Vice President Kamala Harris and breakout pop star Chappell Roan were among the year's most talked-about people. Their names were also among the most mispronounced. The language-learning company Babbel and closed-captioning company the Captioning Group released a list of the words that news anchors, politicians, and other public figures in the US struggled with most in 2024. The list also provides a retrospective of the year's most discussed topics and people, from pop culture to politics, per the AP.
Roan—whose hits include "Good Luck, Babe!"—shot to fame this year and is nominated for six Grammy awards. According to the list, her full name is pronounced CHAP-uhl ROHN, not SHA-pel ROW-an. Meanwhile, during Harris' unsuccessful run for president this year, her great-nieces took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention to clear up how to say her first name, COM-a-la. Other words on the list:
- Buttigieg (BOOT-Edge-Edge): as in US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
- Kooikerhondje (COY-ker-HUND-che): a Dutch dog breed that made its way into the lexicon this year. This is largely because Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani has a Kooikerhondje named Decoy who won the hearts of fans while delivering a ceremonial first pitch.
- Zendaya (zen-DAY-a): actor who starred in Challengers; her name is often mispronounced zen-DIE-uh.
- Shein (SHE-in): not SHEEN for the online fast-fashion giant.
- SPECULOOS-3b (SPEK-yuh-lohss three bee): newly discovered exoplanet.
- Phryge (FREE-je): the mascot of the Paris Olympics, whose name is a nod to the Phrygian cap, an emblematic accessory of the French revolutionaries.
- Semaglutide (sem-ah-GLOO-tide): the drug in weight-loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy; not pronounced SEE-mah-gloo-tide.
- Keoghan (key-OH-gin): last name of Irish actor Barry Keoghan, who starred in Saltburn.
Nancy Niedzielski, chair of the linguistics department at Rice University in Houston, points out that most of the words on the list aren't English, so it's not surprising that they'd be mispronounced in the US. The key to pronouncing them correctly, she said, would probably just be hearing them spoken, she notes. "There aren't really tricks short of knowing how orthology works in that language," she says. More here. (More pronunciation stories.)
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