When I complimented my daughter by telling her that her hair looked like tousled waves, she was confused. Then she realized why and told me I was pronouncing tousled wrong: “It’s “tussled,” she said. I insisted the first part was said like “tows,” as in, rhymes with cows. We deferred to my husband, who said she was right.<\/p>\n
Welcome to my world. <\/p>\n
Because I’m deaf, I don’t pick up on the pronunciation of many words. This means inevitably botching it, which is a little bit easier when done among family. <\/p>\n
I still remember one time when my folks were visiting me in college. My sister was talking about a play she had to read for high school English: “Antee-gone.” It took us a while to realize she meant “AnTIGinee,” or “Antigone.” She was embarrassed, but we told her better it happened with us than in class.<\/p>\n
I emailed a couple of my deaf friends to ask them how they would pronounce “tousled.” It made me feel better when they said they’d use the same mispronunciation. I mean, really, we say “mouse,” and “house,” so why does it not translate for this word? <\/p>\n
I thought “pom-eh-gran-at-ee” was how to say pomegranate. Doesn’t it look like it should be pronounced that way? I still have trouble remembering, especially since I like my version better. <\/p>\n
Yet I know how to correctly say hyperbole. Perhaps I have my degree in English literature to thank for that.<\/p>\n
When I discover that a word I’ve been saying — either in my head and\/or out loud — for years is wrong, it never fails to blow my mind. It’s like the whole world has to be recalibrated. <\/p>\n
There’s no pattern to my word crimes, though maybe they occur with words that aren’t said out loud as often. One constant is that sometimes the English language makes no fucking sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I complimented my daughter by telling her that her hair looked like tousled waves, she was confused. Then she realized why and told me I was pronouncing tousled wrong: “It’s “tussled,” she said. I insisted the first part was said like “tows,” as in, rhymes with cows. We deferred to my husband, who said … Continue reading How do you say?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4roOt-ak","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":647,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}