According to author Bill Bryson, the record for most allowable pronunciations in English is held by two unusual words: hegemony and phthisis. Each, he claims, can be said aloud in nine different ways.

While I could not verify that online, I won’t contradict Bryson, whose bestsellers include A Short History of Everything (2003); A Walk in the Woods (1998) — made into a film with Robert Redford; and 1990’s The Mother Tongue, a fascinating and idiosyncratic look at the English language. If you’re a fan of Webb’s Weird Words, you need to get your hands on that latter linguistic gem.

And speaking of our column: In this fourth and final week discussing pronunciation, I conclude by explaining how to say several troublesome terms — adding material from Bryson to fill things out a bit.

Let’s start by correcting some common errors, shall we?

Espresso, to begin with, does not have an “X”-sound; rather, it starts out just like especially. Water can be spoken two ways: WAW-ter (with an “A” like hall); or WAH-ter, where the first syllable rhymes with la. But the oft-heard woo-ter (with the vowel-sound from good) is not an option.

And finally: Sherbet has just a single “R” (not sherbert), while aluminum is properly pronounced only one way: uh-LOO-muh-num — no “yoo,” and no extra syllable; so al-yoo-MIN-ee-um is out.

Now consider these pronouncing disputes, which I will resolve at the end of this column: schedule, again, aunt and our common meme GIF — plus a series of locales (Quebec, Oregon, Lancaster, Lycoming) and foods: orange, syrup, ramen, parmesan, pecan, chipotle.

Answers later!

In the meantime, Bryson points out that our single most troublesome syllable to say is ough. If you include some outliers, this can be pronounced eight different ways: through; dough; enough; ought; bough; the now-defunct hiccough, pronounced like hiccup (yes, it used to be spelled that way — being related linguistically, and physically, to the word cough). There’s also an ancient form of the Scottish loch spelled lough (pronounce like Loch Ness). And finally, in England, thorough can be pronounced with “uh” at the end: THUR-uh.

Bryson likewise points out another pronunciation issue that you probably never noticed:

A substantial number of English words — like record, for example — double as both noun and verb; but the noun has stress on the first syllable (“broke a REK-erd”), while our verb-form stresses the second: “re-KORD your song.”

Other instances include produce, rebel, convict, addict, affect, defect, subject, object, reject and project — along with minute, where second-syllable-stress is used for the adjective form: my-NOOT. Yet Bryson also notes exceptions to this rule: display, mistake and practice, among many others, are pronounced just one way, whether noun or verb.

And now to finish up by straightening out those hotly contested words above. In order to avoid overcrowding, I won’t list every possible pronunciation; you can look up variants at my primary source — dictionary.com.

Schedule has at least five pronunciations, with the possibility of either two or three syllables; and if you’re British, it can start with “SH.” Preferred: SKEDGE-ool.

Again can have a long “A” (uh-GAIN) — though uh-GEN is preferred. Similarly, aunt can be ahnt (perhaps especially in Britain!); but ant is best.

The meme-word GIF would seem to merit a hard G, like gift — since it’s short for graphic interchange format; but its inventor, Steve Wilhite, is on record with jiff — like the peanut butter. (The other pronunciation remains in common use, however.)

Now on to geography: The preferred way to say Quebec is kwi-BEK, though famed Canadian Alex Trebek always used the less-preferred ki-BEK. Standard for Oregon is AWR-uh-gun.

Closer to home: LANG-kuh-ster is preferred over the more common LANG-kass-ter. And while our county name is not listed in most dictionaries, at least two internet sites indicate the best pronunciation: LIE-kum-ing — rather than lie-COMB-ing. But the latter is how I learned it, and I cannot seem to break the habit.

Finishing with foods:

Syrup is SUR-up or SERE-up — with SUR- preferred. Ramen has only one possibility: RAH-mun. Pecan is best as puh-KAHN, but can also be puh-KAN — or PEE-kan.

Parmesan, meanwhile, rambles over an even wider range, with the following taken directly from dictionary.com: PAHR-muh-zahn, -zan, -zuhn; pahr-muh-ZAHN, -ZAN. Note that none of these have the “ZH” sound of leisure, which I often hear in this word.

Now as for orange: That is listed so many different ways in various sources that I’m gonna leave you to hash that out yourselves. Apparently, it’s good however you slice it — ha ha.

On firmer ground: Chipotle, of course, should be chi-POAT-lay. The reliable Merriam-Webster has three other options; but none of them, happily, sounds like chi-POAT-ull. To my everlasting shame, that’s how I said it my very first time — and, I might add, I never tried it that way again.

Nuff said.