Incorrect pronunciation of words

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Each week I go to a Novena for the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. The deacon that leads it repeatedly mispronounces two words, pronouncing “envelop” as “envelope,” and “bouquet” as “banquet.” We all just let it slide, but sometimes I wonder if we should privately correct him. What do you think?
 
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I am wincing here. We have a lector who mispronounces so many words it’s not even funny. One Sunday the reading was about Barnabas from the Acts of the Apostles and she kept saying Barabas for Barnabas.
 
A lector once — in Mass — read how God appeared in the form of “a flaming brassiere” (mispronouncing “brazier” from Genesis 15).

Sometimes correcting another’s mistakes is a public service.
 
I remember one year the Lay Reader was reading the passage from Jonah about the people of Ninevah.

He kept saying “Nivea” and I had a visual of sinners with very dry skin.
 
I said I went to the Chaplet each week. not that he mispronounced “bouquet” each week.
 
Convert3 said:
The deacon that leads it repeatedly mispronounces two words,
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The Deacon (or you) may be from out of town, different places have different pronunciations you know.

I’ve lived here in Pittsburgh my entire life, and when I go out of town I am always amused at the crazy pronunciations that out of towners come up with. I no longer bother correcting people when they mispronounce words like “Washington” and just sit amused if they don’t pronounce it “Warshington”
 
No, he’s not foreign. Just a hard working blue collar guy who is a good man with a high school education and heard the calling to become a deacon, and a very good one at that.
 
I can’t vouch for his level of education, but we both retired from the same company. I know his position of many years only requires a high school diploma, and in our many conversations he never indicated he went to college. But I could be wrong.
 
It’s a thin line between wanting to help and possibly embarrassing him. I’ll probably keep it quiet. Nobody thinks any less of him for it that I know of.
 
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From what I can find, educational requirements vary by Archdiocese. But they must be able to handle college level coursework.
 
When I’m a lector, I always try to look up correct pronunciation of questionable words or names. I dread the day I have to fill in at the last minute and have some challenging words!
 
Exactly. We all make mistakes with the English language and much is done repeatedly. On top of that there are dialects we don’t like. I’d let it go. It probably wouldn’t do any good anyway.
 
Augustinian said:
always amused at the crazy pronunciations that out of towners come up with
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Oh my, this is evocative of growing up. My parents were from Ontario but us kids were all born and schooled in the west. So I gradually became aware of all the words mom and dad were pronouncing differently from the rest of us. Deef for deaf. Mee-ami for Miami. Coyote was pronounced phonetically. The list goes on and on. Mom and dad passed on years ago but we still laugh over the way they often spoke and wondered over the fact they never noticed they were the only ones saying certain things that way.
 
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Godfollower said:
A lector once — in Mass — read how God appeared in the form of “a flaming brassiere” (mispronouncing “brazier” from Genesis 15).

Sometimes correcting another’s mistakes is a public service.
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When I was little and didn’t even know the word “brassiere” (I just knew it as “bra”), I was actually TAUGHT that “brazier” was pronounced that way. Took me a number of years to figure it all out lol
 
I remember when I was a young kid living on Long Island, NY, I was friends with a neighbor girl when we were about eight or nine. I wasn’t Catholic then and she was. She always insisted “the” was pronounced “thee.” She was my first exposure to a Catholic.
 
Thinking back, most lectors I have heard pronounce “prophesy” (the verb) as if it were “prophecy” (the noun)
 
We had a pastor at my former church who would not say the word “Lord” when reading scripture. He always substituted “The Eternal”. I knew which translation he was reading from and that’s not how it read. It became very annoying.
 
I read almost weekly and I am very thankful when I don’t have a lot of difficult names of people or towns to pronounce.
 
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