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Billie Eilish might be one of the most popular artists on the planet right now, but apparently people aren't quite sure how to pronounce her last name (it's EYE-lish). As NBC News reports, the singer's surname made it onto a list of 2021's most mispronounced words.
The list was compiled by the U.S. Captioning Company, which captions and subtitles real-time events on TV and in courtrooms. The company surveyed its members to generate the list, and tallied the words that were most challenging for newsreaders and people on television to pronounce this year. The list was commissioned by language-learning platform Babbel.
“Newscasters in the U.S. have struggled with 2021′s new words and names while reporting on key sporting events, viral internet trends and emerging celebrities,” said Esteban Touma, a standup comedian and teacher for Babbel Live.
“As a language teacher, it’s always interesting to see that some of these terms are usually new colloquialisms, or are rooted or borrowed from another language,” he continued. “As a non-native speaker, I must confess it’s fun to see English speakers stumbling a bit for a change.”
Other words on the list include cheugy, dogecoin, Omicron, Sein and yassify. Check out the full list here.