By Jane Setter / The Conversation
"A recent survey of 2,000 adults in the UK identified the top ten "mispronunciations" people find annoying. Thankfully the majority (65%) of annoyed people do not feel comfortable correcting a speaker in public.
But leaving aside the fact that 2,000 is hardly a representative sample of the UK, with its population of over 66 million, this survey raises longstanding linguistic questions: why do people pronounce words differently, why does pronunciation change, and why does so-called mispronunciation upset some people to the point of making it possible (and interesting) to compile a top ten list?
I'm a phonetician – an expert in the way people make speech sounds and pronounce language. I've also written about what we can learn about a person from the way they speak.
A universal truth about language is that it is subject to constant change – and pronunciation is just as likely to change over time as aspects like grammar or vocabulary".
Image: J.K2507 / Shutterstock / The Conversation