This Is Now The Most Mispronounced Word In The State Of Wisconsin

Ask someone from Milwaukee to say the name of their city, and you might notice the "L" quietly packs up and leaves. Wisconsin often has its own way of saying things, and nobody should ever feel the need to apologize for it.

However, there are a few words that leave even the most seasoned Wisconsinite stumbling, and a recent study set out to find the most mispronounced words in America, including Wisconsin.

The Most Mispronounced Words in America

To build the list, Unscramblerer.com dug into Google Trends, tracking searches such as "how to pronounce" and "how do you pronounce" between January 1 and October 20, 2026. Search volume was then tallied across 110 variations of those phrases.

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Worcestershire sauce, gyro and dachshund dominated, making up more than a quarter of the top searches on their own.

Here's the full national top 15, along with how to say each one:

• Worcestershire sauce – WUUS-ter-sheer saws
• Gyro – YEE-roh
• Dachshund – DAKS-hund
• Niche – NEESH
• Porsche – POR-shuh
• Qatar – kuh-TAR
• GIF – JIF
• Curaçao – KYUR-uh-sow
• Saoirse – SEER-shuh
• Pho – FUH
• Salmon – SAM-un
• Nguyen – WIN
• Aoife – EE-fuh
• Acai – ah-sigh-EE
• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious – soo-per-kal-ih-FRAJ-ih-lis-tik-ek-spee-al-ih-DOH-shus

Most Mispronounced Word in Wisconsin

This is a state that says Oconomowoc without blinking, yet Wisconsin's top search was paczki, the rich, deep-fried, filled Polish pastry eaten on Fat Tuesday. Here's how to say it:

• Paczki – POONCH-kee

In Pulaski alone, Smurawa's Country Bakery has made around 14,000 paczki on Fat Tuesday for more than 20 years, so plenty of people are ordering them.

Part of the confusion comes from the Polish spelling, which uses an "a" with a little hook underneath called an ogonek. That's where the "oon" sound comes from. Also, paczki is plural. If you only want one, that's a paczek, pronounced roughly "punch-ek." Then again, who stops at one?

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The next Fat Tuesday is February 9, 2027, so there's plenty of time to practice. Mispronouncing a word borrowed from another language is nothing to be embarrassed about.

Ask the question, laugh it off, and get in line early, because paczki taste just as good no matter how you say them.