Having to actually speak to people recently as opposed to the usual copious writing I do, I've gained a new appreciation for being able to search and correct the spellings of words with an ease you can't with pronunciations. If you can't tell in that phone post I mentioned, I'm about hypoventilating by the end, trying to spew that piece without warming up to speaking first, and taking proper breaths, and not... you know... worrying that I screw it up.
Here are words I try to avoid saying because I'm not 100% sure how to pronounce them:
- meme. I think it's /meem/, as it's supposed to be analogous with gene, but twice recently have I heard it pronounced /mehm/, which it is if you talk about memetics (like genetics). For that matter I have a good friend who calls Memepool /mee mee poohl/, so I'm not overly worried about it.
- chai. My hot beverage of choice has been Stash Chai Spice for months now. Back at the holidays I had some Oregon Chai cider drink stuff, which is very good. Logically they would say it's "eye" with a "k" in front if it were a hard ch, so I imagine that's what it is, but I'm still unsure. I even had a conversation at the checkout when buying the Chai Cider, about whether it was good and how about that Chai Nog, have I tried that? and ten seconds later I could not for the life of me remember how or even if either of us actually pronounced the word.
I'm sure there are others but I don't recall them this second. I realize I should suck it up and, if I'm wrong, at least be assertively wrong--I've mislaid the famous quote to that effect--but it's hard. The first step is to admit I have a problem, though, so here you are.
