A new study has revealed the 15 words that Americans appear to struggle most to pronounce. While some of those words are easy to understand, a few are rather surprising.
For example, Worcestershire sauce is a word Americans struggle to pronounce, and it’s easy to see why. Whoever chose to spell it that way clearly did not think about making it simple for the rest of us.
On the other hand, it’s harder to explain why people in Ohio spend so much time searching Google for how to pronounce spaghetti.
According to the study by Unscramblerer, researchers looked at Google Trends data from January 1 to October 20, 2026, to see which words Americans searched for the most when trying to figure how to pronounce them.
Worcestershire sauce topped the list with 321,600 monthly searches. Gyro came in second with 290,400 searches, and dachshund followed in third with 259,100 searches.
These Are The 15 Most Mispronounced Words In America
The study listed the following 15 words as those Americans frequently searched for help pronouncing.
- Worcestershire sauce
- Gyro
- Dachshund
- Niche
- Porsche
- Qatar
- GIF
- Curaçao
- Saoirse
- Pho
- Salmon
- Nguyen
- Aoife
- AçaÃ
- Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Saoirse, Aoife and Nguyen are certainly understandable, as they are definitely not words most Americans learn to pronounce in school. In fact, my spellchecker currently says two of them aren’t even words.
Curaçao and Qatar are also words that are not commonly used by Americans. Porsche is another word that many people have been saying incorrectly for years. (It is supposed to be pronounced as a two-syllable word: “POR-shuh.”)
Then there is the word GIF, which probably should not even count because people are still arguing over how to pronounce it. The person who invented GIF said it is pronounced like Jif peanut butter. That has not stopped the debate.
Some Americans Apparently Don’t Know How To Pronounce Their Own State
Perhaps the most interesting part of the study, which was also covered by Fox 8 Cleveland, was the breakdown of pronunciation searches by state.
Residents of Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nevada and Oregon searched for help pronouncing the names of their own states, while people in Illinois searched for Chicago and residents of Kentucky searched for Louisville.
In South Carolina, the most searched word was salmon. In Florida, it was schedule. Residents in Pennsylvania and Delaware apparently had questions about how to pronounce water. That’s right. Water.
Meanwhile, gyro topped the list in Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi and Missouri.
Of course, the study measured searches for pronunciation help and not necessarily how many people actually say these words incorrectly.
Interestingly, last year’s study had gyro ranked No. 1 nationwide with 312,000 monthly searches, followed by Worcestershire sauce with 300,000. AçaÃ, Qatar and dachshund rounded out the top five.
Ohio residents, who had trouble pronouncing spaghetti in 2026, were also struggling with a different food-related word in 2025: paczki, the Polish doughnut.