Art of pronouncing words incorrectly- confidently!

Without sounding pedantic, I have to admit I cringe when I hear someone pronounce simple words incorrectly. After giving a lot of thought to the issue, I decided I had to give my views. I present below some commonly mispronounced words:

• ASK should not be pronounced as AKS!
• ANYWAY is often given an unnecessary sound to make it ANYWAYS. It is not a plural of ANYWAY!
• DESKTOP is often mispronounced as De-Ks-top. There is a reason for its name...
• The expression is Et cetera (etc) and not Ex cetera!  
• When in a café, people confidently order an EXPRESSO. The word is ESPRESSO! Why not order a simple coffee instead???
• Faux pas- need I even say anything here?
• GRIEVANCE is simply pronounced as Gri-Vuns and not Gri-VANS.
• The past tense of ‘I don’t know’ is NOT ‘I didn’t KNEW’. The wrong inflection is as annoying as nails dragged down a chalkboard!        
• The biggest blunder made in the case of MARIJUANA is pronouncing the ‘J’, which is quite unnecessary. ‘JU’ is pronounced as ‘HU’.
• Next comes my favourite- MERCHANDISE, which is often pronounced as MER-KUN-DIZE. It’s MER-CHEN-DIZE.  Geez!
• This last one definitely takes the cake. The word PRONUNCIATION itself is unnecessarily given an extra ‘O’, making it sound like PRO-NOUN-CIA-TION. Please AVOID! 

It is disheartening to know how people go about pronouncing words incorrectly, without knowing its correct pronunciation. I often ask myself, is that how these words were taught or is it simply ignorance? People might argue, different accents result in varied pronunciations of words, however, that cannot be the answer to incorrectly pronounced words. 

There are many more words to be added to the list. I am happy to discuss further over a nice cup of expresso!!!