Just ask “Miss Pronunciation”

Yesterday a friend and favorite colleague of mine was giving the office a rave review of her favorite new tea shop “Teavania is so excellent,” she raved. “I just love Teavania!”

“TeaVANA” I stage whispered. “Its TeVANA like Nirvana or Mrs. Trump was Ivana – not vania like Transylvania.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly taken aback.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I just didn’t want everyone else giving you a hard time.”

You see – friends don’t let friends mispronounce, at least when they can help it.

Through the years, my best friend Violet has often corrected my pronunciation. She is far more intelligent and well-read than I -- though I could out spreadsheet her in a heartbeat.

I always wind up feeling punched in the gut when she corrects me, kind of like an errant school child who has been reprimanded. I have a split second of insecurity, wondering if she will still like me after I have mangled a word or misquoted an author. I wonder if I’m one dumb ass move away from being dumped in favor of a smarter girl.

That feeling lasts about fifteen seconds, until it’s replaced by a wave of gratitude. Now I know how to say a tricky word or phrase with confidence. The offending term immediately becomes my ‘word of the week’ to be used with abandon, or until I personally notice the eye-rolling.

Who among us hasn’t longed to utter a phrase or word that we think would be just perfect in a given situation … only to have last minute ‘phrase-fright’? We catch ourselves as rests on the tip of our tongue, unsure if we have it quite right. We stop and turn back to the mental grab bag of the tried & true only to find some hackneyed saying that doesn’t quite suit, but isn’t embarrassingly wrong. If only Google came with speech recognition.

This weekend I attended a five-year-old’s birthday party along with a gaggle of what I refer to as the “Momfia” -- those smug SUV-driving suburban moms with tight abs and a relentless drive to one-up one another.

I was semi-awkwardly making small talk with one mom when she suddenly upped the volume and started monologuing about her recent accomplishments thinly veiled as an “I’m so busy I can’t stand it” complaint.
She began bragging about her law firm’s posh new office in “Pailo Ailto” and I stopped for a second, thinking I misheard her. Then she said it again.

Just I was processing this oddity; she went on to describe an issue with her new car, a “Por-sha Cheyenne.” Now I think Porsche is one of those words that can be pronounced a couple of ways correctly -- like the relentlessly annoying ‘Jag-U-Ar’ (but what am I?), but I am 99.9 % sure it’s a Porsche Cayenne.

“Oh,” I said, quite self-deprecatingly. “It’s Cheyenne? I thought it was Cayenne, like the pepper.” Hey, I’m nothing if not helpful.

“It’s Cheyenne,” she countered, looking at me with far more intensity than the situation warranted.

“Oops, my bad”, I smiled, catching a couple sympathetic glances from other moms. No good deed goes unpunished.

Suddenly my four year old broke the tension by dancing over with a bright purple feathered pencil. “Porsha mom” made a great show of bending down low and cooing over his find.

“Oh … this is my favorite … these soft feathers are called ‘Mirror-Boo’. Can you say ‘Mirror-Boo’?” My four-year-old, thrilled to know what to call his toy, parroted it back for her. “Mirror Boo,” he shouts with glee, jumping up and down.

Porsha mom smugly pats him on the head & runs off to catch her own child.

I grab Andrew’s arm and turn him around. “Honey, that’s actually called ‘Marabou’ – Ok, repeat after me – Marabou!”

“But Darren’s Mom said it was Mirror-boo?” he asks, innocently confused

“Um, yeah … but she’s not saying it right – It’s Marabou. Trust me, I’m your mom.”

“We should tell her,” he says sweetly.

“No, that’s OK. She probably just says things funny, because of where she grew up,” I fib.

“Where’s that?” he asks, wide-eyed.

“Wyoming.”

“Don’t mess with people from Cheyenne, I say absently.

And I only correct you because I really care.”