Some of the words tied to this year’s hottest topics were also among the most mangled when it came to saying them aloud
Some of the words tied to this year’s hottest topics were also among the most mangled when it came to saying them aloud, with stumpers ranging from the first name of “Oppenheimer” star Cillian Murphy to the singer SZA to the name of a sacred slab of sandstone used in the coronation of King Charles III.
This year’s lists of the most mispronounced words in the U.S. and Britain were released Thursday by the online language learning company Babbel, which commissions The Captioning Group in the U.S. and the British Institute of Verbatim Reporters in the U.K. to identify the top words that news anchors, politicians and other public figures have struggled with.
Going through the lists provides a bit of a year-end review that ranges from science to entertainment to politics. Babbel teacher Malcolm Massey said the diversity of the words struck him, with words coming from several different languages.
“I think a lot of it is due to how close our cultures have become because of how globalized things are,” Massey said.
SZA, who leads in nominations for the upcoming Grammys and whose “Kill Bill” was the second most-streamed song on Spotify this year, made the U.S. list. Her name is pronounced SIZ-uh, according to the experts at Babbel, who say the first name of another entertainer on the list, the Irish actor who starred in this summer’s hit as physicist J.
