I think I say it the way you mean. It rhymes with egg. But both have the ‘a’ sound.
My good – female – friend Evelyn, from Edinburgh, would be most surprised to hear that.
I met a girl from Texas who talked like this. She had recently moved to Georgia (yes, I realize we sound funny to other folks too 
) & I was making small talk with her. She mentioned her husband & then the fun began.
*Me: What does your husband do?
Her: He’s daaayd.
Me: Oh, I’m sorry. How did he die?
Her: He choked on an aaaayyg.
*
I had to leave. Rapidly. Before the convulsions set in.
There’s another strange pronunciation that amuses me.
People who say the words look, book, & took, so that they rhyme with Luke.
I associate this with Indiana for some reason.
I was watching some show…I forget, and anyway, this English guy was going across different terrain, and then started talking about a glass-ee-er which definitely leapt out at me, because most of us here in the US pronounce it glay-sure.
So, I’m curious now. Is how he pronounced glacier the common way it’s pronounced in England?
I grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, and while I don’t speak this way, I know a lot of folks who do. Some of the terms have to be heard to be understood… well, sorta. Oddly enough, I can’t do a Bawlmer accent. My youngest sis, tho, can nail it.
I pronounce graham “gram” for ease of use; I have a BA in English. Sorry.
It’s Glay - See - Err hereabouts, just like brazier and glazier. With a long A. But a short A is also used, as in Glah - See - Err (q.v. Fox’s Glacier Mints). But then you get into homophonic trouble with glassier. Glacial is usually pronounced with a long A.
Here’s one. Not too definitive in terms of region, but it does show that “ruff” is rarer.
Evelyn Waugh was at one time married to a woman named Evelyn.
I didn’t kno’w Brit’s punctuate’d lik’e thi’s!!
When I was in Australia, I was surprised at how popular Chris Isaak was there…and that they pronounced his last name I-ZAK (instead of I-zik, which is how he pronounces it and how that name’s said in the U.S.).
One word that I’ve noticed people pronouncing differently, and not for any apparent reason, is “negotiate.” For years I always heard it pronounced as ne-go-she-ate, but lately I’ve noticed several people saying it ne-go-see-ate.
i thought it was evil-lyn.
Ah, after doing some Google searching, turns out it’s the show “Man Vs Wild”, and although this isn’t the episode I’m thinking of he does say the word a few times MvW
It’s probably like how most Americans pronounce evolution ev-o-lution but British people tend to say evil-lution.
He-Man nemesis.
This is one of those things that varies regionally; some Americans make the graham/gram distinction and some don’t. It’s probably the same ones who differentiate mirror/mere. Among his many outrages, W irritated me by pronouncing terror as “terr”. That said, it wouldn’t be “gray-am”, but more like “graah-ham”. It’s almost as if the two words are differentiated only by vowel length, except that the contexts of the two words make confusion virtually impossible.
Pacific Coast English is often characterized by merging many of these sounds in addition to ones like cot/caught. I seem to be something of an anomaly since I do pronounce them differently; the reason may be that I studied linguistics in college and inadvertently affected my speech as a result. A year of that time was in Germany, where I took a class in Middle English linguistics; from time to time my German classmates would ask me about questions like this; for example our pronunciation of “clerk”.
By contrast, you often seem to drop letters and whole syllables from the names of old places and families. The notorious example of this is “Cholmondeley-Marjoribanks”, pronounced Chumly-Marchbanks. Or the Plague Village Eyam, pronounced Eem.
I think a Lhasa Apso with a backbite might manage it.
Heh. Agree that ‘roof’, ‘proof’ and ‘hoof’ all rhyme, but not food/nude/dude (in the UK). "Food’ and “dude” rhyme, but “nude” also rhyming is an American thing (or a non-UK thing). In the UK we often introduce a “y” sound where Americans do not. So ‘nude’ is nyood. And we have ‘nyews’ and ‘nyuclear’ and many more.
I had lived in the US for about 10 years before I realized that the things labeled ‘Graham crackers’ were the ‘Gram crackers’ I had heard so often.
And on the subject of names, we have Basil as Bay-zil (US) and Baz-il (UK) and BAAAH-ZIL (Torquay).
My brothers and sister learned English in NZ, though they lost the accent relatively early they still pronounced words differently.
That’s one thing about the Aussies and Kiwis is they cheat. I have heard the same person say the same word, two different ways depending on if they feel “posh” or not.
The biggest thing is that the Aussies, Kiwis and most British people says “SHORE” for sure.
Americans say sure to rhyme with fur or blur. But English people say sure as “Shore.”
This is why a lot of English singers write songs and rhyme sure with before or sure with more, but oddly enough when they sing it, they sing sure to rhyme with fur or were
Other words that Kiwis and Aussies tend to use, in my experience.
Vit-a-min, with a short I. Vit to rhyme with pit.
Din-a-stee (Dynasty)
Mee-moe (memo) in stead of Mem-oh
Var-it-tee (varitey) where var would rhyme with pear or square.
I also noticed New Zealanders tend to really slur words with the ER sound. Like to me DIRTY comes off as DUTY