by Jackie Barbosa
Last week, I wrote about how romance novels improved my understanding for and appreciate of history. Today, I want to talk about lesson #2, which is a little less general and a little more “OMG, how embarrassing would THAT have been?”
So, here we go:
Lesson #2: The Present Tense of “Misled” Is…
…not “misle.”
Okay, so this is truly one of my more embarrassing memories from my teenage years. I read a lot of romance novels, as I’ve mentioned, and in many of these books, the heroines in particular would reflect on how they had been “misled” by the hero. Whenever I encountered this word in the text, I would pronounce it in my head as “mi-zled” with a long “i”. I knew perfectly well what it mean–to be led astray, lied to, etc. But for months, if not years, it never occurred to me that I might be pronouncing it incorrectly.
I did, however, occasionally wonder why no one was ever “misled” in the present tense. Why did heroines never confront the heroes and say, “You are deliberately misleing me” or words to that effect? It did seem…odd.
Then, one day, it hit me. “Misled” was not the past tense of a verb I’d never seen in the present tense but of “mislead.” *headdesk*
All of this I relate to you because, to this day, I credit the relative frequency of the word “misled” in romance novels to the fact that I never in public read the word out loud the way I pronounced it in my head. Because that would DEFINITELY have been embarrassing!
So, are there any words you either learned the meaning of or how to pronounce because of its frequency in romance novels. Tell me all about it. Surely I’m not the only one out there with an embarrassment to share on this front!
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Jackie Barbosa is the author of Behind the Red Door, a Regency-set novella anthology published by Kensington Books, and the Grace Under Fire, an erotic short story set in the Georgian period coming from Harlequin Spice Briefs this April. You can follow Jackie on Twitter, friend her on Facebook, and learn more about all her published works at http://www.jackiebarbosa.com.
As much as I read I would think that I have learned a few words over the years but can’t think of them right now. I am bad with words anyway because or where I am from. Maybe I sould be paying more attention to words in books but I just go for the story line. Thanks for sharing with us today.
Marquess…which I always want to pronounce like ‘marquis’ even though I know that isn’t correct. I swear I still stutter over it in my head when I read it. & I love regencies so that sucker pops up ALL. THE. TIME.
Sounds good!
While I can’t recall any specific words that I’ve learned from romance novels, there have to have been many because I read my first one, from Harlequin, when I just 13. I especially love Regency romance, and ironically, the fact that I live in Virginia and grew up here has helped me with the pronunciation of peerage names and the names of places, because EVERYTHING in Virginia is named after somewhere or something from the Mother country! This is a great blog topic, by the way. I look forward to the remaining eight lessons.
An author’s name can be tricky. I’ve always pronounced Mary Balogh as Bahl-O, but she stated on a blog that it actually should rhyme with kellogg.
I still mispronounce vingt-et-un. I keep thinking it’s vint-et-un where the g is silent. I gotta stop reading books with gamblers. 🙂
Liaison is a word I used to have trouble with. However, Marquess and authors names are up there also.
Aristocracy – I pronounced it Aris ta cra see with emphasis on the Aris. It was many year later that I learned it was ar is toc ra cy. It’s used a lot in historical books so I pronounced it wrong for a very long time. I’m sure there are more words lol.
I always mispronounce hierarchy. I still mentally have to remind myself “higher archy” and not “high archy”!!
When I was in the 3rd grade I was sent to a speech teacher for one class every day because of the way I pronounced words. Because of this I learned how to “recognize” words and learn that the way they looked and how they sounded were not the same. Unfortuantely this did not help me out in high school when I had to take foreign languages – I could read them but not pronounce the words correctly. I fianlly settled on taking four years of Latin which helped in science and not much else.
Now if it could have just helped me to spell better!
I may have learned to read Latin but I love to read romance. I am always surprised by my husband who is half Italian can pick up languages so easily. He was in the Navy and then the Navy Reserves and got to travel to Italy, Spain, Iceland, Portugal and Key West (do you also question – one of these things doesn’t belong?) and never had a problem communicating no matter which country he was in. One of my language teacher mentioned that some people just have an ear for languages while others can have a ear for music but often not for both. I think it’s the same for great writers and the genre or genres they excel at writing. Some can write suspense and romance and another may only be able to write medical journals. I don’t think that means that one isn’t as gifted it’s just that the gift is of a different essense.
Some things are in the ear not the eye of the beholder.
Great post. Phaeton and barouche are two words that come to mind that I learned to pronounce.
When I learned to read, my Dad gave me a dictionary to look up words I didn’t know or couldn’t pronounce.
Through out the years I have learned many new words while reading romance novels, but I am having a hard time remembering any words that I couldn’t pronounce, although I am sure that there have been many! I enjoyed your post very much and if I can think of any words I’ll come back and let you know!
Best wishes!
Chris
I really can’t think of any words…I usually skip over them!
Authors names, I have a problem with some, mostly the paranormal authors. Even my own pen name, the last name is a hard ‘G’, I know that, but when I speak it aloud, always go soft. Great blog~
Good thing I’ve never tried to read a romance novel aloud. Who knows how many words I would have mangled in the attempt?
I’m constantly having to use my handy dandy dictionary.com to figure out how to pronounce words I find while I’m reading.
Words are so funny. I work with 8th graders and they can truly butcher phrases and words.
I know there are different ones. Items of clothing, body part terms & slang in general of different periods, military/weapon words among other things. Not a specific one comes to mind (it’s late, I’m tired, & I’ve been reading for many many years) 🙂 One of the joys of reading is learning new things after all 🙂
I will credit my love of reading with knowing and understanding many words, and there are probably some that I still don’t pronounce correctly – like reticule, for example. I love those dictionary sites that you can look up a word and hear it pronounced, those are awesome. I always have trouble with the made up names or unusual names that authors use. I never know how to pronounce them and usually just make up something that’s easy and let it go at that.
I can think of two off hand. Both were mispronounced through carelessness on my part. Wan I pronounced with a long a, just like wane. I knew what it meant, and the mispronunciation made a bit of sense – being pale & drawn and decreasing or getting smaller. One day i read it out loud and my daughter corrected me.
The second word is heinous. For some reason, my mind was putting the I after then. I was pronouncing it with long e’s and three syllables, something like heneous. My husband caught me on that one.
Embarrassing, yes, but life goes on and now I say them correctly. I am sure I am murdering other words, but if it is done in my head, no one will know but me.
Some author’s names will trip me up…I think Mary Balogh was mentioned. I still say Bay-lo, but I guess that’s wrong. Oh well, as long as I’m talking to the author, I guess I won’t get my mouth washed out! LOL Jaci Burton is another. Is it Jackie or Jay-Cee? She says it’s Jay-Cee. Who knew? Another word is Marquess vs. Marquis. I still pronounce either as Mar-qee but I’m sure that’s wrong. But, since I’m reading to myself, I don’t care!
Thanks for the giveaway today. Cara Elliott is a new-to-me author and I’m anxious to read her work.
One word that I always read in historicals is “mishap” of course, I read it as “meeshap” (with a long i sound) and actually read it out loud when somebody corrected me. *blush* How embarrassing… LOL
Really interesting post. I usually have a dictionary with me when I read and if I can’t figure out what the word means I look it up.
I was very young when I started reading romance books and “belligerent” was a word that I knew how to spell and understood the meaning of but I didn’t actually learn to pronounce for quite some time.
Marquess, Viscount, authors names and all of the above lol. But in the historical novels its hard with some of those words like curricle and phaeton. I also was saying Bridgerton (from Julia Quinn’s series) wrong in my head and thanks to a video i saw where she said their name did i realize I was saying (thinking) them wrong. I am horrible with names. I also remember in school we had to read aloud and in history we were learning about the Missiouri Compromise but couldn’t say compromise right, i kept saying com_promise.
This post is really funny! 🙂 I can think of two I used to pronounce wrong. For some reason I used to pronounce “unrequited” love as “unrequitted” love! Also, I pronounced ancient as ankcient! I knew what they meant but they came out wrong!
I’m sure I got a lot of words wrong given that English isn’t my first language. One I always say wrong is: Déjà vu, but that’s French 🙂 Does it really matter. I mean as long as the story is great and I enjoy it who cares how I say/read things.
There have been many words I hve learned thanks to romance novels. I just can’t seem to think of which ones they are!
And I’m sure there are many I Still pronounce incorrectly 🙂
I read many Regencies with the river Thames in it which I thought had a long a and rhymed with flames so when I saw a newscaster referring to it once I didn’t know what they were talking about.
Amazing that I can never read enough of these… when I come across names I am not sure how they would be pronounced I read them as I see them. I hate getting caught up on a word or name that is repeated, it ruins the story for me. Since I am reading now one can hear how I am thinking it is said, so why ponder on it?? I just keep reading ( :