Occasionally my dad will be horrified at a word my brother and/or I mispronounce. It happens less these days but we chalked it up to homeschooling. Once we hit a certain age, we did a lot of reading and didn't keep a dictionary nearby to check pronunciation.
Teaching Ben Ancient History, I've had the opportunity to reflect on this pronunciation issue. Because it continues. And it seems societal. There are words we don't use enough to know how to pronounce them. And since I'm teaching things I didn't learn well, or at all, I've stumbled around with some words.
Ben studied Beethoven in music appreciation yesterday and I laughed to think what a 7-year old who had never heard of Beethoven would think when he saw his name. In my circles anyway, Beethoven is not mispronounced.
Fortunately, Ben has come to learn to read pronunciation guides and corrects me often. Because these words have given me some real trouble lately:
Ptolemy
Seleucus
Demeter
Persophone
Aeschuylus
Tutankhamen
1 comment:
I can honestly say I don't know how to pronounce one of those words. But, as you were somewhat irritated to hear, I did place in the 97 percentile on the humanities CLEP exam.
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