The most mispronounced words in South Africa
No matter what your mother tongue is, some words are just waiting to be mispronounced.
Some people pick up new languages quickly, but pronunciation often remains a challenge.
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Even fluent speakers can stumble over words with baffling spelling and pronunciation rules.
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According to Google search data, thousands of South Africans used the search engine to avoid embarrassing mispronunciations.
Unscramblerer, a word unscrambling site, used this data and analysed search data from Google Trends for the period from January 1, 2025, to November 3, 2025, for "How do you pronounce" and "How to pronounce".
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Randoh Sallihall, spokesperson for Unscramblerer.com, said about the results: "Our research about the most searched for mispronunciations gives an interesting insight into South African culture. Exposure to new words through media, music, pop culture and social platforms drives curiosity. People often look up pronunciations if there is a gap between how a word or name is spelt and how it sounds."
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Here are the most mispronounced words in South Africa for 2025:
- Schedule (74 400 searches) - SKEJ-ool.
- Croissant (70 800 searches) - Krwah-SAHN.
- Charcuterie (69 600 searches) - Shar-KOO-tuh-ree.
- Aoife (57 600 searches) - EE-fah.
- Worcestershire sauce (56 400 searches) - WUSS-ter-sheer.
- Jalapeno (46 800 searches) - HAH-lah-PEH-nyoh.
- Dachshund (44 400 searches) - DAKS-hund.
- Acai (43 200 searches) - Ah-SIGH-ee.
- Quinoa (40 800 searches) - Keen-waa.
- Chateau (32 700 searches) - Sha-TOH.
- Qatar (31 200 searches) - KAH-tar.
- Tuesday (28 800 searches) - Chooz-day.
- Gyro (25 200 searches) - YEE-roh.
- Nutella (27 600 searches) - Nuh-teh-luh.
- Niche (24 000 searches) - NEESH.
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South Africa's most mispronounced words by region:
- Western Cape - Cocoa (KOH-koh).
- Gauteng - Agile (AJ-ile).
- Limpopo - Croissant (Krwah-SAHN).
- North West - Jalapeno (HAH-lah-PEH-nyoh).
- KwaZulu-Natal - Cautious (KAW-shuhs).
- Mpumalanga - Worcestershire (WUSS-ter-sheer).
- Northern Cape - Persuasive (Per-SWAY-siv).
- Eastern Cape - Nonchalant (Non-shuh-LAHNT).
- Free State - Achieve (Uh-CHEEV).
Rob and Roz also decided to weigh in on these pronunciations:
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Their methodology: Unscramblerer used Google Trends to discover the most mispronounced words and Ahrefs to find the number of searches. South Africa's most mispronounced words can be discovered in Google Trends by searching for phrases such as "How do you pronounce", "pronunciations of", and "How to pronounce". Ahrefs shows many variations of pronunciation searches, such as 'croissant pronunciation' or 'how do you pronounce jalapeno'. We compiled 100 search variations of the top mispronounced queries.
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