“What’s A Word That Someone Horribly Mispronounced That You Still Remember?” (30 Answers)

Unfortunately, the 'th' sound is not that common in other languages. "This suggests they could be trickier to articulate," the accent coach tells Bored Panda. "For those speakers who don't have the 'th' sounds in their native language, the English 'th' sounds might be tricky to master."

What's interesting is that Nicholson advises not to stress too much over this. "This isn't actually that important," he says. "Many English speakers in the UK actually pronounce the 'th' sounds as 'f' and 'v' instead. So 'first' and 'thirst', and 'sliver' and 'slither' sound the same."

Some people use pronunciation to assume people's level of sophistication. If a person pronounces a word or words incorrectly, that somehow reflects on their intelligence. Luke Nicholson says that such stereotypes are simply not true. "As I mentioned, sometimes it's impossible to guess the pronunciation of a word based on spelling alone," he explains.

Nicholson also has a solid argument against prejudices about incorrect pronunciation. "If someone is mispronouncing a word because their first language isn't English, we should remember that they are clever enough to speak more than one language!"