We all know the Swedish store IKEA — whether for its Scandinavian home goods or delectable meatballs — but we may have been pronouncing the household name all wrong.
In a video posted to YouTube, Hanna Hjamar, from Sweden, revealed the real pronunciation of the furniture store. While Americans say “eye-KEE-ah,” it’s really “ee-KAY-ah.”
Hjamar was one of a group of women — Carol Perez from Spain, Elysa from France, Vittoria Lachi from Italy, Virginia from the US and Jessica, the moderator, from Germany — who banded together to help correct mispronunciations of common brand names from their home countries.
For instance, Zara, a retailer that began in Spain and now has locations around the world, isn’t pronounced with the “Z” sound that Americans are familiar with. Instead, explained Perez, it’s pronounced like a “th.”
Jessica revealed that we may also be mispronouncing the German car brand Porsche. While Americans may say “por-sh,” Germans, she noted, say “POR-sha.”
The clip was one in a series of videos posted to the popular World Friends channel.
If you’ve been mispronouncing these common brand names, don’t fret — this is just the latest in baffling pronunciations that has shocked the internet.
Recently, fans of the Kelce brothers, football superstars Travis and Jason, discovered that their last name is actually said like “Kels,” not “Kel-see.”
Similarly, pop star Ariana Grande has gone along with her last name said like a Starbucks cup size, when, really, it has historically been pronounced “Grand-ee.”
Other commonly mispronounced A-list names include Saoirse Ronan — pronounced “ser-sha” — and Chrissy Teigen. (Say “tye-gen,” not “tee-gen.”)