> The one that especially annoys me (as I believe I've mentioned before on the forum somewhere)is pronouncing "antarctica" as "anartica." :-P

That annoys me, too. I'm very careful about pronouncing every last letter in that word.

However, that reminds me of another word where a 'c' is dropped and not thought twice about. "Connecticut." I've never heard anyone from this *country* pronounce the middle 'c'. I never even thought about it until I lived in England for the two years that would have been 5th and 6th grade for me in an American school system. The second year there, our teacher had "America" in the curriculum, which was remarkably convenient for me, but also a little unfortunate, as I'd much rather have spent more time there learning about some *other* place.

At any rate, we "learned" the 50 states of the USA. And the teacher said "Connecticut," pronouncing every letter. And all the students repeated it that way. If I hadn't been so much younger and more intimidated than I am now, I'd have corrected them. :-) As it was, I think I merely said it the correct way myself, and I don't recall being picked up on it. If they noticed, they probably dismissed it as just another one of those silly American foibles.

That, in turn, reminds me of a time when the class was trying to think up as many words that refer to ways people transport themselves as possible. I piped up with "crawl," and nobody understood it. The teacher kept asking me to repeat it, several times, finally looking doubtfully to the rest of the class to see if they had any clue what I was saying. The way I was pronouncing it was with the 'aw' de-emphasized: not quite "crall" but close. The way they do is over-emphasized: not quite "croll" but close. So once some of my classmates repeated the word without the American accent, the teacher exclaimed, "Oh, CROLL!" and wrote it down on the board with the others.

Accents rule.