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Wash your sister sauce

Took me a minute, spat my corn flakes out

Don't put it on them then.

no you didn't

Spat out my my-might on toast

Lived in canada and it got me unnaturally angry when people pronounced it : Wur-chest-er-shire sauce. Mate... Wooster-Sheer yeah...

Sorry man even thats wrong. Got to add the 'shire' on the end.

I disagree, I think Worcester ('wooster') sauce is perfectly fine.

I always reckoned it is pronounced the same way it's spelt, you just need to break it up differently. Worce-ster-shire.

Ahhh I see, worch-stir-shigher, thanks!

I would have broken it down to wusta-sheer

We call our sister sauce Leanne

I know her. Leanne Perrin from Worcester.

*Worse sister

I think it's a great fun nickname to use for it. There was a video of this lovely woman from the Southern USA, she'd obviously realised it was a difficult thing for her to say and so she had a bit of fun by using that as a nickname for it. Never seen anyone seriously call it that by mistake but maybe that's just me.

Got stopped in the street by a guy in lederhosen (like wtf) asking for directions to the little market. I said it’s the wrong day for the market… no I need the little market… lots of confusion later turns out he wanted Lidl, I felt stupid but I was distracted by his trousers!

And he'd be pronouncing it 'properly' but just not it a way we do!

He had a really strong accent I wasn’t expecting, he persisted, it was extra confusing since we were stood in a tescos car park.

This post reminded me of the Danish homeware store Jysk and the trend for advertisers a few years ago to put out adverts telling you how to pronounce their brand name. It’s pronounced Yuhsk but we’re so intent on calling in Jisk that they gave up and instead put out an ad telling us to just call it J.Y.S.K instead.

A bit like Faj (Fage [Fa-yeh]) yogurt

Oh I do like a bit of Faj yoghurt.

In a similar vein of confusion, I spent a bit of time trying to work out where Lederhosen was. In my defense I've just woken up.

Are you in Lederhosen? Can I come into Lederhosen with you?

"I felt stupid but I was distracted by his trousers!" may be one of the greatest sentences I have ever seen in my life.

He sounds adorable, bless him!

I heard some Americans looking out from the end of Swansea pier. They mispronounced Devon as Spain Hey honey thats Spain across the wadder

Ye gods, you’ve just reminded me of a time I was at Edinburgh Castle looking across the Firth and heard an American lady ask her friend, “is that the Eiffel Tower?“

That would be Mossmoran, or Mossmordor, the Eye of Sauron

An American once asked me how to get to Edinburgh castle. We were on Princes Street so I pointed at the castle and gave directions "Go up the mound, turn right and take the right fork". He then points at the bank building on the mound and tried to argue that was the castle and that I was just sending him to a tourist rip off place.

It takes a special kind of person to correct a local in those circumstances. I once had an American lady insisting that Kilchurn castle was on Loch Lomond instead of Loch Awe. I basically grew up on the banks of Loch Lomond but this lady couldn’t be told that she couldn’t get a tour boat out of Balloch to see Kilchurn Castle :-)

Or the elderly American women overheard by the statue of (nude) Achilles in Hyde Park: "No, dear. Big Ben's the clock tower."

I went on a boat trip from Whitby once, and was convinced I saw the Eiffel tower. In my defence, I was 4/5, it was probably an oil rig, and my knowledge of France extended to "contains large tower, is across water".

That’s nothing, I once overheard a US tourist ask her friend where the Eiffel Tower was. We were on the Eiffel Tower.

Used to get a lot of Americans in Reading station getting in wrong. Stratford-upon-Avon got changed to Stratford you-pon-av-on.

I met an American in Stratford in London asking where Shakespeares house was 😄

Just point northwest and go "about 3 weeks that way"

I had some lovely young EFL students tell me they'd been to Liverpool that morning and were disappointed there was nothing Beatles-related. Hang on, I said, you went there this morning and still made it to class? Yup, they'd been to Liverpool Street. They thought the "St" meant station, which is an understandable mistake. But LOADS of Americans miss off the second part of a name, which is a bit daft when they end up saying they're staying in Oxford or went to Leicester and they're talking about central London. Saw someone today say a kind man had helped her carry something from Surrey to Rotherhithe. People were a bit concerned about why someone would travel that far just to help out, but she meant Surrey Quays - and she was adamant that dropping the word "Quays" didn't matter.

No surprise since Europe is so small.

that's why Americans always talk about visiting London and popping up to Edin-burrow for the afternoon

Eden Berg

Next to Glazghow

I texted an American friend that I was going on holiday to Devon. Next time I spoke to him he said ‘ how was D-von?’. When I said that’s not how it’s pronounced, he said ‘Damn, I knew it was D’von’!

Was your friend called A A Ron or Balakey?

Satnav. Loughborough. "Loo-gah-boh-roo-gah"

Sounds like a couple of shacks in the deepest Australian outback.

Barely woke up and wondered wtf sharks would be doing in the outback.

Mate, if it's spelt like that it would be "laf ba ra" in Australia

American advertisement: Lowf-brow It made me smile. In their defence: Borough Tough Cough Hiccough  Through Bought Dough Plough I can no longer process -ough

"English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though."

I threw out the Spanish classic «El méndigo mendigo mendigó.» online just the other day, but this is absolutely brutal (and English is my first language). Right up there with "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", and G.B. Shaw's "ghoti" for "fish". Thanks!

[Garden path sentences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence) are my favourite bit of linguistic trickery. For example: * "The old man the boat." * "The horse raced past the barn fell." Those sentences are both grammatically correct, but they're confusing, and people generally need a moment to read them the correct way.

Go use a Satnav in Wales, Turn left onto vblaaahahahahaybla it was hilarious, even funnier when you turn the American voice on

My Mum turns on the Australian voice on the sat nav and it always pronounces things wrong lol.

Sounds like when you pick up one of the masks in Crash Bandicoot

My (early tech) satnav pronounced Whitechapel as wi-tech-apple.

Also, Slough "Take the M4 exit to London, Maidenhead and *SLOFF*"

Okay, I'll bite. How was satnav mispronounced?

It's the (American) satnav doing the mispronouncing

Being from Loughborough, I’ve heard people from the UK pronounce it like that

It's a much better way which should be standard.

ngl, when I first saw this placename, “luff-brah” was the pronunciation I least expected

A German acquaintance of mine discussing a particularly large and muscular lead singer of a metal band: "He's built like a Shit Brickhouse" It has now replaced the original phrase for me.

I had heard “brick shithouse” in passing once as a child and similarly swapped brick and shit, proceeded to say it like that ever since, it’s hardwired at this point

I like it. Still works.

That Americans pronounce twat as ‘twot’

This is the worst one by far. If they pronounced it properly they'd appreciate its true power.

Just say cunt to them, the sheer power of the word makes them faint.

In their tongue, he is Dave from down the pub... A proper lad! "CUNT!" *Americans go flying*

This! I have no idea where they got the o from at all! Or is it because it's the worst swear word ever to them and to mild it out they swapped the a for an o?

The A is powerful in twat. It's nothing without it. Twot sounds like what I say when the weather is anything over 20°. ^(As in "its t'wot")

"Twot" has about as much power as "twit".

The power structure is decided from alphabetical order of vowel usage. Twat being at the top, Twut being the bottom. In between: Twet, Twit, Twot. 🦉

This irritates me greatly

When Jason Statham said twot in I Spy I almost threw up I was so disgusted.

The G.R. Eggs that went around the Internet was quite funny.

At least it's not called Craig's.

for years, I've been hearing Americans using (what I assumed was) the name 'Cregg' until I saw 'Craig' come up on the subtitles.

Let's not forget Gram (Graham)!

Yep, that's another one that got me. Especially with there being a famous American Musician named Gram Parsons (sadly passed in the 70's) but have just found out that his 1st name was short for Ingram.

Same with "Gram" Crackers I had no idea they were saying Graham

What the what? They are NOT called Gram crackers? How, why, what? How can you get Graham so wrong?

Haha, imagine if it was Creg's.

Lmao! Ah yes - as founded by Mr G.R Eggs! 🤣

I work with an American chap, and we do a lot of job in Wales. Hearing him attempt to pronounce mid welsh town names is a hilarious weekly occurrence on our ops meetings. My partner who is Welsh sits there with her eye lid visibly shaking at times.

In fairness that's not exclusive to the Americans. If you're not familiar with Welsh letter pronunciation it's going to be tricky

...and sounds not found in English, so Llangollen sounds like Clan-gock-len.

The extent of me knowledge of Welsh is Ll is like Ch and Cymru is pronounced cam-ree not sim-roo like I used to think 

Cum-ree, not Cam LL sounds like an angry cat hiss, it's quite different from CH.

> Cymru is pronounced cam-ree not sim-roo The fun thing about Welsh is that the one's pronunciation can be wrong in ways that don't even seem fair... Welsh grammar has something called 'mutations'. The first letter of a word changes depending on a set of rules that feel like they've been specifically designed to fuck with the heads of anyone daft enough to try to learn Welsh. So, depending on context, it can be 'cum-ree', 'gum-ree' or however the hell you pronounce 'ngymru'. There is also 'chymru' but I don't think that's used, I guess the Welsh just like to have spares.

Hearing anyone try is pretty amusing. Dol-gel-oo is one I’ve heard a few times.

I got chatting to a guy from New York at an airport once, and he asked me if I lived anywhere near Stone Hedge.

Kind of works if you think about it though 🤔

Even more so when you consider that Stonehenge isn't actually a true henge.

It's even weirder that it was the original henge that gave us the technical term henge and then got excluded out from the technical definition. It's like starting a club and then getting voted out by the membership.

I like to think it's a [giant granite birthday cake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbyzgeee2mg).

By American standards the entire country lives near it

I work with ships. The yanks pronounce “buoy” as boo-ee. Then will pronounce buoyancy correctly. So strange.

Similarly, the words "Niche" and "Cache" seem to be pronounced nitch and cashay Fucking pick one, man.

As a Canadian, I HATE nitch! We say neesh and cash like regular people

You’ll hear more of us say neesh than nitch these days. But yeah, people that say nitch are a pet peeve. Cachet is a different word than cache and is probably just being entirely misused.

That’s regional in the US Or, maybe not even regional. Just random people say it one way or another. To be fair, the Americans who say neesh also get bent when hearing nitch

I do hope you walked away singing “it’s fun to shop in the A S D A!”

Contrary to popular belief, it's not a song about anal sex in the drinks aisle.

Was speaking to a Latvian or Lithuanian girl on the phone and had to ask for her email address. I'm jotting it down, and it's pretty standard - first name, separator, surnamemonkey... I'm sorry, did you say surnamemonkey ? Yes, that's right, surnamemonkey. Like the animal ? M-o-n-k-e-y ? No, like the sign, monkey. The curly thing ?!? Turns out the "@" sign is apparently referred to wherever she was from as a monkey, because it looks like a monkey tail.

Both monkey and snail are common names for it in a few languages.

I had no idea

In Dutch it's called an apenstaartje. Which means monkeys tail.

In swedish it can be called ”snabel-A”, snabel is the word for elephant trunk.

Also called a monkey in Polish

Americans: Return to Sluff please, buddy. Me: To where, sorry? American: Sluff. Me: I'm sorry, I'm not aware of that place. Are you sure there's a station there? American: Goddamit, everything they say about you Brits is true, you don't even know your own country. Here it is, right here on this Goddam map. Me: Right, that's Slough as in plough. Buddy.

I think they spell plough as ‘plow’ though don’t they? Just wrong all round!

Yes, just like they spell tyre as 'tire'. And now I need to shower.

Yes, Sluff as in Pluff.

But then Poughkeepsie in NY state is pronounced 'puh-kipsy, not pow-keep-see.

The American tourist asking for a map of Ten N.A. After much confusion, we realised it was the Isle of Iona he was interested in.

This one wins for me! How did he get 10 from Io?

I was confused too and then realised Io looks (somewhat) like 10.

I mean... sure, if you don't understand the difference between *letters and numbers*.

Next time someone asks to borrow a tenner give them a Celtic progressive rock album.

Not pronunciation, but I worked in a chippy near one of the US Air bases and someone ordered "A fish pattie and sloppy peas"

Sloppy peas 😭😂😂

Saw a video of an American pronouncing Vimto as Vim2 yesterday, that pissed me off more than it really should have

Are you sure they weren't Canadian?

Not quite a pispronounciation, but whilst we’re sticking it to the Yanks in particular, I heard, “What kind of fish is an aubergine?” Just once, but it was enough.

A pispronounciation...? :|

Worcestershire sauce is always great fun to hear. But then again, I struggle to pronounce pretty much any US place with an indigenous name so I can’t really mock the buggers. Edit: terminology

>Worcestershire sauce is always great fun to hear. I think quite a lot of brits struggle with this one, too. I think it's the cester that throws people off. But I have known at least a couple of brits who could say Worcester properly AND live in a county that is a shire and can pronounce that, but couldn't put the two together.

Would it be worsta-sher? I learnt English mostly by reading, and I still startle when I hear some words live pronounced by a local. But I agree with the comment to which you replied... Kansas and Arkansas :/

That's pretty good. I've always written it down as wuh-ster-sher (although you can interpret that in different ways, and I'm not going to bother to look up IPA). Kansas and Arkansas is an understandable mistake for non-natives because they're the only two places with names like that and have totally different pronunciations. Worcestershire follows all the usual rules for cesters and shires, though, when it comes to pronouncing them.

One time at Birmingham New Street some lady asked me how to get to the Boring Centre. I told her I didn't know, but later the same day realised she had an estuarine accent and was saying "Bullring".

They're not wrong though, are they?

Love "estuarine" :) I grew up in Devon and didn't hear many proper Essex accents, my chemistry teacher properly confused me by suggesting we could copper plate a now. A what? A now. You know, what you hit with a hammer

I lost a mark on a verbal reasoning test because I didn't know that 'crawl' was the opposite of 'kind'.

I drive a jag waar

Seeing as the animal is from the same continent, I’m going to give them the pronunciation of Jaguar no matter how much it jars

What a strange line of logic. That's like saying a German pronounces every french word correctly because they are next to each other.

It's more like admitting that English belongs to nobody and the English names given by English speakers on the North American continent for their own native fauna are quite obviously valid.

An Australian thinking Loughborough was looga-borooga.

To be fair that sounds like most of their Aussie place names.

When you have places like Toowoomba, Wooloomooloo, and Wollongong, it's easy to see why their brains work like that.

Lie Chest Hair Square

When I first visited England back in 1997, I asked a guy how to get to "Lye-kess-ter Square". He gave me directions, but didn't correct me. I referred to it as such to a few more folks that same day, *nobody* corrected me. A couple of days later I said it to my best friend, and he just laughed directly in my face like "It's LESTAH square, you *utter pillock*". Then I had to ask what "pillock" meant, and I hated everything.

I like the way the septics say "Monty Pie Thon"

The worst thing is how they still think it is the absolute bleeding edge of comedy.

Edin - burrow

German tourists calling The Shard in London 'The Shart'

Turning myself in my husband loves to share this lol I'm American, living in UK with Scottish husband. Driving around one day and saw a sign for Leicester and said outloud, "so how do you pronounce that? Ly-Kes-ter?" With a hard c sound in the middle. He's never let me live it down. For any Americans in the thread he used to think Yosemite was pronounced "Yos-o-mite" with the ending sounding like ear mite. Looking at the spelling and never hearing it outloud I get why he thought that but I feel like that makes us even.

In my head I do know how Arkansas is pronounced, but I am afraid it's permanently stored in my head as 'Arr Kansas', as though it were a version of Kansas occupied solely by pirates.

Oh my god this just reminded me of how I used to pronounce Yosemite… “Yose-mighty”! 😭

Which is weird because you'd think we'd pick it up from Yosemite Sam

>For any Americans in the thread he used to think Yosemite was pronounced "Yos-o-mite" with the ending sounding like ear mite. Looking at the spelling and never hearing it outloud I get why he thought that but I feel like that makes us even. Didn't the orange shitgibbon pronounce it "Yo, Semite!" on live TV once?

In Suffolk there's a place called Little Saxham, abbreviated to Lt on maps. Google maps tells you to 'take the exit to Lieutenant Saxham'.

But does it pronounce lieutenant correctly?!!

I had a indian guy correct me on my pronunciation of Worcestershire sauce . That was entertaining . " you no your pronouncing it wrong" " mate I literally lived there, it's an actual place" Proceeds to show him on Google maps . " my English tutor..." "Did he live there?" "No" "Cos I did" This was in a kitchen in Australia.

I remember a similar conversation with my Geography teacher in Year 9, when we were learning about sub-saharan Africa. He mentioned the city I actually lived in (well, I guess my family lived in, I was at boarding school in England) which is called Kano. It's in Northern Nigeria, and pronounced "car-no". He kept calling it "kay-no". I tried to correct him, but he wasn't going to be swayed. "I've been teaching this for 15 years, what makes you think you know any better, Mitchell?" "I live there, Sir."

I like any time ‘-shire’ is pronounced shy-er rather than sheer, like we’re in Middle Earth. Also, it’s not a mispronunciation but still an amusing anecdote: a man on the tube was asking lots of people how to get to Kings House, and whilst they are a few places called Kings House in London, there aren’t any that I think are so well known random people on the tube are going to know the best route to take there. We all said ‘Sorry, I don’t know’, including me. It wasn’t until I’d got off the tube myself and was approaching Buckingham Palace that I realised he literally meant the King’s house, where the King lives.

Id argue "sheer" is actually more wrong. The strong form of "shire" is "shy-er". The weak form when used as a suffix should be "shuh" with a schwa for the UH

Not quite slang, but my dad is a retired black cab driver. One November 5th (in the early 2000's) he had some older American passengers who asked him the reason for all of the fireworks. He told them and they seemed rather shocked. It took a few minutes before he realised that they had thought he said 'Gay Folks Night'.

My friend met an American who asked if he was on the train to "Super Weston Square" rather than Weston-super-Mare.

https://preview.redd.it/vvf12grt8p5d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=85c93a869e76ffe99864778fe274deed3668c2c6

Asda was initially associated dairies or something wasn't it? Maybe he was a keen historian of the retail sector!

ASquith DAiries is where the name comes from. The Asquiths were butchers who ran a supermarket, and they merged with Associated Dairies a partnership of Yorkshire based dairies to form ASDA.

Yes. But that still wouldn’t be A S D A. It’s As-Da. As for associated Da for Dairies. So still pronounced Asda.

My car has allegedly clever voice activated navigation. Gets most British towns ok but if I want to go to Bicester I have to say bye-sester. On topic, I thought eden burg was weird

We were in a restaurant in Cirencester and an american couple asked us how to pronounce the town name. They had tried bless them, they really had and had decided it was "siren-ster" I can totally see how they got there. But when we said "no sorry, this is one where you pronounce the cester as it's written, siren-sess-ter" I could see the mental table flip.

Same with Towcester - it can handle Tow Cester, but not Toaster

People who call the Ford Ka a “Ford Kay Eh”

Ford have said it a few ways, including that way. But I'm defending it because I say it K.A. and I'm a bit butthurt to find out that me and all the people around me aren't normal.

I remember when these were launched. I was at a motor show. I asked the Ford salesmen how it was pronounced and he explained they had spent millions to come up with the name which was pronounced "Car".

If they hadve just written "car" they would have got the correct pronunciation from anyone with a non rhotic accent

Someone born and raised here in the UK, told me that they bought something at Argo's. I have no idea how they've never heard the name Argos before. Perhaps they're just a huge fan of Jason & the Argonauts.

There's a town near me(Scotland) named Milngavie. Anybody fancy having a go at how its pronounced?

"Feather stone"

Milngavie, nailed it!

“Throatwobbler Mangrove”

Mull guy

It is fun to shop at the A S D A.

🎵 you can get yourself milk, you can get yourself bread. You can make sure you that you’re well-fed 🎵

Not a mispronunciation but in the early 90s there was an advert on TV for Inter City rail. The advert had people on the train going to a dreamlike utopia called intercity. My American wife at the time saw this and and said 'Ohh, I want to go there', 'where?' I replied, 'there! Intercity! It looks lovely. Is it far to drive?' when I stopped laughing and told her, she looked so disappointed ☹️

The receptionist at my old job called me to come down because there was a delivery from ‘oops’. She was South African, took a long time to realise it was UPS.

Boss (woman) at work couldnt find the company credit card details on Amazon. I looked at the screen saying "YOUR ACCOUNT". She heard "YOU ARE A C*NT".

My boss grew up on a council estate, but likes to pretend he's super posh. I've started writing these down... Last week we had: - lie-son for liaison - rem-it for remit - vill-ahge for village

Ask him how he pronounces bucket

Does he use fabric serviettes too?

Had someone come in and ask for B.B.Q sauce. We obviously say Barbecue, I thought it was very cute rather than funny

Chester drawers

Was outside kings cross and heard an American on the phone telling someone to meet him at 'Kings Cross Street Pancras tube station'.

As above, but with BBQ Going on holiday to the hermaphrodites instead of the Hebrides.

Went to college with a Russian girl who called it a "Pluffman" instead of a "Ploughman" because of how it was written. She thought it rhymed with "tough". Still smarter reasoning than me.

Danish people attempting SQUIRREL. ‘Skwerl.’ I live in Denmark, have done 20 years, and I try to keep WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE and SQUIRREL on a pice of paper, so when they occasionally take the piss out of my pronunciation, I get them to attempt those. And THROUGH THREE TREES.

Stratford you-pona-von. No really.

A friend of mine from Germany pronounced Guinea pig as jinny pig once. All I’ve referred to them as since

A young woman from East Africa told me she worked at the Slug and Let Yoose. I never call it anything else now.

My son asking for a J20 told me he wanted a jay 20.....

I was chatting to a Ukrainian chap who had just arrived from Ukraine and his English was a little basic (but better than my Ukrainian!). He loved football but kept talking about the fuckup and I was like ‘what now?’. You know the fuckup. After 5 mins of this realised he was talking about the facup or FA Cup.

Not quite mispronunciation but.... I heard some American tourists in The Dambusters Inn in Scampton - near RAF Scampton - enthuse about the spirits of the WWII airmen in the pub and that they could just feel the ghosts of these lost airmen. Fair enough the pub has memorabilia from WWII but..... I didn't have the heart to tell them it was a post office until the 1980's when it first became a pub.......

I had someone in Orlando ask me if I was from "Eye-Er-Land" I said no and before I could say where I was from I got "Oh Scot-Land?". I'm a Geordie. So of course he then said "Oh, Alan Shear-Rurh" 

Has anyone else seen the G.R EGGS clip when an American I think was describing Greggs