Pet peeves

I wasted an entire day in meetings…. one after another from 9:00 a.m. – 4:45 p.m.

One of my greatest irrational irks is the pronunciation of the word, “mature.” I had the distinct pleasure of spending the day with a woman who insisted on pronouncing the word and its derivativatives as ‘ma – tyoor,’ ‘mat yooration,’ ‘mat yoority.’

In case you haven’t already guessed, I pronounce it with the “ch” sound – ‘ma choor,’ ‘ma chooration,’ and ‘ma choority.’

By the end of the day, I was ready to hop across the table and wring the sounds out of her scrawny throat (I mentioned at the beginning of the post that it’s an irrational thing with me). It drives me crazy – like fingernails scratched against a chalk board.

So how do you pronounce words like – mature, roof, caribbean, New Orleans? What secret pronunciations drive you a little insane? Or is it just me?