Every time I am about to say the word "poem", I tend to change it at the last minute and say "a piece of poetry" instead. Years ago too, an aunt of mine once confided that she had similar trouble in pronouncing the word "layer". Does anyone else here experience the same sort of problem in pronouncing certain individual words?

I have that problem quite often, One such word combination for me is "short-lived", because during my lifetime the accepted pronunciation seems to have changed, and what I always understood to have been correct: "short-lyved, now seems to have been changed to "short-livved". Another reason seems to be, for me at least, that I often use words in writing that I never use in conversation, for the very reason that I'm not sure of the pronunciation even though I'm sure of the meaning and/or connotation.