'Gal Gadot' and 'coulrophobia' among top mispronounced words of 2017
This year plenty of people were talking about the star of Wonder Woman, the irrational fear of clowns, and a disgraced Hollywood mogul — but they may have some trouble with their pronunciation.
“Gal Gadot,” “coulrophobia,” and “Weinstein” are among the top mispronounced words of 2017, according to a survey commissioned by the language-learning app Babbel. To compile the list, the company polled professional subtitlers at the U.S. Captioning Company, National Captioning Canada, and the British Institute of Verbatim Reporters about the words, phrases, and names that folks had a hard time saying on TV.
Gadot’s name, for example, is pronounced with a soft T (“gah-dott”) rather than a silent one.
“Coulrophobia,” which saw a surge in popularity amid the box office success of the Stephen King adaptation It, is pronounced “cool-ruh-foh-bee-ah.”
As for Weinstein — as in Harvey Weinstein, the mega-producer who has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women — some linguists say he’s pronouncing his own name incorrectly. They think it should be “wine-stine,” while he says “wine-steen.”
Rounding out the top 10 list of mispronounced words in the U.S. are “bokeh,” “dotard,” “fibromyalgia,” “Namibia,” “nuclear,” “Puerto Rico,” and “Pyongyang.”
