I was quite a prolific reader as a child, and this caught me out with a quite a few words even as a native english speaker. My favourite instance being "awry"(pronounced a-wry). I was aware of and understood the word a-wry (having heard it on the radio), but I thought there was also a word "awry" pronounced aw-ry. I was in my twenties before I connected that these were the same word.

Mine was "adjacent". My inner voice pronounced it "ad-ja-sent", with a soft "a". I said it that way until someone corrected me in my mid-20s; even then, I didn't believe them at first when they said that was the way it was consistently pronounced. I confirmed it through several acquaintances before I adapted my speech.

My inner monologue still pronounces it incorrectly in some instances in text, as if there were two pronunciations that could apply depending on usage.

Come to think of it, there are many instances of this for me. I use "data" with a soft "a" when referring to the abstract concept of structured information, but "data" with a hard "a" ("date-uh") when referring to an instance of that concept (i.e., the data used to generate a chart).

I had a similar experiences to you on both accords: 1. It wasn't until a class aged 14 where I heard the word 'chasm' spoken aloud and realised I had it wrong all those years. 2. It took me a some time to realise a word which sounded like 'rederick' was actually rhetoric.

I'm relieved to know I'm not the only one who did this kind of thing as a child. For me it was "archive" which I was pronouncing "ar-chiff" as opposed to "ar-kive". Took a while to break that habit.

Mine was "hitherto." I was quite deep into my 30s before I found out it wasn't pronounced "hit-hurt-oh."

"Albeit" was the one for me. After 20 years of speaking the language, I realised it's not "all bite" but "ahl-bee-eet".

> hitherto

I’m sorry we don’t still have more use of hither, thither, whither, hence, thence, whence, hereby, thereby, whereby, herefore, therefore, wherefore, hereto, thereto, whereto, herefrom, therefrom, wherefrom, hereafter, thereafter, whereafter, herewith, therewith, wherewith, herein, therein, wherein, hereupon, thereupon, whereupon, etc.

They are fun words.

Wait until you hear someone say 'caveat'.

Good point, I really have no clue what that sounds like.

The poem _The Chaos_ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1edPxKqiptw&t=12s ) is about this sort of thing, written by a Dutch teacher of English pronunciation.

(but even that mass of examples does not include debt, doubt or caveat)

I had a colleague (very smart guy, with excellent written English) who didn't believe me when I told him caveat was not pronounced the same as 'cave at'.

Verbiage is another one.

Most people I know say verbage instead of verb-ia-ge like the dictionary sometimes recommends.

It's funny that sometimes these mispronunciations can become "standardized" in non-native cultures. For example, almost all Romanian programmers will pronounce "integer" as in-teg-ur, not in-tee-ger, because that's closer to how the word would be read in Romanian (though, interestingly, not identical - the natural Romanian pronunciation given that spelling would be in-te-ger, with both 'e's pronounced like the 'a' in tap, and with a soft 'g', like in german), and it's not a word you often hear spoken aloud in movies or TV shows.

A running joke in my family is my intentional mispronunciation of "subsequent" as "sub-see-quent" (similar to "sequence").

How about that "pneumatic", "queue" and "Worcestershire" ;)