My worst example was the word GIF pronounced like the peanut butter instead of properly as in Graphical. It’s worse because Amanda Montell was writing a linguistics book about the history of language and words.
Recent example was “eschew” which is pronounced Eh-shoo but the narrator said “Eskew” and it confused me so much I had to Google it to make sure I hadn’t been saying it wrong my whole life. What exmaples have you found?
I respect both pronunciations of gif, but saying that the g should be the same as graphical because that’s what it stands for is and always has been laughable. Thats not how acronyms work at all, all you have to do is think of a few.
When you put in your PIN at the register, is it your “pin” or your “pine”? Because the I stands for identification. Same with SIM, it’s not a “sime” card.
If you go SCUBA diving, is it pronounced “scuh-ba” or “scooba”? Because the U is for underwater.
How about CAPTCHA? Should it be “cahpt-k-ha” or “captcha”? Or POTUS is “pot-yoos”?
My new pronunciation of CAPTCHA is now caphtkaesque
But not all acronyms are pronounced as a word. You don’t say Fibby for FBI. This is English much like Vietnam there are no rules here.
It’s only an acronym if it can be pronounced. If it can’t, like FBI, then it’s just an initialism.