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Unless you’re a linguist (or any other incarnation of a language expert), learning a language will likely be just a skill to get by in life.

Now, if you do focus on the journey and not the destination, however, you will learn just how fun it is to learn a language. Especially if you’re somewhere between the ages of 2 and 6 when you learn complex words and mispronounce them with equal yet entertaining complexity.

And then your parents laugh about it with the rest of the world because social media requires a sacrifice.

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#2

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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One of the superpowers that humans have is to soak in knowledge and information in the early stages of life. Language is one of the major things that we acquire as kids and continue to refine as we grow older. This happens automatically and requires no formal teaching. As long as they are surrounded by language, it will come to them eventually.

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It is important to note that surrounded by language means interaction. Parents and other people (not just adults, but kids too) do still have to interact with the kid in order for them to pick up the language and to be able to use it for communication. In fact, it’s just as easy for them to acquire multiple languages this way, as long as it’s done in the early stages in life for maximum effect.

#7

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Janissary35680
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

A friend's 5 yo daughter burst into the house from the backyard announcing she'd found a "bird leaf". It was a seagull feather.

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#8

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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BrownTabby
Community Member
9 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

TBT when I flew Qantas to Japan and found that their OFFICIAL pronunciation in Japanese - as in, the one they use on all their Japanese documentation and in their Japanese inflight announcements - sounds like “cünt åss”. They are Australian, I guess.

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#9

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Mark
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It’s easier to get a pear tree on the black market. And isn’t bird trafficking supposed to be really profitable?

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And as is with every journey, learning a language comes gradually. Kids will start off from babbling and move on to monosyllabic and polysyllabic words, then will venture into building simple two-word sentences, then add words to build longer sentences ad infinitum.

In the same manner, they will also experiment with and practice languages, leading them to make mistakes in all facets of language use, including mispronunciation.

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#10

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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glowworm2
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9 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There is this hilarious video where a little girl is eating puto, which is a Filipino rice cake as her mom is Filipino, but her dad who is Colombian is not comfortable hearing her happily declare “It’s puto!”This gets even funnier when she says it around her grandma. “It’s big puto!”🤣

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#11

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Midnight (she/her)
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My younger sister, who is a total dinosaur geek, corrects me and my family on dinosaur facts all the time (and is usually right) yet still manages to mispronounce this one.

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To paint a picture of both making mistakes and the gradual learning of a language, consider this: a kid first learns by mimicking the language. So, if they learn the word feet, they will for a time say it perfectly. But then, they might revert to foots.

Now, saying revert is not really accurate—they have actually moved forward, just that they started applying grammatical conventions instead of just mimicking.

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At this point, the kid understood what the singular form of feet was, and they understood that plural words take an s at the end. Hence feets. But it was wrong because English is a hot mess of a language that follows rule sets from ten if not more languages, and folks who learn it as a foreign language have to deal with the constant facepalming when they realize that buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo is a grammatically correct sentence.

#16

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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BrownTabby
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There are multiple people in my life who repeated even ruder expressions that they learned from their respective parents in the car. 🤣

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#17

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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I'm.Just.A.Girl
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I used to watch a boy who said yesterday as "lasterday". That was 20 yrs ago and I still use it.

Jayjay
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We used to call cumin cheese "pitjeskaas" (little seed cheese). My mom sent me to the cheese shop one day, I was around 9 years old, and told me to get some "komijnekaas" (which translates as cumin cheese). However, I did not know the word "komijn" and ordered konijnenkaas (rabbit cheese). People in the shop were very respectful, and I got my much adored old "pitjeskaas" :).

Jennifer Hunter
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Thanks to Daniel Tiger it's forever referred to as "sprinkle cheese" in our home. My kids are teenagers now.

Stymied Egan
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It was a class trip to our local art museum. The docent asked the kids what all the pictures in that room had in common. My son says "Cheeses". I start looking at the paintings trying to see what he saw. The docent asks again and he says "Cheeses, cheeses." I'm blank, his teacher is lost, the other kids know...Jesus.

Catherine Maven
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

As a child, my husband never understood the Christmas carol that went, "Round John Virgin" - he thought, Who is John Virgin, and why are they calling him "round"?? :P

Ubiquitous
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The way Americans pronounce it does often sound like “farmer John”. In Britain it’s par-mezz-anne

Paul Gerrard
Community Member
9 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

In NZ we are in the town of Palmerston North while travelling Restaurant waiter called it Palmerston cheese..

The Darkest Timeline
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That isn’t conscious word play, that’s just not being familiar with the word so using words they DO know that sound like the words they don’t know. And Miles Davis was wrong; there are definitely wrong notes in jazz.

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And so, learning a language happens pretty much in the same gradual way, no matter if it’s language production or reception. And this is where mishearing and mispronunciation come into play.

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When children learn languages, they will sometimes learn to pronounce them just like they would other words they already know. Hence, cheese crisis and whack-a-mole like guacamole.

It’s this similarity that empowers kids to learn further, applying the rules and paradigms they know to words that the English language ends up ruining for them.

So, yes, it’s quite logical to pronounce fettuccine as if it rhymed with medicine, mishear French hens as henchmens and, instead of saying heebie jeebies, you say Hebrew Bee Gees.

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#24

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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glowworm2
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Well, there is mole sauce which is also pronounced that way, so it makes sense.

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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is fun in more ways than one. Not only are these tiny linguistic mishaps cute and adorable, it also shows the beauty of watching kids grow up and grasp concepts that are mundane to us. Yet, how they experience it might just defamiliarize us, broadening our own perspectives, thus continuing the cycle of learning and better understanding the world.

#26

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Lauren S
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

For anyone that is thinking of extended breastfeeding, be careful what you call it as they will ask for it in public after they learn to talk a bit. We called it boo boo. No idea why.

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#27

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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MontanaMariner
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At around 2 years old, I screamed "BUNNY MILK!" for a few days until my parents figured out it was Nestlé Strawberry Milk powder I was after. Their mascot is a rabbit.

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In fact, kids are an amazing source of understanding the world. Because of their unrestricted way of thinking outside the box, they often find very smart, and sometimes funny ways of expressing their problem solving skills. And that’s just what we see on the surface—inside their heads, tons upon tons of processes are going on, and creativity is just one of many results that follow.

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#28

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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BrownTabby
Community Member
9 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The Japanese word for “cook” (as in a person who cooks professionally, not the act of cooking) sounds like “cøck” too.

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So, with all that said, have you ever heard kids mispronounce the heck out of something to a degree that made you crack up? Why not share those instances in the comment section below!

Be sure to upvote the listicle, and if you want more, then check out another of our listicles about the times kids delivered stories in their own words that could only ever result in awkward and hilarious misunderstandings.

#32

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Laura Gillette
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I thought bubble juice was the stuff in the bottles that come with bubble wands, for blowing bubbles... It's like juuuuust barely soapy water.

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#33

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Stephanie Did It
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I still call it a merote, and eat "melly melon" because that's what my 46 yr old daughter called it when she was three. And because she now owns and directs a daycare, we still go potty and frequently point upwards, exclaiming "Airplane!"

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#35

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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#42

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Leigh
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My sister as a kid had the runs and announced she had die-ah-D-ah! Instead of diarrhea.! We still call it that.

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#43

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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rmandevi831
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Swing and a miss for the auto-censor. From now on, I declare that the F-bomb can now be spelled "KFC" on this forum. What the KFC is going on here?

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#44

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Bob Brooce
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If he pronounces "cat" as "tat" maybe a lot of people are curious about mom's artwork.

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#48

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Stephanie Did It
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

These make a lot of sense and it's easy to understand how new dialects spring up in different communities!

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#49

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

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Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Maybe your toddler helped to program the "speech to text" function on my band friend's phone, because he's always talking about the sex parts.

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#50

Kids-Mispronouncing-Words-Phrases

Hilohaw Report

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Matthew Currie
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My daughter when little would remark "the problem is dissolved." Many years later that's become standard.

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Note: this post originally had 76 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.