When customers can't pronounce words properly...

[Ree]

None of the mispronunciations from customers come to mind at the moment, but I may think of some later.
I have a coworker who mispronounces stuff all the time.
A couple of gems:

On occasion, we have a special sale for a Canadian cookware company called "Paderno"

She calls it "Pandora"

"humidifier" becomes "humifer" (There are so many more, but I just can't remember right now.)

Another of my pricing crew makes me laugh all the time.
She refers to "SKU's" as "skewers"

[chops]

I used to work for a company called VST, sometimes mispronounced "Vista." This is way before Micro$oft came up with the idea for Windows Vista...then you'd see a lot of "Will my Vista work with Vista?"

The company was then bought by a company called SmartDisk, and we eventually had to support their FlashPath media card adapters, which allowed people to use their media cards in floppy drives. One of the brands that FlashPath was sold under was SanDisk; I used to get annoyed by people pronouncing it ScanDisk like the old Windows utility.

[JuniorMintz]

I don't know why but there are quite a few ladies who frequent our shop that just plain refuse to pronounce "Bebe" correctly...

I mean honestly, it's not hard. Bebe=B.B., like a B.B. gun.

Still, they call them "Baby" glasses, "Beh-Beh", and my personal "WTF?" favorite, "Beh-by"...

?!?

I've tried correcting them, but it never works. Soooo wierd...

[Rubystars]

There are a lot of people who switch vowels. It annoys the heck out me.

Propane has become "Preppin"

Quarters = Queertors (no I'm not making that one up, it was hard to keep from laughing)

Quarters have also been called "Kwah tahs" and "Kottas"

Another thing that gets on my nerves are people who don't follow English speech patterns when they're speaking English, because it makes it hard for me to understand them.

Me: "What size shoe are you looking for?"
SC: Eleventy
Me: "Eleventy?" "Do you mean Eleven?"
SC's wife: "he said 11 D!"
Me: Oh, I understand now.

The guy didn't leave any space between them and pronounced the D like a T.

I also despise half said words:

SC: "I wah sigh si"
Me: What?
SC's husband: "She wants size six"

[edible_hat]

It's like, "wow, that's way too long of a name. I'll read it until I get overwhelmed and then I'll just make up my own ending."

People do that with my actual name. I still occasionally get mail for a non-existent D. Williams.

[ShinyGreenApple]

SC: Eleventy

Alas, Eleventy-one years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits . . .


Erm, yeah, that would be my geek showing again

[Andara Bledin]

My favourite "Colour" in the entire catalogue however is "Raven Herringbone". I love that one. It sounds like an extra from a Harry Potter book.

Well, honestly, that's actually a color and a pattern/weave.

Herringbone is a particularly neat pattern, too, when done properly.

[edit to add]

Oh! I can't believe I forgot this!

I have a friend who had a high school English instructor who told the class at one point, "You must leawn to pwonounce youw wowds cowwectly."

The woman had a serious case of lazy r going, and she seemed completely unaware of the irony of her pronouncement.
(yes, I saw what I did there)

^-.-^

[Rubystars]

Alas, Eleventy-one years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits . . .


Erm, yeah, that would be my geek showing again

Maybe having been exposed to that is what made me think of "eleventy" when he said it that way.

I just have a problem with understanding accents, which is bad in Houston, because a LOT of people have them.

Even when people are speaking fairly clearly I can get tripped up, this one guy asked me for a potato bag one time and I didn't quite get it, what he meant was a bag of potatoes.

After that I realized how tired I was that day.

[Rapscallion]

Spoonerism: the act of switching consonants or vowels. Named for Reverend William Archibald Spooner.

I'm just glad I've yet to hear of him telling the tale of Hobin Rood and his ecclesiastical chum.

Rapscallion

[Shironu-Akaineko]

I have a friend who had a high school English instructor who told the class at one point, "You must leawn to pwonounce youw wowds cowwectly."

The woman had a serious case of lazy r going, and she seemed completely unaware of the irony of her pronouncement.
(yes, I saw what I did there)

^-.-^

you Wascawwy Wabbit!

[Imogene]

Only, she didn't actually say Fudruckers...

There's a fairly well-known episode of the Simpsons, where the teachers strike because of how old everything in the school is. At some point, Bart is at the back of a mob of teachers, and he starts a game of Telephone to the front. Which ends up with Principal Skinner saying something to the effect of: "And that goes double for the 'purple monkey dishwasher' comment!"

My brother at some point in his life, attempted to repeat the scene to someone (I forget who), only he ended with "Purple monkey d*ckwasher", turned beet red, and stopped talking.

[daleduke17]

One night I was talking with a couple of friends about former WWF Superstar Bret "Hitman" Hart. Well, sometimes my brain stops apparently and I came up with the non-existant Bret "Hartman" Hit. o_0 I guess he will be fighting "The Kidbreak Heart" Shawn Michaels and "Cold Stone"* Steve Austin.


*- dammit, now I want some ice cream.

[Brightglaive]

I'm not ash shink as you drunk I am ossifer. I've only had tee martunis and I've got all shober to sunday up!!!

(I do this one while I'm staggering around acting like a drunk)

on the subject of mispronouncing your ahs:

Impressive clergyman: Mahwiage, Mahwiage is waht bwings us togevah today. Mahwiage, That bwessed awwangement, that Dweam wifin a Dweam....
Prince Humperdinck: skip to the end.

(Sorry I couldn't resist... the princess bride is a classic in my movie collection )

The ones that annoy me the most at my job are ACLs (should be prounounced A...C...L's) and IPSEC (which should be prounounced I-P- SEC, like IP SECurity). I always hear ackles & ipseck. how hard is it to say 3 whole letters, or 2 letters and an abbreviation?!?

[MaverickGypsy]

I had an older lady come into the store to ask about fencing. We didn't carry material for large fences but since we did have the small fences to go around flower beds, I asked which kind she was looking for.

"Oh, you know, like a chinglink fence. My neighbors have a rockweiller that I want to keep out of my yard and I thought Walmark would have that."

We also have a chiropractor office right next door and I can believe how many people ask if they can get to the care-practor from here. Or the choir-practor.

Curiously, it seems like it's always the seniors mispronouncing words.

"Do you have any extra strength tymenol?"

"Do you carry EZ boy chairs?"

" I need a doovette for my bed."

The list goes on.

[Geek King]

The ones that annoy me the most at my job are ACLs (should be prounounced A...C...L's) and IPSEC (which should be prounounced I-P- SEC, like IP SECurity). I always hear ackles & ipseck. how hard is it to say 3 whole letters, or 2 letters and an abbreviation?!?

NEVER! As a card-carrying Geek, I reserve the right to decide, with my fellow Geeks, which acronyms get spelled, and which get pronounced. It is our way of seperating the pretenders from the herd when they say 'usub port' or 'ups box'.

Ackles and ipsec just sound cool, too.