Here “bus” is pronounced like “buzz” and I didn’t realise it was weird until I went down to Devon and it was a dead giveaway that I’m a Brummie lol
The single syllable words “four” and “hour” are actually the two syllable words “fohwer” and “ower”.
The words “anything” and “nothing” are pronounced “owt” and “nowt”.
The word “the” is not pronounced “t’”, it is simply replaced with an unvoiced glottal stop. The word “t’” is thus, actually, short for “to the”.
E.g.
Goin’ t’ shop. Wan’ owt?
means
I’m going to the shop. Do you want anything?
We also pronounce “bus” as “buzz”, too.
We also use “was” and “were” the wrong way round and say “pants” instead of “trousers”. The rest of the country seems unaware of that last one, and will accuse you of talking American.
Boston accents are funny. When my mother says, “where are the cah-keys”. My dad and I always say, “your car keys or khakis?”
We recently moved to a new area and there is a nearby town called Monticello. The locals all pronounce it mon-tee-sell-oh and will correct you if you say mon-teh-chel-oh. Doesn’t quite fit the question cause I think the locals are insane for that 😅
Port Dalhousie (dal-oo-sy) in St Catherine’s. When it should be port (Dal-how-sy)
Bavarians pronounce Chemie, China, Chlor, and others with CH starting, with a K! KEMIE, KINA, KLOR!
Bavarians there is so much go hate about you!
I was looking up Bavarian dialect terms and found “fesch” (attractive/stylish).
Vindication for Gretchen Wieners! “Das ist so fesch!”
How do you pronounce it? Schemie, Schina, Schlor?
Schlor? except that this one is in any case pronounced with hard K anything else seems ridiculous
also no need for the ‘s’, sounding out should initiate on the back of the tounge/larynx, if that makes sense
Charlottesville Virginia has a road spelled Rio but locals pronounce it with a long I (rhy-oh). Bonus points, the name originated from the road being route 10, marked with signs that said R10, which eventually became Rio.
NY state has a town named Chili that is pronounced—I kid you not—with two long I’s. “Chai-lai”
There’s also a town named Charlotte pronounced “shar-LOT”.
I feel like these are tests to detect out-of-towners.
I’m told there are differences between “merry”, “marry”, and “Mary”, but I don’t believe it.
My ex got so mad because down here the boy name Don and the girl name Dawn sound about the same. He would yell no it’s not it’s DAAHN and DWAWN! But we don’t have that nasal Midwestern thing, it’s just Don and Daun.
In my area, “Don” is pronounced with the mouth wide, jaw open. Force a smile as you say it, and you should be in the ballpark.
“Dawn” is pronounced with the lips pursed. Kiss your grandmother on the cheek.
Depends where you are. Most in the US pronounce them the same, but they are all distinct in Philly for example. But we pronounce “berry” and “bury” the same.
I’m from NJ and Murray, merry, marry, and Mary are all distinct.
Berry is like merry and bury is like Murray.
I’ve lived in Philly and then the suburbs for a couple of decades now and have never noticed the berry-bury thing - I’m guessing it’s a South Philly thing? So do you eat straw’bury’s or do you ‘berry’ your dead pets?
I get the rest, but how is “Mary” different?
Mary rhymes with fairy
That’s how I pronounce it. So now I’m even more confused! How is “merry” different? Because I pronounce that just like Mary.
Merry is like “meh” + “ree”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_/r/
Yes I would say “bury” like “berry”
I grew up in North Philly and South Jersey
It’s listed under Merry Murray merger in the wiki link
Interesting!
It’s “Zed” not “Zee”
Say Jay-Z
Jay-Z
Fellow member of the zed crowd!! When someone says “zee” to mean zed it often sounds like they’re saying the letter c lol
Everyone knows the song goes “ex, why, zed. Now I know my ABCs, next time won’t you sing with med”
“X, Y, Z, now I know my alphabet so I can keep it in my clever head”
The song was written by an American so understandable that they’d do it with the wrong pronunciation.
wait that’s supposed to rhyme with the Z? It rhymes with the ‘me’ so it seems like it doesn’t need to rhyme with the Z
I said I know my ABCs, I didn’t say I know how to structure children’s songs. Next you’re going to expect me to be able to work AND be sober at the same time, SHEESH!
I haven’t lived there in a while and I don’t pronounce it that way anymore, but where I grew up, water is universally pronounced “wooder”.
You from NJ?
Yep.
My wife thinks it’s funny that most words with a “t” in the middle, I pronounce as "d"s… Butter is budder, better is bedder, water is wooder, etc…
Also, creeks are “cricks”.
The creek/crick thing is very regional even within New Jersey.
Oddawa? Torono?
Is the thing on top of a house called a roof or a ruff?
Lol, I’m here sounding it out and it sounds between ruff and woof…
Houston the city and Houston the street.
I pronounce Kraken phonetically - “krayken” - but the world seems to prefer “cracken”.
I moved to AZ and I can now tell who is from here and who moved in from out of state by how they pronounce the town name Prescott.
Crayon: crown
Caramel: CAR-mul
Pecan: peh-CAWN
Got any cricks nearby?
So you pronounce crayon like a kings hat/ tooth repair?
Yes. It’s not very common and seems to occur where regional differences merge.
True, I’m just used to hearing either Cray-on or Cran (like cranberries)
Also I know I struggle with colors sometimes… But I don’t see green or yellow on that map, just red and blue… Is that just me haha
Green is in the northwest corner of Wisconsin.
Yellow is honestly a terrible color choice for this map, because the pronunciation isn’t truly regional. I think it’s clustered along the edges of a few different red areas, mostly on the east coast and some Southern areas.
I actually think the author’s note about it being a merging of pronunciation makes sense, because I was raised in a transitional Southern dialect but my parents both have an east Midland dialect
Ah yes, the coloring company, crow-la
My kid got a worksheet on the long A sound. She got through most of them but was stumped on the “lobster”. I looked at it - Lobster, Crawfish, neither of those have a long A sound, what the heck?
Hours later it occurs to me.
OH, Craaay-fish? Who in the world calls them that? Nobody here. Where was this printed?
As I live in the south I hear my “how are you all doing” morphing into “howya’lldoin” and there’s nothing I can do to stop it
Do you reply with “Fon” now? (How southerners pronounce “fine”).
Try switching to “how dost ye doeth?”
How do you pronounce oil?
I can never tell if my partner says gem or Jim. She had a moment the other day listening to her dad and looked at me and said holy shit this is what I sound like to you. She hadnt seen him in a bit
Shades of Jeff Foxworthy and his southern words.
