"Did you" rendered as "Didjoo"

[Acsenray]

Southwestern Ohio:

Jeet?
Nahtchet.
Squeet, then.

[Cervaise]

@Liberal

I don’t know why this is an ishoo.

Well, it’s not are doody to understand.

[Indistinguishable]

@Anne Neville

AIUI (IANALinguist), it’s a common misconception that linguists do this. They’re generally interested in studying variations in dialects, not in telling people how they “should” pronounce or use words.

Right, I understand that, but I was trying to clarify what I felt telecommunications must have been expressing, and perhaps that misconception helps explain his thoughts.

[vivalostwages]

My mom and brother do this sort of thing on purpose. My brother will actually type “Javany” (Do you have any?) in his emails and so on, but only to us.

Other linguistic perversities they engage in:
Yi (long i) do. (Yeah, I do)
Cuzzawanna. (Because I want to)
Jadoin’? (What are you doing?)

Etc.

[Happy_Scrappy_Hero_Pup]

You did, indeed, get it.

[B.Serum]

@Ronald C. Semone

I’m gonna think about it.

Imunna give it some thought too.

[B.Serum]

@liberty3701

Yes, linguists do study this type of thing. And they have many friends, thankyouverymuch.

This phenomenon is called palatalization. The ‘y’ sound in ‘you’ is palatal, meaning your tongue is hanging out around your hard palate, though not quite touching it. The ‘d’ in ‘did’ is pronounced with the tip of your tongue against your alveolar ridge (the bump you can feel behind your teeth), though some people pronounce it with the tongue tip against the teeth or more back towards the palate.

Now, when you’re talking fast, the ‘d’ and the ‘y’ kinda smoosh together, giving you a ‘j’ sound, like in ‘judge.’’ The ‘j’ sound is a combination of two sounds, a ‘d’ and the sound in ‘measure’ or ‘beige’. This sound is pronounced with the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, not quite touching. If you blend the ‘d’ and the ‘zh’ (for lack of better orthography*) together, you get the ‘j’ sound. It’s like a compromise between the ‘d’ and the ‘y.’

*There is a better orthography, the International Phonetic Alphabet, but I was trying to keep things simple.

Can you explain how “colonel” becomes “kernel”?
Or Worchestershire becomes “woostah?”

[Acsenray]

@Brad Serum

Can you explain how “colonel” becomes “kernel”?

It doesn’t.

The word had two competing forms – coronel and colonel (similar to regal and royal). After their battle, all that survived were the spelling of one and the pronunciation of another.

[Indistinguishable]

@Brad Serum

Or Worchestershire becomes “woostah?”

It doesn’t.

“Worcester” becomes what you call “Woostah” (or rather, it would be better to say, particularly in light of the Massachusetts city of that name, it becomes “Wooster”, which in a non-rhotic accent sounds the same). “Worcestershire”, therefore, becomes “Woostersher”, which is the same as “Woostashuh” in a non-rhotic accent.

As for the process at work in changing “Worcester” into “Wooster”, I’m afraid I don’t know, although it’s kind of just the drop of the “ce” part in a non-rhotic accent.

[Zoe]

By the way, a linguist would be very unlikely to tell a person that her dialect is “wrong.”

I sometimes pronounce isn’t as idn’t:

Idn’t that what you wanted?

Does anyone else do this? What region or country are you from? I grew up in northern West Tennessee – home of the “arsh” (Irish) potato. That was the only time we substituted that word for Irish.