I saw a news documentary about the training of Indians to handle customer service calls for software manufacturers. The teacher, an Indian woman, was teaching them to differentiate between British and American English. She could switch back and forth between accents with incredible authenticity. One of the exercises that I remember she used was having them recite, “Put a quarter in the meter.” They alternated between British and American:
It’s funny you said that. I was going to post a question about this. I’ve been working for a gift distributor in the US for almost a year. We purchase most of our products from an Australian company and in the emails we get from them, our contact spells it “jewellery”. Of course, having never seen that spelling before, I thought she was consistently misspelling the word “jewelry”.
Well, this morning, we received an email from a British jewellery company, wanting to sell to us. I didn’t realize there were two spellings. Question not asked, question answered anyway.
Don’t you love when ignorance is fought and won?
Anyway, Go You Big Red Fire Engine,
It’s my understanding that “onion” is pronounced un-yun, not ung-yun.
I thought that maybe he was pronouncing it some strange way, like instead of ung-yun, perhaps, oh-ne-on
I just realised I unintentionally put a g in there. Now I feel dumb. Sometimes I say it properly, I guess it depends on how I’m talking about it.
Enough! I’m sick of seeing perfectly good dialects hounded into oblivion! Most of these supposed mispronunciations have their roots in various, now-mostly-extinct English dialects. I am currently working my way through Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (by David Hackett Fischer, excellent book, btw), and am right at the portion where the author goes into some depth on the south English origins of the Southern accent. The author states that the southern English counties are the origin of such variants as “‘sebem’ for seven, ‘chimbly’ for chimney… ‘ax’ for ask… ‘perserve’ for preserve… ‘acrost’ for across, [and] ‘mistis’ for mistress.” Furthermore, “virtually all peculiarities of grammar, syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation… typical of Virginia [and later, the south in general] were recorded in… Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Oxford, Gloucester, Warwick or Worcester.” Also illustrative of this point is a 19th-century transcription of the Song of Solomon in the Sussex dialect:
Once again, this isn’t an ill-formed patois, but how people spoke in that area. Remember, Virginia was settled by English noblemen, and this is how they spoke. Languages evolve, and the southern US dialects are merely an archaic form of English that appears uneducated or ignorant because of English’s hidebound orthography. I make many of the so-called pronuncation mistakes described in this thread (I grew up speaking East Texas dialect, wi strong Ozark influnces due ter estenned famly (hah!)); I’m perfectly aware that they are non-standard English, but nowadays I use them solely to piss people like the OP off. Hadn’t hurt me none inna bidness worl, neither.
Hey dere, hon!
I din’t know dere was anyone elts here dat spake Ballmereze!
You from Dundalk? I hear theytalkrealfastdowninDundalk.
How 'bout dem Oreos? Been downey Camden Yards?
Didjew go to Johnny Unitas High Skew downey Johnny Unitas Boowevard?
Ahl be back in a lilwhal, I gotta go hame and anzer the phane.
Grizzly
He learnt Ballmereze when he livt near Warshingdin DC.
For the love of God, it’s “eSpresso,” not “eXpresso.”
It amuses me that many of my fellow library employees say “liberry.”
Also, I find myself waging a hopeless battle against improper “spelling pronunciations.” One that bugs me is the “t” in “often”–it should not be pronounced. Likewise with the “l” in words like “salmon” and “almond.” However, I realize I’m in a dwindling minority on these pronunciations (particularly with “often”).
We’ve gotten this far into the thread with nary a mention of the word tomato. I say it “tuh-MAY-toe” and I will staunchly defend this pronunciation, which fortunately is the more accepted of the two. Whenever someone says “tuh-MAW-toe”, it strikes such a dissonant chord and evokes a sound in my mind like hitting two adjacent white piano keys together. I refuse to even recognize this as an alternate pronunciation, I hate it so much.
The others mentioned in this thread I am less fervent about but they still annoy me, nonetheless. An uncle of mine who hails from the great state of Washington has always pronounced it “Worshington.” If he weren’t such a nice guy I’d ask him where the hell he’s picking up the “r” sound.
I guess you’ve never heard the saying, “You say tom-ar-to, I say to-mate-o?” Maybe people only say it in Aus… but I do remember it being in a Simpsons Episode I think.
Maybe people only say it in Aus… but I do remember it being in a Simpsons Episode I think.