It's all to common to realise you've been pronouncing a common phrase or name incorrectly - we live life in blissful ignorance until someone points the awkward error out. Whether it's dauphinoise potatoes, hyperbole, or mischievous you struggle with - you're definitely not alone.
Now, people are only just realising that they've been pronouncing the car brand BMW wrong - how do you say it? According to a survey by Select Car Leasing of 1,000 UK respondents, 95% of people do not know how to pronounce BMW correctly.
Porsche, Hyundai, Lancia, and Volkswagen are also pronounced incorrectly by many, the research shows.
Bayerische Motoren Werke, the company that owns BMW, has shared that the correct way the brand should be pronounced is "Bee-em-vee."
The likelihood is that you were saying it as "Bee-em-double-you" - but that's not correct.
Hyundai was found to be the second most mispronounced car manufacturer by Brits, with the correct pronunciation being "Hun-day", rather than "Hi-un-die." Only 6% of people that were surveyed knew how to pronounce it.
But there are some car names that Brits can pronounce, reports the Sun, as 56% of people were able to correctly pronounce Renault as "Reh-noh."
The most difficult brand to pronounce correctly was Volkswagen, with just 9% of people saying it correctly.
The V should be pronounced like an "F", making the correct pronunciation "Fokes-vah-gun."
Mark Tongue, director of Select Car Leasing, said: "For all the exposure that car manufacturers are subjected to in the digital age, there's still a gap in understanding when it comes to how they're pronounced.
"Many of them have become household names across the globe, but according to our research, that doesn't make mispronunciations any less likely.
"Thanks to Friends' Joey Tribbiani in part, it's perhaps unsurprising that Porsche features on our list, but the same can't be said of BMW - a huge 95% of people are unaware it's actually pronounced bee-em-vee.
"Our survey reveals the car brands that are most confused and, for the avoidance of any doubt, the proper pronunciations via professional, regional voice actors."
Did you know how to pronounce BMW? Let us know in the comments.
