Hi Currently working on a project that requires that I include a list of the most commonly mispronounced English words in the South African accent/dialect. Help would be much appreciated and rewarded with friendship.
You can probably answer that better than the rest of us seeing as you live there I know from time to time we've had members from SA, but I haven't seen any of them on the board recently. Though possibly there are some and I just don't know it? Or I suppose if someone spends a lot of time watching videos of Elon Musk they could tell you in what ways he 'talks funny'. Though I'm not sure if he has a strong accent or not. What other celebs are from there? Meaning people we can find on YouTube or in movies or something and listen to how they talk.
It also begs the question—mispronounced according to whom? Americans, the English, Scottish, Irish, Australian? Canadian? There are many English-speaking countries with many different accents, dialects, and ways of pronouncing words. And it breaks down even farther than that too. Am,erica is a big country, and there are many different dialects in different areas. Yankees think Southerners talk funny, and East coaters thing West Coasters talk funny (like Keanu Reeves for instance, the prototypical Surf Dude lingo, or the male Valley Girl).
Chalize sounds pretty American to me. I don't know who the other one is. Elon also sounds almost typically American, I don't remember him pronouncing any words differently than I'm used to, like the way Canadians say "sorry".
I hit on the idea of going to Youtube and searching for South Africans. So far I found a video of a typical American Karen screaming at a bunch of her South African neighbors (she apparently lives there) because they're having a 'barbecue' (what they call a Braai) when she was up till 3 in the morning. I couldn't hear any of them because she was screaming so much lol. But I should be able to find a few videos where I can hear them talking and I can say what sounds strange to this American.
Still, what do you mean by 'mispronounced'? Or do you mean words pronounced differently in South Africa compared to the U.K. or U.S.? We've (other forum members) have discussed it previously, but there's a big difference between how Britons and Americans pronounce 'garage' and 'jaguar' (just off the top of my head) but neither pronunciation could be considered wrong or a mispronunciation in my opinion. But there are words commonly mispronounced like mischievous but that's not due to country of origin, I think. 'Nuclear' is often 'mispronounced' in the U.S. but that may be considered acceptable now.
