Heterogeneous

Well that’s embarrassing. 

A reporter just used the word “heterogeneous” and he pronounced it in a way I never would have imagined.

He said “Hetero-genius,” as if he was describing Einstein’s sexual preference. 

Stupid reporter, I thought, he’s going to get tweets about that. It’s Het-er-AH-Jen-us. 

Then, I remembered the banal facade incidents and I looked it up, and damnit, DAMNit, it’s hetero-genius.

Thankfully, I don’t remember ever saying heterogeneous out loud. But I know I have said homogeneous out loud. And I looked that up and damnit, damnit I have been wrong all my life. It’s homo-genius, not hon-MAH-Jen-us.

But wait, I thought, there is that extra “e” that I attributed to British/American spelling. Maybe hetero/homo-geneous vs genous are entirely different words. 

Oh, Jesus, they are entirely different words with different pronunciations that mean the same thing, but for a nuance. That extra e gives the word a scientific slant. So it’s ho-MAH-Jen-ized milk if you’re in the grocery and ho-mo-geneized milk in the food lab? No. Because homogeneized isn’t a word. 

So you know how I will pronounce heterogeneous/heterogenous in the future? “Di-VERSE.”.

Comments

[AH]

I just laughed very hard at the fuk-ade.

For many years when I was younger I thought awry was pronounced awe-ree instead of a-rye. I knew that a-rye was a word, I knew they both meant basically the same thing. I don't know how I thought the a-rye word was spelled, but in my head they existed as two distinct words (with the exact same meaning). Kind of like homogen(e)ous.

Although not a mispronunciation, my favourite of these types of missteps was from someone I knew who used to use the term "bolivious" rather than "oblivious". The irony was the best part. "Oh you know Susan, she's just so bolivious".

[TheQueen]

Hah! bolivious! That is great! And yes, I could see ah-ree as a word, even more than a-rye.

[KC]

Ah-ree is probably how it's pronounced in Scots dialect? :-) (am not googling in case I am wrong...)

[TheQueen]

KC - evidently, Scots don’t say awry, they say agley.
https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/scottish-word-day-agley-1614414

[KC]

I knew they said agley (see: the best-laid plans of mice and men), but I vaguely hoped that, perhaps, they also said ah-ree, sometimes, in lighter moments. :-)

(also! I have found glorious pronunciation nerds on the awry topic! http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2012/05/going-awry.html )

[TheQueen]

KC - wow that pronunciation blog is a challenge. All I know is the schwa. Many other sounds in there.