Learn English – Is it common for English people to say “crap” instead of “crab”

pronunciation

When you read "crab", do you think of "crap"?
Is it usual to pronounce wrongly?

Best Answer

Native speakers' brains are already on the right path. We won't mess it up in a conversation between native English speakers. When a native speaker hears, "What's your name? Mine ..." we already have "is" in our heads queued up. If we hear anything else, we will be surprised. A non-native speaker may not have this anticipation, and may hear "Minus" instead of "Mine is". This exact problem happened this morning between my German roommate and me.

Native speakers would almost never hear "minus" where the speaker said "mine is", and likewise we will never confuse "crab" for "crap".

Of course, I make the assumption that the speaker is also a native speaker. Non-native English speakers also have subtle linguistic clumsiness that throws off this anticipation effect. So another time we could mess it up is if the speaker says something that we have to parse word-by-word to understand, throwing off the sense of rhythm and anticipation.