10 mispronunciations that could get you killed

This is the cast of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.



They know about heinous. This is because they deal with heinous sex crimes every day of their damn working lives. In fact, they eat a bowl of heinous first thing in the morning. When they get to their desks, the first thing they do is update their status on facebook and twitter to 'very heinous', and after work, they go to the gym for a variety of workouts, such as 'heinous pump', 'cross-heinous' and 'advanced heinousness'.

And because they deal with heinousness in every facet of their day-to-day lives, they also know how to pronounce the word heinous – you would if you had to deal with it every damn day of your life.  But what about you, who isn't confronted with the same amount of heinousness every day of your life? How will you cope when something heinous comes along? And who knows how a psychopathic murderer will react when they hear you say 'heinous' wrong?

And it's for this exact reason that you need to know these 10 frequently mispronounced words – so you are safe from all forms of heinousness in the future.

Here are 10 frequently mispronounced words:

Heinous – HAY-nus, not heen-us. Hear it here.

Often – you do not pronounce the 't' in often. Hear it here.

Exacerbate – the 'c' in exacerbate is soft, so it is ig-ZAS-ur-bayt, not ig-ZAK-ur-bayt. Hear it here.

Interpret – in-ter-PRET, not in-ter-PRE-TATE. Hear it here

Miniature – This word has four syllables. Say min-I-A-ture, not min-A-ture. Hear it here.

Preventive –This word has three syllables, not four. Pre-ven-tive, not pre-ven-TA-tive. Hear it here.

Regardless – This word has three syllables. Ain't no such word as 'irregardless'.

Asterisk – Notice the second S. Say as-ter-isk, not as-ter-ik. Hear it here.

Dilate – This word has two syllables, not three. Say di-late, not di-A-late. Hear it here.

Etcetera – Say et-cet-era, not ex-cet-era. Hear it here. 

Armed with this knowledge, you can go about your business, never having to be afraid that you will suddenly utter a mispronunciation without realising. The streets might not be any safer, but at least your pronunciation is.

That vs which

During a very enjoyable afternoon of internet browsing, I image-googled 'that vs which', and this image came up:

Mysterious.

So, when do you use that, and when do you use which?

The easiest way to remember how to use these two words correctly is to remember that you use that for a restrictive clause, and which for everything else.

A restrictive clause is a clause that limits what is being talked about. For example:

Dogs that bark get kidnapped around here.

In these clauses, you can't just leave out the bit about barking, because the kind of dogs we are talking about is restricted to dogs that bark.

However, if you say:

Dogs, which bark, get kidnapped around here

It means that it is not just dogs that bark that get kidnapped, but pretty much any dog that gets kidnapped. The barking bit is just extra information that might give you when they are overly interested in details.