Do you say "Shtreet" instead of "Street"? Is this a regional variation?

[xash]

@CurtC

However, I thought that everyone pronounces “train” and “tree” as chrain and chree. Are there people who actually say it without the ch- sound (as part of their dialect and not an affectation)?

@needscoffee

Certainly. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t.

Are you guys serious? I thought everyone says “train” and “tree” without any “ch” in it, just the “tr” sound. I say “train” and “tree” without any “ch”, and so do at least a billion Indians. I’m going to ask people tomorrow to pronounce “train” and “tree” for me.

If you want to learn something truly fascinating, check out this post I made sometime last month:

@xash

Obama pronounces Pakistan as the locals do. Taliban, locally, is pronounced taa-li-baan, with a soft T sound that no American I know seems to be able to differentiate from a hard T sound. It’s a sound that I think doesn’t exist in the English language, or at least I’m unable to find a word that uses it, to be able to explain the difference to my friends.

The closest I can come to an explanation is this:

Say tree. Now say three. See where your tongue is when you say three? It’s not the same place as tree, right? Now say T with your tongue at the the position where you start the word three. That’s a soft T sound. Am I making any sense?

Next time you meet a South Asian friend, ask them to pronounce a native language word that uses a soft T and a hard T, and see if you can make out the difference. Chances are, you can’t.