Billie Eilish performs onstage during Austin City Limits Festival
(Picture: Getty Images)Omicron and Eilish are among the most commonly mispronounced words of 2021, according to a survey.
The US Captioning Company, which provides subtitles for live events on TV, compiled a list of words which newsreaders and presenters struggled to pronounce.
Their survey found many newsreaders were mispronouncing the name of the new Covid variant Omicron which is said like “OH-mee-kraan” in the UK.
Many people were also mispronouncing the Grammy Award-winning singer’s name which is said like “EYE-lish”.
President Joe Biden and Barack Obama were among the thousands of people to mispronounce Glasgow (GLAHZ-go) – the site of the COP26 climate conference.
Fast food chain Chipotle (said as chih-POHT-lay) also made the list, as did cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOHJ-coin).
The survey was commissioned by language learning app Babel.
Esteben Touma, a teacher on the app, said it was not a coincidence many of the words on the list were not in English.
He said: “Newscasters in the US have struggled with 2021’s new words and names while reporting on key sporting events, viral internet trends and emerging celebrities.
“As a language teacher it’s always interesting to see some of these terms are usually new colloquialisms, or are rooted or borrowed from another language.
“And as a non-native speaker, I must confess it’s fun to see English speakers stumbling a bit for a change.”
Last year’s survey included the surname of US infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci (pronounced FOW-chee) and the first name of US Vice-President Kamala Harris (CAW-ma-la).
The most mispronounced words in 2021:
- Cheugy (CHOO-gee)
- Dalgona (tal-goh-NAH)
- Dogecoin (DOHJ-coin)
- Eilish (EYE-lish)
- Ethereum (ih-THEE-ree-um)
- Omicron (AH-muh-kraan/OH-mee-kraan)
- Shein (SHEE-in)
- Stefanos Tsitsipas (STEH-fuh-nohs TSEE-tsee-pas)
- Yassify (YEAH-sih-fai)
- Chipotle (said as chih-POHT-lay)
