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Why We Mispronounce Words

At one time, Robin Young thought "misled" was pronounced "mizzled." (Rachel Rohr)
At one time, Robin Young thought "misled" was pronounced "mizzled." (Rachel Rohr)

Virtually everyone has one – a word you find out you’ve been mispronouncing.

For Here & Now’s Robin Young, it was the word “misled,” which she thought was pronounced “mizzled.” For our executive producer Kathleen McKenna, it was “determined,” which she always pronounced “deeter-mined” when she read it on a page.

We put a shout out on our Facebook page for more, and got nearly 100 responses. Ariel Goldberg, director of the Tufts University Psycholinguistics & Linguistics Lab, joins us to explain why it is we mispronounce so many words.

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