Hooked on Phonics

In our continuing “little lesson” on the demise of the English language as we once knew it and all the slang we keep adding to the dictionary, our family plays a little game about how to pronounce words.

Photo courtesy of See-ming Lee

I keep a running list on my computer and it has grown over the years. It all started when we were driving up to the mountains and Lizzie said “I know we’re getting close because I saw the sign for Cherry-o-key.”

In her defense, she was in the 3rd grade.

We love to mispronounce things whenever we can. Part of it is some Indiana dialect that comes from both of our mothers. Part of it is that we all have some classic word we have mispronounced and then whenever we try to say it, we have to stop and think “Did I just say that wrong AGAIN?”

Here’s our Humpfreeze list of amusing words that we like to mispronounce on purpose.

Sidenote: I won’t call out who said it wrong first which is usually why it gets on the list. Some are really just for fun. Just in case you read the list and think “Oh my, they are really a dumb family.”

We call our little game “IS IT?” You really have to say them out loud to fully enjoy the game.

• cherokee or cherry-o-key
• pecan or pee-can
• carribbean or care-a-be-n
• caramel or care-mell
• potato or po-tot-toe
• roof or ruff
• wash or warsh
• milk or melk
• bear or bar
• route or root
• coupon or coo-pon
• Illinois or Illi-noise
• italian or I-tal-yen
• creek or crick
• syrup or sere-up
• envelope or on-velope
• lidocaine or lid-o-caine

Bad inside family jokes posted just to make the kids laugh:

• vending or bending
• biscuit or b-kit
• foreigners or fur-ners
• brown hog or brown log
• mosaic or mose-e-ack
• vinyl or venil
• filet or fill-et
• ex-lax or egg slice

Did any of them make you laugh? Or are you just thinking we really are dumb?