The Top 10 Most Mispronounced Terms of 2024, According to TV Captioners

Newcasters and other public figures are generally more conscientious about pronouncing words correctly than you might be in an offhand conversation with friends. So if they’re all stumbling over a certain name or term, there’s a pretty good chance that we are, too.

As an annual tradition, Babbel teamed up with two TV captioning organizations—The Captioning Group in the U.S. and the British Institute of Verbatim Reporters in the UK—to find out which terms gave people on TV the most pause in 2024.

Half of the U.S.’s top 10 most mispronounced terms are people’s names, from Kamala Harris to Chappell Roan. The others extend from the pharmaceutical industry (semaglutide, a key component in the weight-loss drug Ozempic) all the way to space (Speculoos-3b, a newly discovered exoplanet).

So how do you say all these toughies? Some are fairly straightforward: Chappell is pronounced like chapel (as opposed to the Chappelle of Dave Chappelle), and Roan rhymes with phone. Fast-fashion company Shein goes by “SHEE-in,” not “SHEEN.” Once you know the correct pronunciations, they’re pretty easy to execute.

But there’s more gray area with certain terms, sometimes because they don’t have English origins. The 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics mascot was a Phryge, which in French is “FREEZH” (with the guttural French “r” sound). But Babbel has phoneticized it in English as “FREE-je,” and the accompanying audio guide sounds more like “FREE-juh.” The surname of politician Pete Buttigieg is another tricky case: Babbel has “BOOD-ih-judge,” where “BOOD” rhymes with food. But Buttigieg himself says it with the clipped “oo” of good—and he once distributed stickers printed with the words boot edge edge.

It’s not the only time an authority complicated the pronunciation conversation. Semaglutide is supposed to be pronounced “sem-uh-GLOO-tide” (like glue). But in commercials for Wegovy, which manufactures a semaglutide drug, the word is clearly pronounced “sem-AG-luh-tide,” with the emphasis on “AG” (like bag).

All this to say that it’s difficult to pin down a single definitive pronunciation for some of the terms below. (And even in the more straightforward cases, your own regional accent will likely affect how they sound.) Also, we tweaked the phonetic pronunciations in some entries, which are asterisked.

You can see Babbel’s full breakdown—including what topped the UK list—here.

Discover Other Common Mispronunciations: