When it comes to the pronunciation of “Oregon”, I’ve noticed that only those who were raised on the west side of the Rocky Mountains actually know how to say it. That’s not completely true for everyone on the east side, but its a pretty accurate generalization.
Another annoying state mispronunciation is of “Nevada.”
The “a” in the middle syllable is short, like cat.
SmartAleq writes:
> All I know is that every newscaster I hear on WGN (Chicago, right?) says it like
> that, and for some reason every single person I’ve ever talked to on the phone
> (call center, customer service–everybody asks you where you are located, as
> though it matters!) from Kansas, Ohio and Nebraska all say it like that too… It’s
> like they figure someone’s gonna slap their hands with a ruler if they don’t
> make sure and pronounce every single letter…
I grew up in Ohio and I’ve never heard anyone there pronounce it “OR-ee-GAWN”. I don’t think you’re correctly recording the pronunciation. The way you’ve written it has the middle syllable as being the least accented and yet having a long vowel, which just isn’t natural to English at all. I suspect that what you’re hearing is “Oar-ree-gun”, with the first syllable having a strong stress, the second syllable having less stress, and the third syllable being unaccented. That pronunciation is something that I can at least imagine a native speaker of English actually saying.
This thread is still stuck on the pronunciation of “Oregon”?
Just to confuse the issue even more, I’ll add that many locals tend to leave out the middle syllable altogether and just say “OR-g’n”, making the pronunciation indistinguishable from the musical instrument or those gross slimy things inside your body.
Which is what makes the names of towns like Monitor, Boring, Sisters, Drain, Needy and Canby so gawdamned funny!
Most Americans that I have talked to who watch House and aren’t familiar with Hugh Laurie otherwise don’t realize he’s not American. Me, I have been a huge fan since Black Adder III (and had also seen him in Frye & Laurie), and was just tickled to death to see him as House (such the opposite character!) and also in the Stuart Little movies playing an American. At (very rare) times his inflection is ever so slightly odd, but it isn’t anything that would make you think “weird accent”; it’s more a characterization thing or one might chalk it up to a regional nuance.
This freaked me out, too, the first time I heard it. You’d never guess he wasn’t American.
[re: Forest Whitaker in The Crying Game] I am not British, but I winced at his accent as well. It didn’t sound right to me, and I’m relieved to know that it wasn’t just me.
I would say it is “any accent that sounds native to Britain”…? I don’t think it implies there is only one. As for the second part, I think that implying that a British actor can do a good “American accent” is perfectly acceptable, too. It could mean any number of accents–wouldn’t refer to one specifically–but the idea is that if an American heard it, he/she would assume the speaker was also an American, be it from Texas, New York, California, or wherever. Likewise, a good British accent would convince someone from there that the speaker was also from their country (from whatever regional/socio-economical/whatever background that might be)
(Oregon) Ok, what is the “wrong” way and what is the “right” way? I pronounce it pretty much like “or-ih-g’n” with emphasis on the first syllable. Sometimes the middle syllable is more of an “ah” and sometimes more of an “ih” depending on how fast I’m talking or whatever. Ok, on reading further into the thread I see that the mispronunciation is the “Or-ih-GONE” one, which I occassionally hear, but I’d hardly say it’s 80%! More like…5%? It is by far the less common pronunciation at least in my circles because it always stands out as sounding odd when I do hear it. Maybe it is a regional thing where you live that people say it that way?
Second that. The accent Anthony Hopkins used in “Silence of the Lambs” struck me as merely eccentric until I found out he was a Brit – whereupon it was easy to notice that, no, those are really specific oddities. But with Hugh Laurie, I can’t hear anything distinctively British even if I’m listening for it.
Hey, my first post as a member! Be gentle…
Just have a comment on Daphne’s accent in Frasier. Although she’s English, she affects the worst Mancunian (resident of Manchester, industrial english northern city) accent known to man. I don’t know why - they clearly wanted her to sound ‘common’, as her natural english accent is at the posh end, but why they picked Mancunian I’ll never know. She sounds as Mancunian as Dick VD sounds Cockney.
To a previous poster, Mancunian is a different from Cockney as Ausralian is from Irish.
Phew, that was fun.