I often hear Americans mispronounce the name Iraq.
It is correctly pronounced “e-rack” as in “e-bay” or “e-mail”, and NOT “eye-rack” as in “ipod” or “iphone”.
The same mistake is made when pronouncing Iran.
This mis-pronounciation is so common I hear it in tv shows and movies.
Something else that is commonly mispelled is the word “Definitely”, which some people wrongly spell as “Definately”.
Another mispelling is using “then” in place of “than” and vice versa.
Different English-speaking peoples have different different pronunciations for all sorts of words. Try listening to an Austrlian or New Zealandian speaking English, you’ll notice vast differences. A language is an ever-changing, malleable thing. It constantly evolves in very different directions, especially when different groups of speakers are mostly isolated from each other. You can even notice this with regional dialects within the same country. It’s a completely normal process.
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@sprotz The then vs than drives me nuts haha. Another one is “should of” instead of “should have.”
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Before you presume to teach, you need to learn.
Contrary to what you stated above, Iraq is correctly pronounced as “ear-rock” with the accent on the second syllable.
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Here’s a recent CNBC video covering the OPEC meeting in Vienna where the reporter pronounces Iran and Iraq (01:32 mark).
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I really don’t understand why the latter mistake happens, “of” and “have” have totally different roles in a sentence to be conflated with each other…
I think it’s because when you don’t read a lot or write for a living, you just literally go by how that sounds when you say it? And when you do, “should have” CAN sound like “should of”… but if they spend 1 second thinking about that and if SHOULD OF makes sense, then they’ll change it!
Actually, I think that should of is more annoying THEN than. Lol.
That makes a lot of sense. I guess it did not occur to me because I’ve always been an avid reader, I read everything I can get my hands on, so I didn’t think that some people just read less.
It isn’t “should of”, it’s “should’ve”. A contraction of “should have”