Australian beach ‘most mispronounced’ in the world

An Australian beach has been named the most mispronounced beach in the world - any guesses which it may be?

An Australian beach has taken out the top spot on a list of the most mispronounced beaches and beach resorts in the world.

An analysis of how many times the most popular beaches, landmarks, museums and nature spots had been searched on pronunciation dictionary Forvo, revealed Peregian Beach, near Noosa on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, is the beach people need the most help with saying.

Peregian Beach near Noosa has tourists very confused with its pronunciation. Picture: TikTok

Peregian, which is pronounced “Per – ridge – ian”, is thought to be an Aboriginal word meaning emu.

However, its source is not clear because in the local Gubbi Gubbi dialect, the word for emu is Nguriun, according to Noosa Libraries.

Peregian Beach is located on the Sunshine Coast.

Peregian Beach isn’t the only name confusing tourists Down Under.

Five other Australian beaches made the top 20 most mispronounced beaches list, which was collated by travel website HawaiianIslands.com.

They were Sydney’s Milk Beach, Clovelly Beach, Bondi Beach, Vaucluse Bay and Manly Beach.

Australia also made it on the list of most mispronounced nature spots in the world, with the Great Barrier Reef coming in at number seven.

Bondi Beach commonly holds a spot on lists of Aussie places tourists have trouble pronouncing. Picture: Dean Tirkot/news.com.au

A separate recent list by language learning app Preply revealed the top 10 most mispronounced places in Australia.

An analysis of Google search data for hundreds of hard to pronounce places found Cairns in Far North Queensland was the Aussie name providing the most confusion.

Cairns has been found to be the most mispronounced city in Australia, according to an analysis of Google searches. Picture: Brendan Radke

Preply said the two main reasons tourists struggled was that the “r” is silent and Aussies elongate the “a” sound.

“This means that, when spoken in an Aussie accent, Cairns sounds like ‘caaans,’” it advised.

The inner Melbourne suburb of Prahran came in at number two, while Melbourne came in at number three.

Launceston in northern Tasmania, Gloucester in NSW’s lower Mid North Coast, Australia’s capital city Canberra, Balmain in Sydney, Ngunnawal in Canberra, Warwick in southeast Queensland, and Derby in the Kimberley region of Western Australia rounded out the list.