What's a regional pronunciation of a word that seems normal to you but is weird to people from other parts of the country?
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.
Where do people talk like that?
Bolton. Bury. Wigan. Perhaps other parts of Lancashire, also.
Semmel
For some reason almost every person in my city says "seen" where they should say "saw". Drives me bananas.
Same here except it sounds like "sin" instead of "seen" like "I sin a guy at the shop today"
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 😅
Spaniards: Montitheyo
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.
Port Dalhousie (dal-oo-sy) in St Catherine's. When it should be port (Dal-how-sy)
It's apparently the only thing named for that dude pronounced that way too, Dalhousie University as an example. Wiki page has an etymology section that has some suggestions as to why, it'd sound weird to me though pronounced the other way.
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".
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'm told there are differences between "merry", "marry", and "Mary", but I don't believe it.
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?
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.
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.
I pronounce Kraken phonetically - "krayken" - but the world seems to prefer "cracken".
Elemen-tary or documen-tary
The tary pronounced like Terry. Apparently this is unusual outside of this region.
But where do you put the emphasis?
Most people pronounce it doc-you-MEN-teh-ree. Are you saying you pronounce it doc-you-men-TERRY?
I think it would be closest to say that the emphasis is on both the men and the tary. I wish we could post audio clips on here, I'd just record myself saying it. Doc-u-MEN-TARY.
What region? I'm pretty sure that's standard.
Central New York. I've been called out on it many times by people from other places.
Both the US and UK pronunciations on this site are different from how we say it here. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/elementary
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.
Prescott gets messed up more often, but Avondale is a trap also. I couldn’t figure out what someone meant when they pronounced Avondale like it started with the name of the MLM cosmetic company.
Melbourne.
Now most will read that and go Mel bourn. But in Australia we say Mel Bin.
A really easy way to tell if someone isn't an Aussie while there.
It's ironic Aussies don't pronounce the R in Melbourne considering you add Rs to every other word!
They used them all up
Old gen x Australian here, and pretty much everybody I know pronounces it Mel burn.
To pass as local I say the Mel part clearly and mumble bu or bun at random, depending on the mood. So MELBu
But the real test is all the mumbling variations of Straya, AUSTRAia, etc
Is there a similar "tell" with how people pronounce Darwin?
Houston the city and Houston the street.
Boston area doesn't use "r".
The famous: "Can't pahk(park) your cah(car) in Havid(Harvard) Yad(yard)".
Sorry for the IG link
Here's a Youtube link (couldn't find a peertube link).
I love the guy who shows up and says "Ur ur a ur ur" and then just nods his head like he solved it.
Ha, yeah .. can't hear it.
When I was in school, I had a teacher who insisted on pronouncing the word "across" as "acrosst".
No thank you! That one really bothers me for some reason.
Same as "eltse" for else, "foe-ward" for forward, "warsh" for wash, and "ayggs" for eggs.
And some people say "heighth" for height and I swear it's just to fuck with me.
I lived in Louisville, KY briefly, and the official pronunciation is apparently “Luuhwuuhh”. You will be mocked if you get it wrong.
Not "loovul"? I need to brush up.
Do the British and Irish dialect quiz. It's really interesting to find out what words you use and how you pronounce them pinpoint where you grew up and where your family is from. I've got a mixture of London, Midlands and Devon and it's bang on!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html
Paywall
I was able to do it without any sign in
North-East Netherlands. Besides the dialect, every sentence is ended with the word "ja", which means yes/yeah. It's like saying "It rains, yeah", or "Let's take a look, yeah". It's also drawn long, like jaaaa. Also, a lot of nouns are ended with "gie" in the dialect, making it a diminutive.
I recently saw a video where a woman pronounced "drawer" as "draw".
The woman at the beginning may say "draw"
Carpentry guru Norm Abrams always says "draw" too. "Let's see how the draws fit..."
I never noticed that with Norm but its likely a New England thing since the woman I heard was from Rhode Island.
... How would you pronounce it?
Houston is not pronounced "hews-ton", it's "hows-ton"
Hues-ton here
Boiseans pronounce it boy-see, but everyone else pronounces it boy-zee. It makes it easy to tell who is from there
That's the opposite of Quincy where the naives call it Quinzy.
I live in the U.S., and my state capitol is spelled Pierre, but pronounced "peer".
I think that's a common type of slur that comes from familiarity, like how people in New Orleans call it "norlans".
Southern Baden Württemberg: everything is followed by 'li'.
Please, we must have some examples of this.
'Le' works too.
My doctor has an Impfung-Eckle (vaccination corner) and a Laborbänkle (lab bench).
No...li
Wash wahsh warsh Bag bahg beyg Oil oyel ohl
In the Maritimes, Dalhousie (the university) is pronounced: "dal-HOW-zee".
In Ottawa, Dalhousie (the street) is pronounced: "dal-HOOOOOO-ze".
I don't know why, but I find the Ottawa pronunciation really annoying.
I’m newish to the maritimes. For a good while when we got here I thought it was supposed to be like “dollhouse” >.>
We pronounce d and t exactly the same way, so both sound like d to other people, but ofc we know from context which one is meant, always, therefore to us they aren't the same at all! :)
Desk draw
In Iowa, USA:
In eastern MA, we have towns Berlin pronounced BERLin, Peabody pronounced PIBudee, Quincy pronounced QUINzee. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting.
I think "buzz" is used a lot to people near Manchester too.
People from Bolton (UK) get very defensive about the exact pronunciation of Bolton too. I heard this conversation several times between two colleagues:
Colleague 1 (c1): "... that's because you're from Bolton" Colleague 2 (c2): "It's not Bolton, it's Bolton" C1: "What? That's what I said, Bolton" C2: "No, you said Bolton, it's Bolton" C1: "You're saying the same thing, Bolton" C2: "No, Bolton" C1: "That's what I'm saying!" Me: "what. the. FUCK"If you've ever seen Brooklyn Nine Nine and Jake would say "Nikolaj" and then Charles would correct him saying the exact same thing, it was exactly like that, but saying "Bolton" instead.
Also I heard several people from Wigan say "A packet of crisp" and not "A packet or crisps".
Also forgot about this one: I used to live in South Wales, and people would say "Premark" instead of "Primark". They'd think I was the weird one for saying it like Primark.
Never been to Wigan before, so til people from Wigan don't refer to a packet of crisps in the plural!