As someone who has learned the English language primarily by reading thousands of books, I wholeheartedly agree. On the other hand, English pronounciation sucks big time.
Truth…hah! I still have words I have to look up on the sly on the internet and click one of those definition services that will pronounce the word for you so I don’t sound completely wrong.
I pronounced epitome epi-tome for the longest time. Now as I read, I pop onto Google when I encounter something I’m unfamiliar with. And I’m 36, my job has me fairly familiar with the English language, but I swear some writers discover a word and they’re like “can’t wait to use this two or three times in the next couple chapters.”
It’s that and character/place names, but character names are dangerous lookups, spoiled a plot in WoT looking up how to pronounce Moraine. And the worst part is her name’s pretty obvious, but I fucking looked it up anyway. I thought Hermione was obvious as a kid, but that’s probably because I transposed the I and O, now that I think about it.
I was teasing my significant other about her epi-tome but then she caught me with indictment so we’re back on equal footing.
Wait that’s how in-died-ment is spelled?
The one that I mispronounced for awhile was hyperbole. I thought it was pronounced like “hyper bowl.”
Epitome and Penchant for me. Mocked mercilessly for those two.
So apparently for the latter you can just claim to be using the american pronunciation https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/penchant
