Mispronunciation is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

 as "incorrect or inaccurate pronunciation

Pronunciation

Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....

". The matter of what is or is not mispronunciation is a contentious one, and indeed there is some disagreement about the extent to which the term is even meaningful. (It is interesting to note that even the word "pronunciation" itself is commonly mispronounced or misspelled as "pronounciation.") Language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

s are pronounced in different ways by different people, depending on such factors as the area they grew up in, their level of education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

, and their social class

Social class

Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

. Even within groups of the same area and class, different people can have different ways of pronouncing certain words.

Standards of pronunciation

All speakers must adhere to some standard of pronunciation in order to be understood by others. But standards vary among groups, and the extent to which any group has authority to claim that their standard is better, or even that they have the right to impose such a standard, is often the main source of contention.

Those who make claims about correct pronunciation often cite dictionaries

Dictionary

A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

 as their authority, and so at this point a summary of the principles by which pronunciation guides in dictionaries are written may be helpful. We start by discussing two distinct standpoints from which pronunciation standards can be viewed.

Mispronunciation terms

• Spoonerism
  Spoonerism
  A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched . It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner , Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency...
  
  is the (usually) unintentional exchange of letters or syllables between two words or even within a word, often with comic results – especially when the result changes the speaker’s intended meaning. The term is named after the 19th century clergyman and academic Rev. William Spooner
  William Archibald Spooner
  William Archibald Spooner was a famous Oxford don whose name is given to the linguistic phenomenon of spoonerism.-Biography:...
  
  , who was supposedly prone to this trait. Among the examples attributed to him is “you've tasted two worms” for “you've wasted two terms”.
• Aspiration
  Aspiration (phonetics)
  In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
  
  is the sounding of an "h" sound at the beginning of a word whether needed or not. For example, the "h" in honor (British: honour) is not sounded but in "happy" it is. As with all pronunciation "rules", conventions regarding the aspirated "H" differ from region to region. In parts of the US, it is customary to pronounce "herb" without the initial "h" sound, while in the UK, the initial "h" is aspirated. In "My Fair Lady
  My Fair Lady
  My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
  
  ", Professor Henry Higgins castigates those "down in Soho Square, dropping aitches everywhere."
• Metathesis
  Metathesis (linguistics)
  Metathesis is the re-arranging of sounds or syllables in a word, or of words in a sentence. Most commonly it refers to the switching of two or more contiguous sounds, known as adjacent metathesis or local metathesis:...
  
  is the reversal of letters within a word, such as "iron" being pronounced as "iorn."
• Analogical pronunciation
  Spelling pronunciation
  A spelling pronunciation is a pronunciation that, instead of reflecting the way the word was pronounced by previous generations of speakers, is a rendering in sound of the word's spelling.-Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations:...
  
  Mispronouncing a word due to similar spelling of another word.
• Aphesis
  Aphesis
  In phonetics, apheresis is the loss of one or more sounds from the beginning of a word, especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.-Apheresis as a historical sound change:...
  
  Dropping the sound at the start of a word.