My word, is it really that difficult to say Aoife or Saoirse?
And how have people stumbled over ‘Omicron’?
IRISH names, omicron and Kyiv rank among the words with the most difficult pronunciations, according to a study.
Based on Google search results, the research found that the hardest name of all is Aoife, which generated 111,000 searches last year, the London Times reports.
Saoirse ranked as the second, while the third was omicron, which has at least two common pronunciations in use – ‘om-mykron’ and ‘om-uh-kron’.
Next comes Ukraine capital Kyiv. English speaking countries have traditionally referred to the city as ‘key-ev’, like chicken ‘kiev’ but a campaign since 2018 prefers the sounding to be ‘keeyiv’ or ‘keev’.
Finishing the top five is the Brazilian super fruit açaí – pronounced ‘ah-sah-ee’.
This was followed by two more Irish names, Niamh and Siobhán, as well as gyros – ‘yee-ros’ – which is a type of kebab.
Another name commonly mispronounced is the Vietnamese surname Nguyen, typically said as ‘n-win’.
We also get confused by Americanisations like the word schedule, which comes in tenth place in the study.
The confusion might be because there are two common pronunciations – ‘shed-yool’ and ‘sked-yool’, the former being the traditional English version and the latter being American.
Other mystifying pronunciations are the likes of: ‘A cache of quinoa, mangetout and an espresso in the foyer of parliament probably leaves you on tenterhooks in Arctic February.’ It contains ten of the 25 words people find hardest to say, research has revealed.
The survey of 2,000 adults found that quinoa is the one we struggle with the most, often pronouncing the edible seeds as ‘ki-no-ah’ instead of ‘keen-wah’.
Next comes probably, which frequently ends up as ‘probly’ instead of ‘prob-buh-blee’, followed by espresso, often rendered as ‘ex-spres-so’.
Also in the top ten are tenterhooks and cache, which many people mangle into ‘tenderhooks’ and ‘cash-ay’. Other words to make the survey list include parliament, foyer, Arctic, mangetout and February.
The study was commissioned by South Korean car giant Hyundai, which is currently running an ad based on the pronunciation of its name.
Almost half of those surveyed (47%) admitted using Google to check correct pronunciation.
Two increasingly used technical words, GIF – an abbreviation of a type of computer file used for images, and meme, a humorous image widely shared on the internet – made the top ten. GIF is often being mispronounced ‘JIF’ and meme ‘meh-meh’.
Where you live may affect how you say words. Probably was a particular problem in the northeast of England and zoology in England’s northwest. Arctic stumped people in Wales.
Meanwhile, nearly half of Londoners often use words or phrases they do not understand or know the definition of in conversation.
Residents were also the most likely to correct someone if they pronounce a word incorrectly, with 49% doing so.
Hyundai is currently stressing its name is not pronounced ‘Hyun-dye’ but ‘Hyun-day’.
Almost half used Google to check