meme Pronunciation Manual

Pronunciation Manual

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About

Pronunciation Manual is a YouTube video series purported as short instructional videos on how to pronounce tongue-twisting English vocabulary words. In the video, each featured word is mispronounced intentionally for comedic and trolling purposes.

Origin

The YouTube channel PronunciationManual[1] was launched on April 13th, 2011 with the release of false pronunciation videos for the words "schedule", "barbiturates", "Hulk Hogan", "prerogative" and "thesaurus."



The series was inspired by another YouTube video series Pronunciation Book[2] which provides correct pronunciation of English words, launched exactly one year prior on April 14th, 2010. In fact, the correct editions of some of the videos featured on Pronunciation Manual can be found in the original channel:



Precursors

Similar wordplays have been observed prior to the launch of the PronunciationManual series, most notably through MS Paint Icons and wurds threads on the 4chan imageboard dating back to November 2007 and December 2010 respectively.


thread File :1196446124317jpg-(41 KB, 276x110, gouleg.jpg) O Anonymous 11/30/07(Fri)13:08:44 No.46990234 Goleg sarch engene Anonymous 11/30/07(Fri)13:08:56 No.46990246 fail >Anonymous 11/30/07(Fri)13:10:01 No.46990310 http://goo.ne.jp/ Anonymous 11/30/07(Fri)13:14:14 No.46990585 hawtbawt >Anonymous 11/30/07(Fri)13:14:45 No.46990624 lol File 1292575659121 png-(72 KB, 320x320, peesh png) Anonymous 12/17/10 (Fri)03:47:3 No.295522136 tiem 2F File :1292575734430.ipg-(33 KB, 400x400, 1289711261932.jpg) PEESH BAN 3> File 1292575781266.jpg-(2 KB, 126x98, 1289454911548s.jpg) F---

Spread

However, the hilariously misleading videos didn't gain viral momentum on YouTube until months later in August 2011, when the channel was picked up by a number of tech blogs including The FW[4], Neatorama[7], Lady Likes[3] LaughingSquid[5] and Gizmodo[6] among others. Some of the most popular pronunciation videos range from exotic brand names like "Yves Saint Laurent" and "L'Occitane" to English loanwords that are derived from foreign languages such as "bruschetta" and "faux pas."


35,973 14,214,714 Pronunciation Manual Subscribe video views Featured Feed Videos Uploads (154) Most popular Uploaded Videos penisJustin Bieber Jake Gyllenhaal 0:08 0:08 How To Pronounce Penis 658,047 views 8 months ago How to Pronounce Justin Bleber 338,637 views 3 months ago How To Pronounce Jake Gyllenhaal 328,931 views 8 months ago onomatopoeia Ng Cthulhu 0:08 0:08 How to Pronounce Onomatopoeia 296,014 views 7 months ago How To Pronounce Ng 291,042 views 8 months ago How to Pronounce Cthul hu 286,426 views 4 months ago Yves Saint Laurent 0:08 0:08 How to Pronounce Faux Pas 261,835 views 3 months ago How To Pronounce Thesaurus 258,608 views 8 months ago How To Pronounce Yves Saint 258,600 views 8 months ago GucCl hamburger panties 0:08 0:08 0:08 How To Pronounce Gucci 257,022 views 8 months ago How To Pronounce Hamburger 255,150 views 8 months ago How To Pronounce Panties 248,401 views 8 months ago

On February 1st, 2012, Washington Post's Style Blog[13] published a Q&A interview article with the creator of PronunciationManual, who chose to remain anonymous. Throughout the month, Washington Post's blog post triggered another round of coverage in the blogosphere, receiving mentions on The Ellen Degeneres Show[11], as well as on Mashable[14] and Rhizome.[12]



The videos are widely shared on Facebook as well as on Tumblr[10] and the official Twitter[9] page for Pronunciation Manual was set up in September 2011. As of June 2012, the channel has released at least 174 videos and gained more than 85,000 subscribers, 43 million total views and 98,000 average views per day since its launch. The YouTube channel has also inspired additional copycat channels like PronunciationPartner[15] and PronunciationPooper[16] using a similar setup with audio tracks that are blatantly misleading.

Notable Examples



Search Interest

External References

Recent Videos 81 total

Recent Images 1 total


Top Comments

pug on toast
pug on toast

No. Just no.
I've seen the videos, and from what I felt, it was no more than trolling foreigners. People learning English as a second language will get trolled by the channel without knowing.

+10

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