I wonder how many ways I can find to embarrass myself. For years I have bought Kumho tires and pronounced it as "come ho." No one has ever corrected me until Monday when I got two new tires. The guy very quickly corrected my pronunciation. If I were the blushing type, I would have been crimson. My face was hot. I could barely think or talk as I considered how long I have been pronouncing this wrong. This tire is pronounced " koo' mo," long 'O" at the end.
Of course, there are usually several men--employees and customers--standing around when I say this while buying tires.
Your turn
Did you know how to pronounce Kumho? Do you ever manage to embarrass yourself so thoroughly that it smarts later?
I've never heard of it. I embarrass myself all the time. It makes me laugh.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
Janie,
DeleteYes, I did laugh at myself later. However, I was mortified at all the other times. Oh, I do embarrass myself. A guy I dated 34 years ago asked me why I said the things I said.
I haven't heard of them and would have pronounced them just as you did. And I embarrass myself often. And often.
ReplyDeleteEC,
DeleteOh, I am in good company with you and Janie.
when i was about 14 i pronounced lingerie the wrong way and the listener laughed. it was horrid, if justified! ever since then i have tried very hard to be very diplomatic about mispronounciations
ReplyDeletekylie,
ReplyDeleteI rarely laugh at mispronunciations of others. That was not nice. If what I said had not been so sexually charged and only said to men, I would not have been so horrified. I did laugh when he told me, but thankfully he did not.
I would have turned beet red.... I am a blusher! No I did not know that is how you pronounced it...
ReplyDeleteM.E.,
ReplyDeleteI had a friend who would blush all over. Her neck and what you could see in the V-neck below, her arms--all would turn beet red. Then, it started splotching. When we went to play tennis, I would say, "Whose balls are we going to play with?" She volunteered her husband's and then blushed until she was laughing and splotching. This is how we started every tennis session. She hated it because I never blushed even when I was embarrassed.
Never heard of it. But some of the kids in history were talking about hero-DOH-tus (Herodotus.....He ROD o tus).
ReplyDeleteAAACK! Who taught them that? I have heard teachers say the way a word was said did not matter, just as long as the person knew what it meant. Pardon me? If I have to work on translating every other word, then effective communication is not happening. There is one word that puzzles me every time it is mispronounced. I forget at the moment what it is.
DeleteI've never heard of Kumho, but I mispronounced "pseudonym" until college. I knew the "p" was silent, but I always said the first syllable like the word "suede" until one of my R.A.'s corrected me.
ReplyDeletej,
DeleteOh, I would have died! You obviously were not an English major. Right? Looking at the word, I can see how you were mistaken.
Actually, Linda, I was an English major, living on a co-ed dorm floor with mostly other English majors! That made it all the more embarrassing! It was just a word that I had read many times but didn't hear spoken enough for the pronunciation to stay in my brain.
Delete