By Brian Boone

English is a vast and complicated language, and it can be confusing, getting all of the rules right. Many words will even acquire widely used pronunciations, which are technically very incorrect. Here then are some words you might have been sounding out incorrectly.

Sherbet is similar to sorbet in that they’re both fruit juice-based frozen desserts, although sherbet contains dairy products. Perhaps the confusion between those two things is why so many people call the former sherbert. 

Jewelry is supposed to be pronounced the way it’s written — like joo-ell-ree. Somewhere along the way, people started transposing the second “e” and the “l,” resulting in the pronunciation joo-leh-ree.

Nuclear is another word that should be spoken as it’s written — noo-clee-urr. And while it may have given us the nuclear bomb nickname “nukes,” to pronounce it as nuke-you-lurr is simply incorrect. 

It’s actually a little bit mischievous is pronounce that word with four syllables. And that’s not correct. It’s a three-syllable word, so say the right number: mis-chuh-vus, and not mis-chee-vee-us.

Mauve is a shade of light purple, almost lilac or lavender. It’s pronounced moav, not mawv.

Et cetera entered English from Latin, and it means “all the rest.” Probably because it’s used mostly in written form, and abbreviated as etc., it’s often misused aloud as ex cetera.

In a similar case of X marks the spot (to change), this marking — * — is an asterisk, and not an asterix.

Even if you’re bragging that correct English language usage is your forte, you might make that a two syllable word, saying for-tay. But there’s no accent on that “e” to indicate that pronunciation. The word properly sounds exactly like fort.

A crêpe is a thin pancake of French origin. The name is derived from a Latin term that means “crispy.” Still, most of incorrectly order crapes at brunch instead of the proper crepp.

Do you have any electronic devices manufactured by Nokia? The Finnish company pronounces its name like knock ya, rather than sounding it all the way out, like no-key-uh.

The Chinese city of Beijing is one of the largest metropolises on the planet, and we mostly all say the name wrong. There’s a hard “j” in the middle, making the right pronunciation bay-jing and not beige-ing.

It used to be okay to say Uranus in the funny way — “yer anus.” But that got to be so annoyingly overprominent that the scientistic community slowly started conditioning the world to say yurr-uh-nuss instead.

Gyro. Not jy-roh, or jee-roh. It’s yeer-oh. (It’s a Greek word.)