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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

My common bloopers - 12 - brooch

As I have maintained, Indians of my generation were better at spelling than at pronunciation. Ever since I started working on trying to eliminate all the errors, I created a flash cards system. Every time I heard a word that was pronounced differently from the way I knew it, I wrote it down on a visiting card (my designations changed so fast that I had a lot of spare visiting cards). On the back of the card I wrote the correct pronunciation of the word after checking it. This system was created at the time when I did not have access to computers. Now I do, but still prefer those cards. 

A couple of days back I was looking at those cards. I found this word written on one card. 

I always used to pronounce this word as brew-ch, whereas the correct pronunciation is bro-ch (bro as in short for brother). Though the way I used to pronounce it was acceptable in the US, it was not the preferred pronunciation. In the UK it was not even an acceptable form. 

Thankfully this is a word that generally does not appear in news bulletins. But when it does, a red flag pops up in my mind. 

I don't get it wrong these days. 

So, it is ब्रोच not ब्रूच 

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