Pronouncing Words Correctly

October 20, 2007

I was talking with a friend the other day, and he mentioned a woman who always dressed in a very “chick” way. He wasn’t trying to suggest that she was dressing in a womanly way, but that she was dressing in a fashionable way. Of course, he was referring the word word “chic,” which seems like it should be pronounced “chick,” but is really pronounced “sheek.” It’s of French derivation, so confusion is understandable.

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It is never polite to correct someone when they mispronounce a word, unless it is spoken by a child, or a close friend and you can advise them of the correct pronunciation in private. However, rather than seeking to tell others about the mote in their eye, it is best for us all to deal with the log in our own eye. Fortunately, the Internet can help us learn to pronounce words without relying on the often confusing phonetic spelling found in dictionaries.

I have found that writers are particularly susceptible to mispronouncing words. We hammer out our work on the anvil of a computer screen, and we seldom vocalize what we have written. We know the meaning of a word and how it’s spelled, but sometimes we don’t know how to pronounce it. If you want to learn how to pronounce a word correctly, I’d suggest HowJsay.com.

This site has a list of about 100,000 commonly used English words, and it’s easy to use. You simply type in a word, then click “Submit,” and you’ll hear the correct pronunciation of the word. If you misspell a word it will find the nearest match.

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Written by The Editor · Filed Under The Writing Life

Pronouncing Words Correctly

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