inverness

[unixken]

As a teen, and in my early twenties, I marveled at pronunciations I'd heard all around the country, when I was in the Coast Guard.

As a native New Englander, I'd theorized that the disappearance of the letter "R" was because New England had had 350 years of maritime history. You can not yell the sound of the letter "R" from weatherdeck to crow's nest, or from one ship to another (try yelling "lob-sterrrrr." It comes out "lob-stahhhh.") I assumed that whalers and fisherman developed this tendency to replace "R" with "AH", and then upon returning to shore would propagate this to their families.

Next, I discovered in the mid-west, some folks had a tendency to add the letter "R" where none was required. People would "warsh" their clothes in "warter."

And then there were the folks I met, in the south. When stationed in North Carolina, I was apartment hunting. While speaking with the woman who would later be my land lady, I had been asking questions such as how much to expect an average utility bill to cost each month, and so on. We were talking about the expenses, and as we'd been talking about money, she asked if I had any pay-ettes. I thought to myself "Is she asking about payroll receipts or other proof of income?" I was silent. She re-phrased the question... "You got any cats or dawgs?"

So...
In New England, letters and sounds disappear... and are replaced.

In the Midwest, letters, displaced from elsewhere, are inserted where they don't belong.

In the South, not to be out done, single-syllable words gain a syllable, are hyphenated, the short "e" sound is replaced with the sound of a long "a", and the whole thing then gets appended with a final "e".

Oh... and I grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, pronounced "Quin-Zee", though I've known people from Quincy, Illinois, pronounced "Quin-See."

[KentuckyCeltophile]

Next, I discovered in the mid-west, some folks had a tendency to add the letter "R" where none was required. People would "warsh" their clothes in "warter."

And then there were the folks I met, in the south. When stationed in North Carolina, I was apartment hunting. While speaking with the woman who would later be my land lady, I had been asking questions such as how much to expect an average utility bill to cost each month, and so on. We were talking about the expenses, and as we'd been talking about money, she asked if I had any pay-ettes. I thought to myself "Is she asking about payroll receipts or other proof of income?" I was silent. She re-phrased the question... "You got any cats or dawgs?"

I can totally relate to this as I am from the Mid-West (Ohio). I had a primary school teacher and family members who added "R" to oil (sounded like "oral"). But your "pay-ettes" story had me rolling on the floor.

[Celtic Mom]

I love this thread because I am a Navy Brat, and lived in eight states before my dad retired. I love accents, and I am sad that it seems that regional accents seem to be declining. I lived in Upstate New York, not far from Schenectady, I remember trying to fathom out the names in eighth grade when we moved there. Oregon also has some place names that are quite tricky like Willamatte, and Yachats. I now live in Utah, and here there is a tendency to drop the letter t drives me crazy. They typically say "mountain" as "mou-an," my maiden name of Barton became "Bar-un." They also pronounce "our" the same way as "are."

[Father Bill]

When Ronald Reagan was first elected president, a Canadian reporter called up the party's press secretary and asked if the president's name was pronounced "Reegan" or "Raygan". The reply was that it was definitely "Raygan".

The reporter then asked several innocuous background questions for future reference - his favourite colour, birthday, favourite movie, etc., ending with his favourite dog...
...to which the answer was that it was definitely a "baygle" which meant that the reporter still didn't know the answer to the first question.

Aren't accents fun?

[sydnie7]

(snip) I now live in Utah, and here there is a tendency to drop the letter t drives me crazy. They typically say "mountain" as "mou-an," my maiden name of Barton became "Bar-un."

This shows up in California as well. One local TV news reporter (and I use the word loosely) is especially guilty, or "gill-ee" of it, and it drives us crazy as well!

There is a town in Wyoming named Dubois, pronounced due-boice. My mother told the story of a new president coming to Wyoming State University. People thought he was somewhat stuck-up, or "full of himself," when he insisted that his last name of Dubois was not pronounced that way!

[Blupiper]

Yeah, up here in the upper left corner we get a lot of pronunciation challenges. With place names coming from a mish-mosh (itself a Yiddish term) of French, English and local native languages, we can generate some interesting pronunciations. Try: Pend d'Oreille (from the French fur trade), Puyallup (local Salish language), Mesa (Spanish--but locally pronounced MEE-sa) or Bangor (is it like the place name or the sausage?). We natives tend to not have much of an accent, so to hear new transplants or those with regional dialects is always interesting.

JMB

PS:
POND duh-ray
PYOO-al-up
MEE-sa
BANG-er

[Ian.MacAllan]

. . . We natives tend to not have much of an accent, . . .

No one has any accent in his home town.


.

[ctbuchanan]

I grew up in the small town of Norfolk, Connecticut which we always pronounced Norr-fuk. It was routinely the coldest town in the state in the winter because it was up in the Berkshires (Berkshears). We always knew when the weatherperson on the local station was new because they would pronounce it Nor-foulk.

And as for the habit of dropping 'r's in New England, that is only an eastern (coastal) New England thing. On the west side of the Connecticut river every 'r' is enunciated strongly. I have often read that the western half of Connecticut is an area with literally no accent of any kind.

Sorry I missed this thread when it first started.

[OC Richard]

I now live in Utah, and here there is a tendency to drop the letter t drives me crazy

This isn't just a Utah thing, but common throughout the English-speaking world. In general, medial t's either disappear or change to other sounds except in certain circumstances.

People rarely are aware of the sounds they're really uttering, unless they've taken linguistics, or had somebody point it out.

For example, say "t" and take care to listen to exactly where your tongue is placed in your mouth. It's touching the ridge of gum right behind your front upper teeth. It's also devoiced, that is, your vocal chords aren't vibrating.

Now say "butter" taking care to pronounce "t" exactly as you did before. If you're able to do it (many can't, but revert to how they usually pronounce it) "butter" will sound very strange, like "buh-Tur" with that "t" oddly plosive and harsh.

Of course no one does it like that in ordinary speech, because in English initial t's and medial t's are pronounced differently.

Depending on your accent/dialect that medial "t" can become voiced, that is, becoming "d" /budder/ or become a glottal stop /buh'er/. Listen to how many British people say "bottle" to hear the glottal stop in action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop

With "mountain", with many people, the glottis shuts and reopens, the sound after opening being a nasalized schwa.

Or medial "t" can disappear altogether, often heard around here with "Santa" coming out /sanna/. Try saying "Santa Claus" with the "t" being the same as when you say "t" by itself, or initially in "too" etc and you'll see it's a bit of a tongue-twister when said quickly. Ditto "winter time", which in casual conversation is /winner/ time. Try pronouncing that medial "t" in "winter" the same as the initial "t" in "time" in "winter time" and you'll see how odd it sounds and how clumsy it is to say.

Another thing people don't realize is that English has unreleased final stops. English's initial "p" is famously plosive; it can put out a candle at close range. Say "paw" with your hand in front of your mouth and you can feel it.

Now say "pop" with your hand there and... wow... there's only the initial blast of air, but not a second one! Why could this be, when they're both the same letter? If you look at your mouth in a mirror and pronounce "pop" like you usually do you'll notice that the lips form for the final "p" but don't actually make the final puff of air. "P" is what we call a "stop" where air is stopped and then released, and in English you don't release final stops (t/d, p/b, k/g). (The pairs have the same point of articulation, one being voiced and the other devoiced.)

With practice you can say "pop" with the same "p" that occurs at the beginning, also at the end, and boy does it sound strange.

Ditto all the stops, and it's more complicated that I'm making it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_audible_release

Anyhow about local place-names that outsiders never get right, back home in West Virginia we have Appalachia, Kanawha, and my Mom's town Hurricane.

Here in California we have wonderful native names which unfortunately are recorded using Spanish orthography such as Hueneme, Tejon, Cahuenga, Tujunga, and so forth.

[Stitchwiz]

Language is wonderful! I loved to read as a child and was always looking for more - even encyclopedias were fair game for me. Figuring out the symbols for how to say things was a challenge at a very young age, though. Thank goodness for Dad being so picky about 'the Queen's English', and he always welcomed my questions. My biggest problem was that I did most of my reading when I was supposed to be sleeping - it was hard to remember my questions the next morning.

Enunciation is always fun. When singing, we need to focus on the consonants so that listeners can hear the words properly. If we don't enunciate clearly, then the words just disappear into a beautiful stew of vowels.

Richard, you took me back years with your very accurate discussion. When I was tutoring, I had to figure out how to make the sounds so that I could help my students. I would sit them beside me in front of a mirror so we could practice together. As a very little girl, my daughter had a problem with the word 'yellow'. She would say 'lellow'. I figured out that the easiest way to help her was to break it down by the sounds. So we practiced 'ee-ll-oh', stretching it out slowly until she had all the various parts of her mouth moving the way that they needed to move. Then she just started saying it a little faster until it flowed. It took about a week and she was fine. For that short time, she loved sitting in front of the mirror to practice. But it didn't last long. She had 3 brothers to whip into shape, so she never spent much time in front of a mirror after that.

If you look at a map of Ontario, you would think that someone had taken the names of towns from the UK, stirred them in a pot and dumped it out and just spread them around the province. It is a very real reflection of the heritage of the people who settled in this area. And, of course, we have every mixed up pronunciation imaginable because everyone was trying to figure out how to pronounce those 'foreign' sounding place names.

For example - Alvanley. Some people with exposure to Latin will follow the rules and say AL-van-lee. While most of the locals say Al-VAN-lee. This type of issue has always been up for discussion around our dinner table. Of course, someone always plays the advocate and enjoys taking a contrasting opinion, just because they can...

Love these discussions...