95% of people can't pronounce these words, can you?

Updated on December 8, 2021 at 7:39 PM

Be it the automobile industry or certain fashion brands, some businesses have very localised names, which we often mispronounce. Have you been mispronouncing these names all along?

Survey shows 95% of people can't pronounce these brands. Are you one of them?

Did you know, around 95% of people mispronounce some really popular brand names?

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Ranging from Jacquemus to Zara in the fashion industry, to BMW and Škoda in the automobile industry. The list is endless.

Despite all the attention that automobile and fashion manufacturers receive in the digital era, there seems to be an ambiguity about how they're pronounced.

Give this article a glance to find out if you can pronounce these household brand names.

Automobiles

According to a survey conducted in the UK, only 5% of people get the names of the popular vehicle manufacturers right.

BMW should be one of the simpler ones to pronounce, right?

Well, it seems you may be wrong. Even though there are just three letters, people immediately assume it is in English. But actually, BMW is a German manufactured car and W is pronounced in German.

BMW

A Bavarian household automobile brand, founded in 1916.

Wrong pronunciation: Bee-em-double-yoo

Right pronunciation: Bee-em-vee

Škoda

Another luxury brand founded in 1925. This car manufacturer hails from the Czech Republic.

Wrong pronunciation: Sko-da

Right pronunciation: Schko-da

Select Car Leasingconducted a survey, with a sample size of 1,000 UK respondents, which found that 95% of the motorists pronounced the names incorrectly.

Just 6% of the individuals managed to successfully pronounce Hyundai. (Hun-day)

Mark Tongue, director of Select Car Leasing, told LADbible:

Many of them have become household names across the globe, but according to our research, that doesn't make mispronunciations any less likely.

Thanks to Friends' Joey Tribbiani in part, it's perhaps unsurprising that Porsche features on our list, but the same can't said of BMW - a huge 95 percent of people are unaware it's actually pronounced bee-em-vee.