Reykjavik

Revelations: The Biblical book is The Revelation of St John the Divine.

Roger's Theosaurus: Roget's Thesaurus

Stephen Hawkins: Stephen Hawking

Suits you, sir: Suit you, sir! (From the Fast Show.)

The Forsyth Saga, series of novels by Galsworthy, twice televised: The Forsyte Saga.

The Narzies: the Nazis (Allegedly Winston Churchill stuck to Narzies because that was how many people pronounced the word.)

Tiananmen Square in Beijing: Tienanmen

Trivial Pursuits, the 80s game: Trivial Pursuit

tumeric: turmeric

When Good King Wenslas last looked out: King Wenceslas looked out.

Some insist it's "an historic" rather than "a historic". This was never a rule, though we used to say "an hospital" and "an hotel", not pronouncing the Hs. 

 
As a child, I had a friend called Adele, pronounced A-dell. My mother insisted on calling her "AD-ell" because she thought it sounded more French. And others on this template: a Giovanni who was called "Yevanney" by one of his teachers. Conversely, the holder of the name tries to make it sound more English: a Radio 3 announcer in the 70s pronounced his name "HOMEstr'm" (Holmstrom). But perhaps he thought the Brits couldn't cope with the correct Swedish sounds.

At a convent boarding school in the 60s, postulants (trainee nuns) were called “apostulants” by everybody.

Every day we recited: “The angel of the Lord appeared unto Mary/And she was conceived by the Holy Ghost”. Wrong theologically and biologically (people also confused conception and contraception, back then). It's "she conceived by the Holy Ghost". (And some are now confusing gender ideology and gender criticism.)

In the school garden there was a beautiful rose-draped pergola (path with columns). The adjacent lawn was the “pergular lawn”.

Every Friday we sang a hymn – we never got the text, we just picked it up by ear. There was one line where everybody sang "er er er er". Years later I found the words and that line is "Eia ergo".

The Dennehy girls were persistently called "Dennehay" by one nun.  

And designer Laura Ashley was always "Laura Rashley" or just "Laurashley".

Some try to put extra vowels into words like "Renaissance" or "Sèvres" (Renayassence and Seyervres).

And then there's pronounciation versus pronunciation...

 

Technophobia 15

 

Does your desktop look like this?

I admit there was a time when I didn't know you could cut and paste text from a web page... About 1993? And for a while I didn’t know you could pause CDs. I used to think you had to let your phone run out completely before you charged it, and you couldn’t leave it plugged in once it was at 100% because er er... It wasted electricity?! But now we're putting a woman on the Moon!

A friend told me about a man who runs his entire business through a tablet.

Someone on Twitter asked what the little bumps on the F and J keys of a keyboard were for. Touch typists find them with their forefingers. They keep your fingers on the home keys, ASDF JKL;.

Boggles my mind how many people work from a laptop as their only computer. Not even a plug-in monitor or keyboard or mouse. Just that 15in screen and touchpad in their $200k/year white collar job. The absolute hubris of it all. (@dioscuri)

I have a client who communicates exclusively via Microsoft Word. If she has something to tell me I will receive an email with nothing in the body, but a Word doc attached. That’s where she writes her message. Whenever she wants to email me a photo she does it via an empty Word doc with said photo as its background. But my favourite thing was the first time I witnessed her visiting a website. She had me spell the URL (w w w dot), and with my own two eyes I watched her type it into Word, make it a hyperlink, and Ctrl click to go there. I was so fascinated I didn’t even say anything. (Via Twitter)

It’s 2026, but when I watch a film on a streaming service the sound is so quiet as to be almost inaudible.

Who at Apple was like ‘you know we should make the new iPhone photos app super confusing and random because now it’s too straightforward and easy to use, let’s make it feel like you’ve had a stroke every time you want to find something!’ (@seanonolennon)

Actual interaction I had today, Jan 16:
website rejects bank info
I retype, website rejects info
I refresh and retype, website rejects info
I call support
"Oh, it's a savings account? You need to click the button five times"
I click the button two more times
It works (?!?!)
(@its_bvisness)

Why does it seem like everything has three extra steps now? You can’t just do one thing. You have to log in, check your email for the code, enter the passkey to access password, that isn’t the right password so you enter email AGAIN for password email, then you have to make a new password, then you have to save it to your password saver but first you have to enter the passkey to access your passwords but the username doesn’t automatically update so you have to enter your email AGAIN in your password saver and then you can finally Do The Thing. What is this system? (@parakeetnebula)

I got a new TV after 11 years, and there was a nice simplicity to just turning the old one on. The new one requires a loading screen, logging in and navigating complex menus just to be able to watch. (@ianmackey)

There is a special place reserved in hell for website designers who disable cut and paste in password fields. (@WKCosmo)

Trying to buy something at an actual store, and they’re like, What’s your email? Phone number? Zip code? Blood type? (@kristabellerina)

I am so tired of logging into things. Please stop making me log into things. I don’t want to make an account! Stop texting me codes! (@holy_schnitt)

THE BIG REGRESSION
My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby. It’s new construction... It’s amped up with state of the art systems. The ones with touchscreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and interfaces that try too hard. And it’s terrible. What a regression.

The lights are powered by Control4. And require a demo to understand how to use the switches, understand which ones control what, and to be sure not to hit THAT ONE because it’ll turn off all the lights in the house when you didn’t mean to. Worse.

The TV is the latest Samsung which has a baffling UI just to watch CNN. My parents aren’t idiots, but definitely feel like they’re missing something obvious. They aren’t — TVs have simply gotten worse. You don’t turn them on anymore, you boot them up.

The Miele dishwasher is hidden flush with the counters. ... It wouldn’t even operate the first time without connecting it to an app. This meant another call to the house manager to have them install an app they didn’t know they needed either. An app to clean some peanut butter off a plate? ... Worse.

Thermostats... Nest would have been an upgrade, but these other proprietary ones from some other company trying to be nest-like are baffling. Round touchscreens that take you into a dark labyrinth of options just to be sure it’s set at 68. ... Or is that what we want it at, but it’s at 72? Wait... What? Which number is this? Worse.

The alarm system is essentially a 10in iPad bolted to the wall that has the weather forecast on it. And it’s bright! I’m sure there’s a way to turn that off, but then the screen would be so barren that it would be filled with the news instead. Why can’t the alarm panel just be an alarm panel? Worse.

And the lag. Lag everywhere. Everything feels a beat or two behind. Everything. Lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little. Real-time must be the hardest problem.

Now look... I’m no luddite. But this experience is close to conversion therapy. Tech can make things better, but I simply can’t see [how] in these cases. I’ve heard the pitches too — you can set up scenes and one button can change EVERYTHING. ... It actually feels primitive, like we haven’t figured out how to make things easy yet. That some breakthrough will eventually come when you can simply knock a switch up or down and it’ll all makes sense. But that's at least 20 years down the road.

It’s really the contrast that makes it alarming. We just got back from a vacation in Montana. Rented a house there. They did have a fancy TV — seems those can’t be avoided these days — but everything else was old-school and clear. Physical up/down light switches in the right places. Appliances without the internet. Buttons with depth and physically-confirmed state change rather than surfaces that don’t obviously register your choice. More traditional round rotating Honeywell thermostats that are just clear and obvious. No tours, no instructions, no questions, no fearing you’re going to do something wrong, no wondering how something works. Useful and universally clear. That’s human, that’s modern. (@jasonfried. Jan 5, 2026)

The government makes the Civil Service get the lowest bid for computer services and it always, always results in the Civil Service paying out a ton of money in compensation for continual errors. They hide the information about compensatory payments under different names in their rules and regs. "Special payments" was the name the DWP used to use (I worked on the team for two years and paid out an average of 27 claims per week, just me. There were over 50 on the team covering CSA alone, let alone the other areas of the DWP). (Rebecca Hodson)

Friends my age, who have been not-very-techy for decades, and hardly ever watched TV (some didn’t know how to turn theirs on) have now got tablets and Netflix and are keen followers of some niche series I’ve never heard of! (Now I want to say: There are other streaming services!)

Your life becomes so much more liberating when you learn that keeping your laptop plugged in at max is actually Perfectly Fine and much healthier for the battery than draining and recharging constantly. (@PalmyrPar)

More here, and links to the rest.