Exactly, in linguistics we call this a 'separate lexical entry', meaning that a word, regardless of its meaning, has a completely different meaning in our brains. When we see 'lol' written, we know it means someone thought something was funny (well... sort of), but when someone says, 'for tha lolz!!!!' out loud, it has a nuanced meaning from, 'I did it because I thought people would think it was funny'.
And I mean, I never heard any of this stuff spoken out loud until I started hanging out with hardcore nerds. They say stuff like 'rofl-stomp' and 'get bodied!' all the time, and I know it's just referring to something back on the internet, not something that replaced a word in their normal speech.
Anyway, if I had to read this topic out loud, I would say, "how do you pronounce pown?".
edit - I've heard people say 'pawn' before, but they were probably canadian
