inverness

[georgeetta]

I was at the watering hole asking about a departed waitress how she was doing ..her chum said she was living in ..Inverness, Fla.

but it came out like : in'foorniss ..sounded like "in furnace"

I got a kick out of that ..

other day I called about a 4x4 ATV somebody was peddlin' ..I said I knew the area she was up north of Sacandaga (in the 70's my granda 'right, fae Aberdeen min ! used to blow gaskets trying to pronounce local Dutch /n Indian name villages ..lakes) 'SCHAGTICOKE' WAS A DEAL BREAKER schnectady was not far behind ..Kayaderosseras Creek put him on the floor !!

she lady asked how I knew area ..so I told her ..well Dad's ma'd a camp up over at Edinburgh [correct Edin-bur'rah] and we'd to drive up each 3 wks to take her grocery shopping 'as she lived spring till fall ..

YEP she murdered it .. y'mean Ed 'n berg ..

just funny I guess .

th
d

[KentuckyCeltophile]

There is a Scottish guy here locally, who delivers from my favorite Chinese restaurant. He was greatly impressed that I pronounced Edinburgh and Glasgow properly.

In southern Ohio, where I am from, there are towns like Patriot (pronounced like the British version PAT-ree-ut, not PAY-tree-it) and Pedro (PEE-dro as opposed to PAY-dro). I don't know why they are like that, but everyone gets it wrong, and no one will correct you.

[Tarheel]

I still have fun listening to the folks pronounce names here in the "Magnolia State." The surname Ingram (at home in NC) is Ing-grram with two gs and a short rolling r. Here it is "ING-ram". I smile a lot and nod.

The county I live in is Lafayette. It is not pronounced anything near French sounding here. It is "La-FAY-et"
Larger more difficult names are referred to other people for interpretation.

[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!

[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.

[SeumasA]

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."

I grew up in northern California and in Washington. I also now live in Utah. I don't think it's that they drop the 't'; it's that the syllables are accented differently. For instance, in my west coast accent I say the word mountain as moun-TAIN. Here it's MOUNT-un. The town Layton is LAYT-un, where I would say Lay-TON.