Oh dear! Pronunciation mishaps have been few and far between lately so I guess I was due one sooner or later...
And what a good one it was.
There I was sat watching a TV programme about some famous artist with my Pa when I asked, ‘Was he more famous posthumously?’ except I pronounced it post-hume-oos-leee
*blush
After pausing for a good old chuckle, Pa told me the correct pronunciation and I realised just how wrong mine had been.
Making those kind of mistakes in front of Pa is fine though. His chuckles are good-natured and as he’s a really word expert I think he finds my quirky take on my own language entertaining. He was also the one to point out that envelope has two pronunciations and that the paper posting way wasn’t quite appropriate when related to hugs, for example.
But it does worry me about who else hears my unique and quite frankly bonkers pronunciation…
And who hears it who doesn’t know I am deaf, and instead thinks I am like Joey from Friends taking inspiration from word-of-the-day loo roll?
I worked hard to build the vocabulary that most people build aurally during their teens and uni years where the big words come out in force. I grew tired of reading ‘limited use of vocabulary’ at the bottom of my essays and so I read as many books as I could to help this – even dictionaries, which were insanely dull – but the problem is, this doesn’t help the pronunciation… and pronunciation is another word that sounds totally difference to how it reads… just ask Friend Who Knows Big Words.
In fact, I think I’ll do just that, when I meet her for dinner tonight.
1 comment:
wow, when I was in public school, my teachers didn't push me at all. I guess the higher your hearing you have rather you use HAs or CIs the more they push you. Another word, all my public school teachers probably had low expectation from me.
(I'm profound deaf from birth, went to public school from k-12th - I never had a teacher of the deaf or any deaf program.. just special education)
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