If English wasn’t your first language, maybe if you learned English later in life, were there any words that you had a really hard time learning how to pronounce? Do you think that had to do with the sounds made in your first language?

Routing (e.g. for cables or traces on a pcb). I’ve heard both over the years: as in cangaroo or the german Frau. But the latter might be a german mis pronounciation. Which brings up two new questions. Is it German or german and mispronounciation or mis pronounciation or mis-pronounciation?

Mispronunciation. “Mis” isn’t a word, but a prefix (or something) that gets attached to another word to modify it. Since it’s not its own word, it gets prepended to the root word (“pronounce” in this case) without a dash. German would always have the capital. In English, proper nouns get capitalized. There’s an official list, I’d bet, but a good rule of thumb is that titles (books, movies), specific place names (Germany, London, Abbey Road), people’s names (Bob, Reiner), and “I” (but not “me” etc) are put into “Title Case”. (Title case wouldn’t be capitalized, I just typed it that way to demonstrate it) I actually like a lot of the German capitalization rules. On the internet, a lot of people will be more casual with capitalization. Some people will capitalize “important words”, or things that aren’t proper nouns but have a different meaning than usual…but these kinds of things are improper. As for routing (and router, and heck…route in general)…both are correct pronunciations of this “ou”. I think “oo” is more common for networking in North America, and “au” is more common in other English-speaking countries (the UK, Australia…). As for “route” as in “Route 56”, I tend to hear and say both/either (I’m in North America). Sorry it’s so inconsistent!