The discussion revolving around pronunciation struggles is mainly centred around the experiences of second-language speakers. It is naturally, people find it struggling to articulate sounds in languages they did not grow up speaking natively. Actually, getting rid of your accent is generally the final hurdle to so-called “perfect fluency,” and most people never actually get there anyway. This is why it is so surprising that some of the most commonly mispronounced words in English are words that even native English speakers get wrong.

It is a truth, English is a complicated language, reading or speaking even by its most fluent speakers incoherent from time to time. But it is also simply more realistic to acknowledge that “perfect speech” actually, really does not exist, and native speakers of any language are supposed to veer off the straight and narrow path of what is considered “right” from time to time.

In any scenario, few words are certainly harder to pronounce compared with others. Here are some of the most commonly mispronounced words in English that even native speakers fail to pronounce correctly.

Prestigious

Pre-STI-gee-us, this is what people say. How it is actually pronounced: pre-STI-jus

Prestigious is a 3-syllable word masquerading as a 4-syllable word.

Jewelry

Jool-ree, this is what people say. Jew-ell-ree is actually the word to pronounce. At times our mouth gives an extra syllable, and at times it takes away.

Sherbet

Shur-bert, is what people say. SHUR-bet is what actually pronounced.

Admittedly, this may not have ended up on this list of commonly mispronounced English words if it were not for the very confusing existence of sorbet, which is not similar to sherbet.

Zoology

zoo-OLL-oh-gee, is the word that people say. But the correct way is ZOO-lo-gee. Perhaps because we are used to referring to the sciences as several “ologies,” we seem to make that suffix fit here totally. Too bad. It is actually simply a “logy.”

Mischievous

mis-CHEEV-ee-us is usually said by people. MIS-chiv-us is what it actually is. This is a bit tough one, and plenty of that is because of the fact that this word has plenty of vowels, making it seem like it has more syllables than it truly does. To be honest, though, people have apparently been making this error from the 16th century, onwards so it may as well be regarded as the correct pronunciation by now.