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Whether intentional or unintentional, this is when a character is placing the emphasis on the wrong syllable of a word.
In song lyrics, it's usually because the song was done by some foreigner who hasn't quite grasped the rules of stress in their second language, but sometimes they're just being [[Epic Fail|completely incompetent]] about setting lyrics to music. This can lead to [[Mondegreen
Sometimes, this is done in dubs when the [[Lip Lock|lips are clearly visible]].
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{{Examples}}
== INtentionAL EXamples ==
=== [[Anime|aNIme]] and [[Manga|manGA]] ===▼
▲=== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ===
* In ''[[Detective Conan]]'', Jodie Starling uses this as a form of [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]. Naturally, Hattori calls her out on it right off the bat.
* True Assassin from ''[[Fate/stay night|Fate Stay Night]]'', used as a sign that his body and mind are not entirely stable due to the circumstances of his creation. After he manages to 'repair' himself {{spoiler|by [[I'm a Humanitarian|eating the remains of Caster and Lancer]]}} he begins talking normally.
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* The ''[[Code Geass]]'' picture drama ''Miraculous Birthday'' has a funny gag where Lelouch incorrectly teaches the student council to say "Yes, your ma-JEST-y" repeatedly.
* In the original Japanese version of [[Digimon Adventure 02]], the Chosen Children owned power-ups for their Digimon called Digimentals. When these were activated, they [[Calling Your Attacks|shouted, "Digimental UUUUP!"]], which, though a little hammy, is nevertheless an aversion of this trope. Come the infamous English Dub, and for some reason or another it was decided to change this call to "Digi-armour ENERGISE!". Due to the lip-flaps, however, the syllable of this shout that was stretched out was the "er" in "energise". The result was "Digi-armour enEEEEEEEEERgise!"
* A classic instance appears in the theme for the original North American dub of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'': the line "She is the one on whom we can depend", with "depend" pronounced "DEEP end" in order to match the melody.
* In ''[[K-On!|K-On! High School]]'', when the next-generation version of the Light Music Club discover their new drummer Sumire isn't ethnically Japanese but Anglo-Australian instead, they deliberately do this to give her a nickname: by pronouncing her name (which in Japanese sounds kind of like "SOO-m'ray") the way an ignorant English speaker would say it ("soo-MEE-ray").
=== [[Comedy]] ===▼
* [[Emo Phillips]] sometimes employs this as part of his stage persona.▼
* [[Eddie Izzard]] used this to illustrate how awkward it is when Robin Hoods have American accents.▼
** "Where is the Maid MarEYEan? And the Sheriff of NottingHAM? I live in SherWOOD ForEST!"▼
=== [[Film]] ===
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* In ''[[The Thin Man (film)|The Thin Man]]'' movies they keep referring to the people who might have done as the "susPECTS".
=== [[Literature|litERatURE]] ===
* In Damon Knight's science fiction story "You're Another," there's a man in the year 4000 or so whose native language is Esperanto (though not named). When he speaks English, he has a thick Esperanto accent, and stresses the penultimate syllable of every word, just as in Esperanto. (E.g., "Now you will give me d'in''stru''ment.")
* In [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''Glory Lane'', an alien in disguise on Earth is described as talking like this trope, stressing the wrong syllables and words, due to having learned English from a cheap crash course.
* Do not attempt to pronounce the surname of ''[[
* This is how Jaina Solo and Lando Calrissian realize that a robot is impersonating Lando and giving his droids orders in ''Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Vortex''.
=== [[Live-Action TV|live-actiON tv]] ===
* A surprisingly eerie example from ''[[Doctor Who]]'' is with the Mondasian Cybermen in ''The Tenth Planet''.
* On an episode of ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', Rimmer asks Lister not to pronounce his name the way he does. Lister asks if he should call him "Rim''[[Its Pronounced Tropay|MAIR]]''".
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBzIqpQ8c9U This] skit from The sketch Show features a man with this problem. He's a speech theRAPIST.
* In ''[[The Middleman]]'', it's how Tyler knows the "job interview" he's at is actually a test, and the board is fake: the head of the board keeps pronouncing Manservant Neville's name the way you'd assume it was pronounced. It's
* Reid on ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' occasionally puts a weird emphasis on a weird syllable when he
** Hmm. I thought that pronunciation was a Nevada/[[American Accents|Jello Belt]] thing.
* Captain Sisko from ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' does this, although it at least stays
** Michael Dorn also once said in an interview that he did this when playing Worf so he would have a distinct speech pattern from the rest of the (mostly human or [[Human Alien]]) crew.
* In an episode of ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'', Peter Weller played a terrorist who threatened to release a virus if a global video conference involving every nation's capital on Earth was not cancelled. His right hand man told him "there are no plans to halt the summit in Can-BERRA or Berlin". The writer having known that Canberra exists and is the capital of Australia is more than Canberrans have come to expect, but it's pronounced CAN-berra. CAN-bra, with the last vowel cut off to sound like a hard "u", is also common and acceptable.
* In a later episode of ''[[Friends]]'', Ross finds that he tends to slip into a stereotypical English accent during his new job of lecturing at a college, as a result of nerves. Mid-lecture, under the assumption that he wasn't being listened to anyway, he attempts to reassert his normal accent, but finds that he starts slipping in and out, resulting in the placement of emphasis on strange parts of words, such as saying "
* A sketch on ''[[The Day Today]]'' features [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLuaqNoxjro a spoof advert for a documentary about the footballer John Fashanu], which consists solely of a man saying "John FA-shanu" in a sinister voice for 15 seconds... immediately followed by the presenter announcing "That's John Fa-SHA-nu, tonight on BBC 2".
* A common quirk of the narrator of the Brazilian comedy show ''Pânico na TV''.
* One episode of ''[[The Andy Griffith Show]]'' in which Barney repeatedly refers to "a''pathy''!"
=== [[Music|muSIC]] ===
* [[Gilbert and Sullivan|Sir William Gilbert]] loved to invoke this trope, [[Rule of Funny|taking it to deliberately ridiculous lengths]].
* The somewhat obscure [[Trope Namer]], "Sing a Tropical Song," was written for the 1943 movie musical ''Happy Go Lucky''. [[The Andrews Sisters]] also recorded it. "Rum and CoCAAA-Cola"
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** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7kJRGPgvRQ&ob=av3e "Here comes the wo-ma-NAY-zer!"]
* A certain Spanish language ballad (circa 1997? by Rocio Durcal?) has a verse ending with a phrase to the effect that her tears are stuck in her throat. In Spanish, that's "garganta". There's nothing unusual about the way the word itself is accented, but it's unusual to hear such an unattractive-sounding word placed in full prominence at the climactic point of a musical phrase and backed with lush orchestration, rather than buried in an inconspicuous part of the verse.
* "Pretty Vacant" by [[Sex Pistols]] has the latter word pronounced "VaCANT", making it sound like the word "cunt".
* In "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", [[Gordon Lightfoot]] pronounces "Detroit" with three syllables--"De-troy-it". Native Detroiters usually pronounce it "da-TROYT." The last "t" is really more of a glottal stop than anything.
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{{quote|"Yes GRANted we PROSper, but the FACT that we PROSper... is Even TAken FOR granTEEEEEEEEE-duh."}}
** Yes, they did indeed add a whole new syllable to the word ''granted''.
* MC Frontalot's ''[[Dungeons
{{quote|'''Front's DM:''' Damien, are you saying '''At'''tribute, or At'''trib'''ute?
'''Front''': '''At'''tribute, obviously.
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{{quote|FragMENTS of torTURED
ExistENCE reVEALing cold WHISpers }}
* From the [[Pussycat Dolls]]' "When I Grow Up":
* "Genius Of Love" by the Tom Tom Club. "No one can sing / Quite like Smokey, Smokey Ro-BIN-son."
* As you might expect, this trope (along with mispronunciations galore) features in the song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmOWejvdyvk&feature=related "Bad English"] by Québécois comedian François Pérusse.
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* [[Nicki Minaj]] - it varies, but her favorite word to mangle is the simple "me"; she'll stretch it out sideways and somehow make it "mAy" as to make it fit her raps. Most noticeable because she'll use the correct pronuciation in the same song.
* "Unconditionally" by [[Katy Perry]] consistently emphasizes "tion" instead of the standard "di".
* "We Connect" by 1980s [[One-Hit Wonder|Two-Hit Wonder]] [[Stacey Q]] has this example:
{{quote|''We connect''
''When we're together it's''
''So per-FECT...''}}
=== [[Newspaper Comics|newsPAper coMICS]] ===
* In ''[[Pearls Before Swine]]'', Pig mispronounces "atlas" as "at''LAS''" in order to make a really bad [[Pun]].
* Many characters in ''[[Pogo (comic strip)|Pogo]]'' do this.
* From ''[[FoxTrot]]'', Andy certainly [https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrotclassics/2017/04/12?comments=visible#comments walks right into ''this'' one.]
=== [[Radio|raDIo]] ===
* On ''[[My Music]]'', one of the panelists once described "Michelle" by [[The Beatles (band)|The Beatles]] as "one of those songs that has the emPHASis on the sylLAble".
=== [[Recorded and Stand Up Comedy|recorDED and stand UP coMEDy]] ===
=== [[Theatre]] ===▼
▲* [[Emo Phillips]] sometimes employs this as part of his stage persona.
▲* [[Eddie Izzard]] used this to illustrate how awkward it is when Robin Hoods have American accents.
▲** "Where is the Maid MarEYEan? And the Sheriff of NottingHAM? I live in SherWOOD ForEST!"
▲=== [[Theatre|theAtre]] ===
* In the second act of [[Richard Wagner]]'s ''Meistersinger'', Sachs strikes his cobbler's hammer each time Beckmesser does this in his serenade, ''Den Tag seh' ich erscheinen''.
* In the musical ''[[1776]]'', Richard Henry Lee goodnatured-Lee emphasizes the "-ly" at the end of every adverb he uses in both dialogue and song as a tribute to his prominent fami-Lee.
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{{quote|"Come on, let's go watch ''Wizards of Waver''ly ''Place''." }}
=== [[Video Games|viDEo games]] ===
* The G-Man from the ''[[Half-Life]]'' series speaks like this, along with speeding up and slowing down randomly and a bit of [[Vader Breath]].
* In ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'', {{spoiler|President Deling's body double}} talks like this. Given [[Body Horror|what he transforms into]] after you kill him, it's not surprising.
* Some demons in ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]'' (particularly Slime) like to do this.
* In the game ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'', [[
* The flamingo in ''[[Max Payne 2]]'''s [[Show Within a Show]], ''Address Unknown''. Justified because the flamingo's dialogue is the dialogue spoken backwards, then played in reverse.
* In ''[[ADOM]]'', Chaos cultists' mIxEd cAsE dIaLoGuE is probably intended to represent this.
=== [[Web Animation|web aNImaTION]] ===
* ''[[Homestar Runner]]'''s Strong Bad does it all the time when reading his email messages, often done to accentuate spelling errors. All the speaking characters have spoken this way at least once. There [http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/Deliberately_Poor_English are] [http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/Multiple_Consonants even] [http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/%22Er%22_pronounced_as_%22Oi%22 a] [http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/-ed few] [http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/-or_pronounced_with_a_long_O pages] on the Homestar Runner Wiki listing their occurrence.
=== [[Western Animation|wesTERN ANimaTION]] ===
* While they were casting ''[[Harvey Birdman]]: Attorney At Law'', when [[Stephen Colbert]] auditioned for the eponymous role, they told him to do this every sentence or so. It... didn't quite work out, as one can see on the first DVD collection.
* Dr. Zoidberg on ''[[Futurama]]'' pronounces "robot" as "RO-bit," which is ironically how the word was first pronounced.
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* [[Veggie Tales]] Silly Song "Monkey" had Larry say, "We finally did it, photo-GRAPH-er!"
=== [[Real Life|reAL life]] ===
* If it hadn't happened before the invention of the Wiki, George Bush might have been referencing this during the 2000 election campaign, where in one debate, he admitted "I've been known to mangle a syl''lab''le or two myself."
* Opera singers whose first language is English are often given the following advice about pronouncing the works of Bartok and Janacek: "In HUN-garian and CZECH-oslovakian, the ACC-ent is AL-ways on the first SYLL-able, no EX-ceptions ." This worked better back when Czechoslovakia was a country, but if you just say "Czech" it wrecks the joke.
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* Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien often used to joke that he often "put the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle"; the less charitable joke about him was that he was the first Canadian Prime Minister in history who couldn't express himself coherently in ''either'' of Canada's official languages. Ironically, this was at least in part an intentional branding strategy to make himself look stupider than he really was; in actual fact, he was a remarkably canny strategist whose political instincts quite regularly blew "smarter" politicians right out of the water.
* JFK said we should go the moon by the end of this "deCADE"
== UnINtentionAL EXamples ==▼
▲== UnINtentionAL EXamples ==
=== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ===
* From ''[[Noir (anime)|Noir]]'', the track "[[Ominous Latin Chanting|Salva Nos]]" makes "requiem" in the phrase ''dona eis requiem'' four syllables and accents the second (re-QU-i-em), while "eis" becomes one syllable instead of two. This is likely because the vocalist's first language is Japanese, which consistently allows vowel hiatus.
* Many English dubs of anime, particularly earlier ones, do this for character's names and other Japanese words that find their way into the dub. A couple of examples: ah-KAH-nay (instead of ah-kah-NAY), ah-KEER-ah (as opposed to ah-kee-rah) and sah-KOOR-ah (as opposed SAH-koo-rah).
** This has been changing since the middle-2000s, as dubbers and viewers both become more knowledgeable about Japanese usage, but 1990s-vintage dubs like ''[[Ranma ½]]'' demonstrate it in spades.
* Happens in spades in the theme songs for ''[[Persona 4: The Animation]]'', leaving them very difficult to understand even though they're in [[Engrish|English]].
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* In an episode of ''[[iCarly]]'', Carly (and everyone else) repeatedly say "Yaki-MUH," as in "I'm not moving to Yaki-MUH." It's actually pronounced "Yakih-MAH."
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'''s 20th anniversary special, a Time Lord official is taken for a mind scan. His cry of, "No, not the [[Mind Probe|mind PROBE!]]" was unintentional, and no matter how many takes the director called for, the actor kept saying it the same way.
* In
=== [[Music]] ===
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* [[Oasis]]. Particularly whenever Liam Gallagher has to pronounce a word with a long "I" in it. ("Sheee-iiiiiiinne!")
* This is par for the course for much Spanish-language music: the lyrics are set without much care towards whether the musical accent matches the linguistic accent.
** Tone-based languages like Chinese (be it Mandarin, Cantonese or some other dialect) do the same thing. When spoken, every syllable requires either a rising, falling, bouncing or flat tone, and using the wrong one gets you the wrong word. Chinese music, for its own sanity, doesn't care, which probably leads to lots of [[
*** That depends on ''what'' kind of Chinese you refer to on the music thing; Cantonese pop
** In the case of Spanish rock, much of it has to be with the fact that they're inspired by melodies which were constructed around the English language. A language made with polysyllabic words, most of them stressed in the penultimate syllable is tricky to fit into a typical rock melody.
* Finnish rap. Probably has something to do with Finnish not being English, much as the above.
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* "99 Red Balloons" by [[Nena]]: "Ninety-nine minISters MEET..." Though, to be fair, Nena's native language is German.
* "Miniature Atlas" by [[Dappled Cities]]: the emphasis matches the emphasis of the beats (the kick and the snare in 4/4 time). "MIN-ia-TURE atLAS".
* As noted in the description, this is actually rather common in many languages with large speaker bases and multiple varieties. English has quite a few examples, such as: a-DULT vs A-dult; aLLUminum vs alluMINium; MOUStache vs mousTACHE; and many other examples.▼
* A potential problem that non-native speakers of [[wikipedia:Tonal language|tonal languages]] such as Chinese need to be careful with.▼
* Similarly, some languages, including English, simply make more use of stress than others. French, for example, tends to afford most syllables equal stress, unless the vowel is accented; English, by contrast, tends to have at least one stressed syllables in every word, which as the regional differences illustrates doesn't necessary have anything to do with the sounds involved.▼
* It's a common problem among the hard of hearing, who may not be able to discern stress in spoken language. (It also shows up when people use a word they've never heard spoken aloud: this often crops up in medical settings, where patients or family members may not know how to pronounce the words they've read in the literature.)▼
* If you're British: Americans. If you're American: the British. If you're from some other English-speaking country: British and American people, each on different words.▼
* Oh dear goodness, the Russian language. Once you study it (for say, 8 years), you begin to pick up patterns, but you can never be sure until you hear it for sure or look in the dictionary. Coupled with the fact that Russian words tend to be long, and also somewhat tonal (trUsy -- cowards, trusY -- underwear), you can never be sure where the real stress lays, or if the word you said was the one you meant. And the [http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/spelling.html spelling rules], or the [http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/pronounc.html akaniye and ikaniye accents]...▼
* New Orleans is pronounced by locals as "New OR-lins," not "New Ore-LEENS," as most of the rest of the country pronounces it. If you've got a thick accent, you might pronounce it more like "NAW-lins" anyway.▼
* Whether this is real, a joke or an urban legend, the story goes that Madame Degaulle was once asked what women want. Her reply (in English) was "A Penis" to which her husband added "In English it's pronounced '[[Happiness]]'".▼
=== [[Theatre]] ===
* In ''[[The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny]]'' the protagonist is called Jimmy Mahonney, pronounced MAH-Honee, so some American versions, to keep it along the music, rename him Jimmy MacIntyre (Funny enough, even when the usual American pronuciation is Ma-HOH-nee, the original Irish one is indeed MAH-honne. This is due to different accents having the stresses on words in different places.)
* The lyric
** Similarly, Sondheim's lyrics for ''[[West Side Story
* ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'': throughout the show, there seems to be no consensus as to whether the female lead's name is pronounced '[[Christine]]' or '[[Christine]]'.
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* From ''[[The Lion King]]'''s [[Villain Song|"Be Prepared"]]: "deCADES of denial." As usual, the pronunciation was forced in order to fit the melody.
* The song for the second series credits of [[Blinky Bill]] misprounces Marcia. This is only the singer. When the cast sing they get it right.
* From ''[[My Little Pony:
** It happens several times in "At the Gala" from the [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S1/E26 The Best Night Ever|first season finale]], especially the instances of "TOnight at the Gala".
** The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTPqjKk_xCo "EquesTRIa Girls"] commercial.
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* In ''[[Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog|AOSTH]]'', Dr. Robotnik was [[Memetic Mutation|snoo PINGAS usual, we all see]].
* In ''[[King of the Hill]]'', Peggy's poor grasp of Spanish usually results in this.
▲* As noted in the description, this is actually rather common in many languages with large speaker bases and multiple varieties. English has quite a few examples, such as: a-DULT vs A-dult; aLLUminum vs alluMINium; MOUStache vs mousTACHE; and many other examples.
▲* A potential problem that non-native speakers of [[wikipedia:Tonal language|tonal languages]] such as Chinese need to be careful with.
▲* Similarly, some languages, including English, simply make more use of stress than others. French, for example, tends to afford most syllables equal stress, unless the vowel is accented; English, by contrast, tends to have at least one stressed syllables in every word, which as the regional differences illustrates doesn't necessary have anything to do with the sounds involved.
▲* It's a common problem among the hard of hearing, who may not be able to discern stress in spoken language. (It also shows up when people use a word they've never heard spoken aloud: this often crops up in medical settings, where patients or family members may not know how to pronounce the words they've read in the literature.)
▲* If you're British: Americans. If you're American: the British. If you're from some other English-speaking country: British and American people, each on different words.
▲* Oh dear goodness, the Russian language. Once you study it (for say, 8 years), you begin to pick up patterns, but you can never be sure until you hear it for sure or look in the dictionary. Coupled with the fact that Russian words tend to be long, and also somewhat tonal (
▲* New Orleans is pronounced by locals as "New OR-lins," not "New Ore-LEENS," as most of the rest of the country pronounces it. If you've got a thick accent, you might pronounce it more like "NAW-lins" anyway.
▲* Whether this is real, a joke or an urban legend, the story goes that Madame Degaulle was once asked what women want. Her reply (in English) was "A Penis" to which her husband added "In English it's pronounced '[[Happiness! (visual novel)|Happiness!]]'".
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Language Tropes]]
[[Category:Music Tropes]]
[[Category:Self-Demonstrating Article]]
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