inverness

[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!

[plaid preacher]

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."

Actually, I heard a linguist being interviewed once regarding the New England accent (among others) and the change of "r" to "ah" - as in "I'll Paahk the cah in the garage". He noted that the New England accent actually is an old English pronunciation, which has now mostly disappeared in the UK, but because of the isolation of those first settlers in New England, still exists on this side of the Atlantic.

As an aside, the same is true of the French spoken in Quebec (and northern Maine). It is 17th Century French which has evolved differently (or some would say not at all) from Modern Parisian French because of its isolation.

[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

[The Q]

[QUOTE=plaid preacher;1289985]Actually, I heard a linguist being interviewed once regarding the New England accent (among others) and the change of "r" to "ah" - as in "I'll Paahk the cah in the garage". He noted that the New England accent actually is an old English pronunciation, which has now mostly disappeared in the UK, but because of the isolation of those first settlers in New England, still exists on this side of the Atlantic.

QUOTE]
Sadly I believe it is disappearing in the USA as well as the UK, traditionally Norwich , in the UK is pronounced Norrich or Norridge, but having seen a program from the USA / UK about pronunciation some time ago, of the 9 Norwichs in the USA, the only ones still using that were those on the east coast and then only by old timers, all were gradually changing to Nor-Wich but with their own particular local accent.

Of course the classic about accents was the bombing of the Atlanta Olympic games, when the person who received the call was asked what accent the bomber had, the person said they had no accent. Only later was it realised it meant a local to Atlanta accent.

Then also in the USA you generally say ZEE in the UK we say ZED but another old pronunciation is IZZARD.

In England generally saying the Alphabet you learn: I (eye), J ( jay), K (kay),
in Scotland they often say I (Eye), J (jai), K(kay),
Which is an older pronunciation from the fact I and J were the same letter in old English.

Also the Scottish name of Menzies is or should be pronounced ( approximately) Mengis, this is from the disappearance of a letter for the old NG sound and the nearest in shape to the old letter was a Z. Sadly even in Scotland I often hear: Men-zees

[sydnie7]

(snip)Of course the classic about accents was the bombing of the Atlanta Olympic games, when the person who received the call was asked what accent the bomber had, the person said they had no accent. Only later was it realised it meant a local to Atlanta accent.(snip)

Ah yes, when I worked for a car company we had several engineers on the tech line. A tech called in and said he'd been discussing a problem with "the fellow with the foreign accent" and was dutifully transferred to Bill Roche, an irrepressible Scot (RIP). Bill determined that the caller had in fact been on the line with Steve, who was from "down Maine"!

[MacKenzie]

Also the Scottish name of Menzies is or should be pronounced ( approximately) Mengis, this is from the disappearance of a letter for the old NG sound and the nearest in shape to the old letter was a Z. Sadly even in Scotland I often hear: Men-zees

The yogh.

The Anglicised Mackenzie had originally been pronounced "Mackaingye" – with a modern English Y sound represented with the letter yogh ȝ. In the 18th century it became popular to write and pronounce the name with what is the equivalent of a modern English Z sound, because of the similarity of the letter yogh and letter Z. There are Lowland Scots words and Scottish names that have been affected in a similar way (example: the surname Menzies).

http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/cmLFyo.asp

[Stitchwiz]

No one here has an accent - just everyone else has one.

My father grew up in northern Yorkshire and was a stickler for correct English. He's in his late 80s now and will still correct one of us or our children if we mis-pronounce a word or use incorrect grammar. I will admit, we are getting lazy...

I soon learned not to question the pronunciation of a teacher - even the one who said 'pronounciation' instead of 'pronunciation'. When I was in kindergarten, age 5, I walked past another school on the way to my school when one teacher ordered me to get inside and get 'warshed up' before school started. I explained to her that I was not a student at that school and then I foolishly asked her what she meant by 'warshing up'. The teacher literally ranted at me when I questioned her use of 'warsh'. I apologized and left and never walked that way to school again. But it did spark an interest that was not there before.

Accents have always fascinated me. I'm sure I drove my parents crazy when I was a child, because I would imitate every accent that I heard. This actually made it easier when I studied languages; I was able to pick up the correct accents much faster that most. When I was in Europe, I fit in quickly because I picked up the local accents... and the slang!



Auto-correct has been going crazy as I typed this. Today it is definitely not my friend - as I got to the end, it had stopped correcting even the most obvious mistakes - like adn instead of and.

[MacCathail]

When my Irish-born wife was a young and single lassie she went with a Massachusetts-born fellow. She says they once had a short but heated argument when he insisted she should bring the car keys and she insisted she had no khakis.

Cheers,

-John-

[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.

[unixken]

Bill determined that the caller had in fact been on the line with Steve, who was from "down Maine"!

Was he from Bah Hah Bah? Cuz Pep-ridge Fahm remembahs.