How To Pronounce The Names of 24 Famous Places You‘ve Mispronounced Your Entire Life
Mistypes are annoying – nay, shameful – for a literate person, but what about mispronunciations? Those are harder to pick up on, and can be really embarrassing. Fortunately, there’s a snazzy visual guide to commonly mispronounced places from around the world that you can use to be sure you’re always right. You’ll notice that pronunciation of Australian cities is, well, extremely Australian.
Abhisek Das at Thrillophilia gave us the most visually appealing version of this useful list. The usage of contrasting blurry and clear images of cities helps hammer the point home. And implies that when you mispronounce these names, you sound drunk!
More info: thrillophilia.com (h/t: designtaxi)
Bangkok, Thailand
Melbourne, Australia
Reykjavik, Iceland
Dubai
Beijing, China
Budapest, Hungary
Phuket, Thailand
Brisbane, Australia
Colombia
Yosemite Park, USA
Iraq
Montreal, Canada
Qatar
The River Thames, UK
Versailles, France
Worcester, UK
Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem
Helena, USA
Kissimmee, USA
Lafayette, USA
La Jolla, USA
Niger
Pakistan
Worcestershire, UK
Got wisdom to pour?
im not sure what your basing this off of, but the Reykjavik is a bit off, the “vik” would actually be “veek” (like week but with a V) but thats how the Icelanders say it (im Icelandic), all the English speakers I know just say Rek-ya-vik/Rake-ja-vik
Fun read though, so interesting how we tend to force our own languages on the foreign ones we encounter! Melbourne and Brisbane made me laugh though, I didnt realise people thought it was said that way HAHAHA <3
There remain a number of incorrect pronunciations here, notably Dudapest and Montreal. Unfortunately, the residents of many cities have adopted their own pronunciations, like Lafayette. The French pronunciation is not used locally, as you note. Des Moines, WA is pronounced Da Moinz locally. but the coreect French pronunciation is used in Des Moines, IA (silent s). Delhi in India is pronounced “Delee”, but the town of the same name in IA is pronounced DEL-Hi. In WI, Prairie du Chiens is locally pronounced Prairie du Shane, a bastardization of the French word for dogs if there ever was one. Don’t forget Paris is pronounced “Par EE” and the locals will correct you quickly while dumping a drink in your lap.
BOO-da-pesht. Always stress the first syllable in Hungarian.
Some of these are helpful but some of these you probably are just not very good with foreign languages to pronounce them right (La jolla)
well, Montreal is not pronunce Mun-tree-all . its pronunce Mon-re-al. you do not say the ‘t’
oups, pronounce.