Pronunciation

The pronunciation of words by an individual is the way that the individual makes the words sound when spoken. A word can be spoken in different ways by different individuals, depending on many factors, such as the time in which they grew up, the area in which they grew up, the area in which they now live, their social class, and their education.

Lingusitic terminology

The way in which an individual pronounces words depends firstly on the basic units of sound (phones) that they use in their language. The branch of linguistics which studies these units of sound is phonetics. Phones which play the same role are grouped together into classes called phonemes; the study of these is phonemics.

See also: Language, List of words of disputed pronunciation, List of words commonly mispronounced, Mispronunciation, Initial-stress-derived noun