Recently I’ve discovered a few words where I know the definition and spelling but I don’t know the pronunciation. The problem is that I think I know how to pronounce them so when I use them for the first time in conversation, or hear someone using them, some confusion arises (as well as making me look like a fool).

I am not sure if this is isolated to me or society as a whole. The world does seem to be getting more and more open so maybe this is a result of that - the spoken dictionary is getting smaller and smaller so many of the words that were commonly used in conversations decades ago are no longer being used.

In any case I think we should all try to identify such words and try to use commonly written words in conversation, we may be surprised by how wrong we are.

For me, the word I didn’t know how to pronounce was “albeit.” I was pronouncing it as all-bite when it turns out that it is pronounced all-be-it.