>>After 37 years since I've learned enough English to prevent being sold (*), I'm still not sure which of these are considered correct, and which are wrong:
>>
>>

expression	pronounced as
>>et cetera	eksetra
>>february	febewary
>>library		lie-berry
>>product		produk
>>status quo	staytus cow

>>
>
>As far as I'm concerned, all of those are wrong, though some may be regionally correct.

Thanks for the sanity check, Tamar. The reason I'm concerned with all this is probably the number of times my teachers corrected me, threatening that I may be badly embarrassed once I happened to be in an anglophone company and mispronounced. Knowing how we Serbs use to mock others who learn our language and mispronounce it (a bad habit, and doesn't really help anyone - I figure it originates in the shock that anyone would dare learn such a hard and convoluted language), I thought they were right.

Now I know better. When I'm in doubt about spelling, consult the dictionaries, that's easy. When I'm in doubt about pronunciation, ask anyone. Chances are high that it's wrong, but I don't really care anymore. It's right for at least some people.

For instance, I once pronounced "exit" as "eksit", and a guy from Ohio understood "axe it". So I made sure I pronounced it as "egzit" henceforth - and then in Pennsylvania I heard "eksit". So it seems most of the rules are local.