New York:Â Babbel and the US Captioning Company, found most difficult to pronounce throughout the year. Luckily for most of us, we won’t ever have to utter these words on TV.
They found Omicron had proven especially challenging.
The new Covid variant, named after the Greek letter O, is supposed to be pronounced “OH-mee-kraan” or “AH-muh-kraan”, depending if you are in the UK or the US, according to the list.
And many newsreaders were also mispronouncing Eilish’s name, which is said like “EYE-lish”.
Some of 2021’s most commonly mispronounced words:
- Stefanos Tsitsipas (STEH-fuh-nohs TSEE-tsee-pas) – the world number four tennis player who reached this year’s French Open final
- Cheugy (CHOO-gee)- a slang term used to describe, and dismiss, anything seen as hopelessly uncool or unfashionable
- Glasgow (GLAHZ-go) – the host city of the COP26 climate conference was mispronounced by both Joe Biden and Barack Obama
- Yassify (YEAH-sih-fai) – a popular beauty filter trend
- Ever Given (Ev-er GIV-en) – the name of the ship that blocked the Suez Canal was often mistaken for “Evergreen”, the company who owned the vessel whose name was printed on its side
- Dogecoin (DOHJ-coin) – the cryptocurrency popularised by Elon Musk
Pronunciations provided by Babbel                      Â
