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English as a second language learners: what words were really hard for you to pronounce?
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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
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Routing (e.g. for cables or traces on a pcb). I've heard both over the years: as in cangaroo or the german Frau. But the latter might be a german mis pronounciation.
Which brings up two new questions. Is it German or german and mispronounciation or mis pronounciation or mis-pronounciation?
Mispronunciation. "Mis" isn't a word, but a prefix (or something) that gets attached to another word to modify it. Since it's not its own word, it gets prepended to the root word ("pronounce" in this case) without a dash.
German would always have the capital. In English, proper nouns get capitalized. There's an official list, I'd bet, but a good rule of thumb is that titles (books, movies), specific place names (Germany, London, Abbey Road), people's names (Bob, Reiner), and "I" (but not "me" etc) are put into "Title Case". (Title case wouldn't be capitalized, I just typed it that way to demonstrate it)
I actually like a lot of the German capitalization rules. On the internet, a lot of people will be more casual with capitalization. Some people will capitalize "important words", or things that aren't proper nouns but have a different meaning than usual...but these kinds of things are improper.
As for routing (and router, and heck...route in general)...both are correct pronunciations of this "ou". I think "au" is more common for networking in North America, and "oo" is more common in other English-speaking countries (the UK, Australia...).
As for "route" as in "Route 56", I tend to hear and say both/either (I'm in North America).
Sorry it's so inconsistent!
Very precise answer. Thanks, I've learned something.
My apologies though, I got it backwards. I'll edit the comment to be accurate, but for router (networking stuff)...
"oo" is more common outside of North America.
"au" is more common in North America.
Roo-ter is usually British and former colonies. Row-ter is north America.
I thought this was more of a British-American pronunciation difference: I (English) generally say roo-ting, and Iโve only ever heard USians say row-ting (row like argument, not like rowing a boat).
The former is typical of British RP, and the latter is found in General American (though it varies regionally). So it really just depends on who you're taking to.
To your questions, I would use "German" and "mispronunciation".