Omicron, as in the new Covid virus variant, is one of the most mispronounced words of 2021. This is according to a survey released by the U.S. Captioning Company on all of the names and terms that people mispronounced while speaking on television during the course of 2021.
With over 20 years experience, U.S. Captioning Company, a division of Country World Productions, Inc., is an industry-leading provider of closed captioning services for national TV stations, networks, producers, and programmers.
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“As a language teacher, it’s always interesting to see that some of these terms are usually new colloquialisms, or are rooted or borrowed from another language. As a non-native speaker, I must confess it’s fun to see English speakers stumbling a bit for a change,” Esteban Touma, a comedian and teacher for Babbel Live, told AP.
Babbel, a language-learning company, was commissioned by the U.S. Captioning Company to generate the list.
Here are 5 of the most mispronounced words for 2021 as compiled by Babbel for the U.S. Captioning Company:
Ethereum is one of those cryptocurrencies that you have heard all about. It is pronounced ih-THEE-ree-um.
Cheugy – pronounced CHOO-gee – is one. Don’t feel bad if you are unfamiliar for this slang term that refers to something outdated and unfashionable. It is used primarily by Gen Z people.
Chipotle is another. Yes, this is the fast food chain. The question you are probably asking right now is why it would be so hard to pronounce this word. Well, it is pronounced chih-POHT-lay. Now try saying that ten times fast.
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Yassterday pic.twitter.com/0fnHVLAVs0
— Yassify Bot (@YassifyBot) December 2, 2021
Yassify is another one of those newfangled terms that the tech savvy kids use these days. To “yassify” something is to apply multiple beauty filters to a picture that someone posts on social media platforms like Instagram. The end result makes the person in the pic almost unrecognizable. The term comes from the Twitter account @YassifyBot which provides people with varied examples of this.
But how do you pronounce the word? Well its YEAH-sih-fai.
Stefanos Tsitsipas is a Greek pro tennis player among the world’s top ten in the rankings. But if you are not Greek then you probably have no idea how to properly pronounce his name. The sports broadcasters certainly had a lot of trouble with this tongue twister while covering his tennis matches in 2021. Well, his last name is pronounced STEH-fuh-nohs TSEE-tsee-pas.
