atlantic and antarctica are two words that are commonly mispronounced.
The original word was "artic." It came from medieval French, in which the C in Latin
arcticus had already been lost. It was only when scholars began to "correct" the spelling of English words of Latin origin that they mistakenly "replaced" a C that was never there. Then when literacy became common in the 18th century people began to think they had to pronounce the C that was never there.
These are the same "scholars" who put the S in "island," thinking it was related to the French word
isle, when in fact it's not. Fortunately no English speakers have yet tried to pronounce the S in that word.
The T in "often" has been silent since the 17th century. But once again, people who claim to be "educated" just because they can read began thinking that was a mistake that marked the speaker as illiterate, so they started pronouncing it. It has become so prevalent that today "of-ten" is considered a legitimate, although not preferred, pronunciation of the word.
laboratory is also mispronounced.
If you lived in the U.K. you'd have to put up with luh-BOR-uh-tree.
Potato and Tomato. Pronounced like...... Patato and Tamato
The unaccented O in both words invariably reduces to a schwa (IPA ə) except in the most formal speech. It doesn't matter whether that letter is A E I O U or Y. It will be pronounced as a schwa.
Again, in both words when they're not being emphasized it's an unstressed vowel and reduces to a schwa. Short vowels almost always degrade to a schwa in unaccented syllables. That's just the way English phonetics works!
