There's probably a word I've been pronouncing wrong my whole life that I don't know about
Just based on how often I notice someone mispronounce a word without realizing it (or have done so myself and realized it later). Statistically I'm probably still doing it with some word.
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You CAN pronounce it fish, but you can also just simply not pronounce it.
GH is pronounced _ like in high.
O is pronounced _ like in jeopardy.
T is pronounced _ like in potpourri.
I is pronounced _ like in receive.
Therefore, ghoti is completely silent.
Fun fact: every letter except V can be pronounced silently.
That's interesting! How about Q?
Lacquer. (Which I believe is the only word in English with a silent Q. Proper nouns don't count.)
Do you mean stuff like acquire? There are a good bunch of 'cq' words.
No, the C is silent in "acquire." Otherwise, it'd be pronounced "akire."
Got it, thanks.
Kind of a cop-out, since that's a straight-up French loanword. "Soften" would be better. Or "often," if not for the fact that it's so commonly mispronounced.
True! I just remembered that there was a way to make the whole word silent but didn't remember the T bit so I looked it up. This was the first example. Soften is much better!