A list of mispronounced words provides a retrospective of 2024, from Kamala to Chappell
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and breakout pop star Chappell Roan were among the year's most talked-about people. Their names were also among the most mispronounced.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and breakout pop star Chappell Roan were among the year's most talked-about people. Their names were also among the most mispronounced.
On Wednesday, the language-learning company Babbel and closed-captioning company The Captioning Group released a list of the words that news anchors, politicians and other public figures in the U.S. struggled with the most in 2024. The list also provides a retrospective of the year’s most discussed topics and people, from pop culture to politics.
“It’s a nice way to kind of look back into the year and see everything that has happened,” said Esteban Touma, a linguistic and cultural expert at Babbel.
Roan — whose hits include “Good Luck, Babe!” — shot to fame this year and is nominated for six Grammy awards. According to the list, her name is pronounced CHAP-uhl ROHN, not SHA-pel ROW-an.
During Harris' unsuccessful run for president this year, her great-nieces took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention to clear up how to say her first name, pronounced COM-a-la. Also making the list was U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose last name still leaves people tongue-tied. During his 2020 presidential run, his campaign made posters and T-shirts with the pronunciation “Boot-Edge-Edge” to help.
Other words on the list include:
Nancy Niedzielski, chair of the linguistics department at Rice University in Houston, points out that most of the words on the list are not English, so it’s not surprising that they would be mispronounced in the U.S. The key to pronouncing them correctly, she said, would probably just be hearing them spoken, she said.
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