As important as spelling is, pronunciation of words pretty much equals it in importance. I've been watching a lot of TV over the winter and I've noticed several egregious mispronunciations occurring commonly, unfortunately.
When I was taught how to spell "opossum" I was also taught how to pronounce it: "possum." The o is silent. Likewise "often," where the t is silent: "offen." It has become commonplace to hear people say "opossum" and "of-ten," so I thought I should do a blog about pronunciation. Would that people who mispronounce these words would avail themselves of my blog, but alas, I suspect they won't.
I have also come across "possum" in written pieces, especially on the Internet, that vast repository of bad spelling and sentence structure.
People: Spell the word correctly! Accept the fact that in English we have words with silent letters!
Finally, in the mispronunciation realm, I have heard on more than one occasion the word "especially" pronounced "expecially." I wonder what it is that people think they're saying. This also applies to "espresso," which is commonly mispronounced as "expresso." No, no. When the letter e is the first letter of the word, followed by the letter s, the s doesn't magically become an x. Believe me, it remains an s and should be pronounced that way.
