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Comment by lproven | Hacker News Reader

> "missils" would be more phonetic

  Only for Americans. In British English, it's "MISS isle", and "MISSul" is
  a church book. I'm not Christian and I am not sure of exactly what's in a
  _missal_ but it's prayers or something.

  I do not know if American English even has missals. They're old fashioned
  things these days, I think. But in my dialect, "missile" and "missal" are
  two different words with 2 different sounds, which means that when I hear
  Americans talking about the fast moving weaponry what I hear is that they
  are launching prayer books at someone. It's not a very common word and so
  I keep forgetting.

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A missal generally has bible passages organized by mass date (instead of in the usual order), as well as some hymns and a reference to the order of mass (the things that happen when you go to church)

Aha.

I was very vaguely notionally Church of England until age 11, although still had to go to Chapel daily from 12-17. I have never been to Mass and I don't really know what goes on in a Mass. I'm not even sure if Anglicans have Mass.

My local Canon certainly had plenty of small-m mass: big lad. Nonetheless, when he scattered my father's ashes in the sea, he got caught by a wave, and proved that despite this he could run backwards up a shingle beach, wearing wet robes, at surprising speed.

In northeastern US, missile is anywhere between 'ill', and schwa 'ul', but not 'aisle'. "Hurled a miss-aisle" is sometimes heard in court.

I was responding to the framing of the parent comment that suggested "missles", which already essentially ignored that pronunciation.

You said only:

"how people pronounce words ending in that"

You did not restrict which people you were talking about, and that's a critical omission. Nobody in my daily life, in real life where I live or on TV or radio, would ever say "missal" when they meant "missile".

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