Up until recently, I thought that the US national park was pronounced “yo-semite”, as if it was some sort of ghetto-slang used for greeting a Jewish person.
There was an '80s cop show called Hill Street Blues that had a recurring latino character named Jesus. All I heard as a kid was “Hey, Zeus” so I thought his actual name was Zeus and everybody just said “hey” to him when addressing him.
I thought Yosemite Sam had pretty much taught all English speakers the correct pronunciation. I remember my parents saying their Swedish relatives pronounced it “Yohsmeet.”
Doesn’t mean it isn’t cute/funny when it does happen, though. Just this week my SO pronounced chihuahua as “CHA-HOO-A-HOO-A” so I told them “you know this word, it’s the taco bell dog” lol
Also dialects are a thing. The way a lot of words come out of my mouth has been culturally labeled as ignorant. I go out of my way to change my pronunciations at work so I get taken seriously, but I’ve been doing it less now that I’m accepted in that world. Maybe that caps how much farther I can go, but maybe I don’t want to go further if it means continuing to act like people who sound like how I sound are less than
Pour one out for all my epi-tome homies
You should never mock someone who pronounces a word strangely: They might be from Reading.
Which by the way is a town name that very often gets mispronounced by people who only read it in books.
