Pronunciation

I grew up in the UK and the US, but have spent most of my adult life in Israel/Palestine. I have done some studying in all three places. However, the majority of my learning has always been from reading.

As a result, I can usually spell even difficult words from memory but my pronunciation is decidedly rather hit-and-miss. This is the newly discovered advantage, and embarrassment, of listening to audio books by expert speakers: Everyday I discover another word that I've been saying wrongly.

The latest is "hegemony". As with many words, it is pronounced one way in the UK, another way in the US, and I've been pronouncing it yet a third way, probably based on hearing it spoken in Hebrew (where the word has been introduced - possibly directly from the Greek ἡγεμονία - as הֶגְמוֹנְיָה (heg-mon-ya - with a hard g)

The question is whether it is already too late in the game to break lifetime habits of saying certain words to myself in my head?

Photo: While waiting at the airport for D's return flight, I tried taking some photos, but only the mistakes were interesting.