A Story Using Words I Have Mispronounced

(The words are in all caps and spelled phonetically in the way I used to pronounce them or read them in my head. The context should hint at what words they really are. I've also listed them at the bottom, correctly spelled. Check out www.howjsay.com to hear official pronunciation of these and other words)


About this time last year at the docks an old sea merchant MY-ZULD me into thinking I could hitch a free ride on his skiff. What luck, I thought, as my lips curled upward and I grinned out toward the frothy chop at two distant bumps, one obscured by clouds, the other lit green by the sun's favoring ray. Now I would be one of the first traders this autumn to do business with the natives of Norsen Island.

We set sail and I secured myself at the stern, counting the bills I had saved that summer and sheltering them from the wind with my frock. This free trip would allow me to buy twice as many ivory carvings as I had planned, and might even afford me an extra day or two to cavort with the sunny natives.

I should have seen from the start, however, that my fortunate circumstance was bloated with Yang, and suspiciously lacking in Yin. Ten miles out, something seemed AWE-REE. I stood up, still clutching the rail at the bow, and stepped carefully on my way toward the sinewy old man at the tiller. I reminded him that he had said he would take me to Norsen, not Durth, where it appeared we were headed. I waited for a reply; the wind shifted momentarily but his mouth moved not. Instead, from his eyes came the same impelling charisma with which he had lured me onto the boat hours earlier. A simple steady stare convinced me that my fears regarding Durth were nothing but a TCHIM-ER-AH, and that the natives there had carvings of equal quality. Something like black magic must have been at work because up until that short moment I had always known that not only were Durth natives a conniving lot, but their carvings were terribly BAY-NUHL.

It wasn't until he beached the skiff on the foggy island that my trance broke and I realized the leatherfaced prune had deceived me with a FAY-CADE. I glared into his squinty Mis-CHEE-VUS eyes, then shot a glance at his gray chin, where I caught evidence of an ancestral mark between erratic hairs. No doubt now, the knife-shaped mole proved he was a native of Durth Island himself.

Looking back, I wish I had read Captain Joseph Narwhallis' bestselling PRY-MER on maritime etiquette more carefully. I could have avoided what the Captain called an “Inevitable DAH-NEW-MENT.” He was referring to Sea Rule number 13, which warned against accepting something for nothing from a boatman. According to the captain, the final result of breaking that rule is that you will always lose something worth more than that which you accepted at no cost. It may even be your life.

Thankfully the Durth natives let me keep my life, and my coat, but it irks me to know that three months of sweat-bought salary now help fund the trifling trinkets they carve on that worthless chunk of ARCHIE-pa-LAW-GO. Still, rather than LAM-BAST that old wrinkled sea-merchant, I humbly concur with the lesson he and Captain Narwhallis taught me: nothing is free.


Mispronounced Words:
Misled
Awry
Chimerah
Banal
Facade
Mischievous (emphasis on “Mis”, not “chie”)
Primer
Denouement
Archipelago
Lambaste