Mispronunciation

Jeff Atwood, in stackoverflow Podcast #5:

So I like to put the disclaimer out there. Because I have a history of mispronouncing things a lot. I think it’s because I grew up in an area that was somewhat rural, and I read a lot. And I didn’t hear people using the words that I was reading, so I kind of had to imagine what they would sound like. And I think that got, at some point just, you know, it became second nature for me to pronounce things however I thought they should be pronounced and not look them up.

This is pretty much the exact excuse I’ve been using for years to explain why I never knew how to say things like “hors d’oeuvres”, and why I’ve always been irritated by people who say things like “could of” when they mean “could have.”