Published 20:12 IST, December 10th 2020
Kamala Harris, Anthony Fauci among top mispronounced names of 2020; Check out the list
The United States Captioning company which captions and subtitles real-time events on TV and in courtrooms has compiled the list of most mispronounced words.
The United States Captioning company which captions and subtitles real-time events on TV and in courtrooms has compiled the list of most mispronounced words and America’s disease expert Anthony Fauci and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are on top of the list. According to the reports by Associated Press, the captioning company said that it surveyed its members to generate the list. A senior linguist at Babbel, Todd Ehresmann said that the list reflects a year dominated by presidential politics and the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are top mispronounced names of 2020
Ehresmann also broke down the proper pronunciations for the commonly misspoken words. He wrote, ‘Anthony Fauci (AN-thon-nee FOW-chee): Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’, Bangtan Sonyeondan (PUNG-tahn SOH-nyun-dahn): The full name of South Korean K-Pop band ‘BTS’, which translates as “a group of bulletproof boys” or “bulletproof boy scouts; iannis Antetokounmpo (YON-nis AHN-de-doh-KOON-boh): Greek basketball player who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks and was named the NBA’s ‘Most Valuable Player’ this year; Isaias (ees-ah-EE-ahs ): The name given to a powerful hurricane that caused significant damage to the East Coast and Caribbean this summer; Kamala Harris: The Vice President-Elect.
The Associated Press has reported Harris’ first name is pronounced KAH’-mah-lah” — or, as she explains in her biography, “‘comma-la,’ like the punctuation mark; Leonardo da Vinci (lee-oh-NAR-doe dah-VIN-chee): The Italian painter, architect, and engineer who created the ‘Mona Lisa; Mahamayavi Bhagavan Antle (mu-HAH-muh-yaw-vee bag-AH-wahn ANT-uhl): The full name of wildlife park operator ‘Doc’ Antle, who shot to fame in the Netflix documentary series ‘Tiger King’; Nevada ( nev-ADD-ah ): Homestate of Las Vegas that played a central role in the presidential election; Yosemite: The famous national park in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, it was notably mispronounced by President Trump in August. Multiple sources list its pronunciation as (yoh-SEM-it-ee)’.
In a separate development, two Dictionary companies declared a similar ‘top’ word as their 2020 word of the year for the first time: Pandemic. Experts at Oxford English Dictionary noted that the word gained popularity and entered mainstream usage due to the COVID-19 crisis this year. Merriam-Webster and dictionary.com chose ‘pandemic’ specifically as it started to trend after WHO declared a global health emergency citing, that an epidemic had ‘swelled’ to a pandemic crisis.
The search volume for pandemic sustained the highest levels on-site over the course of 2020, dictionary.com informed in a release. Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster.com told AP that the word picked up when the first US COVID-19 fatality was recorded and a cluster outbreak broke out on a cruise liner.
(Image Credits: AP)
Updated 20:12 IST, December 10th 2020