That’s because everyone else does it wrong.
We’re Angelenos. We know freeways better than anyone. Therefore, our customs on matters relating to them are paramount. Q.E.D.
Also people from Ontario, like me. But only freeways. The 405, the 115, the 400, the 401.
True enough. But I just realized, Sunspace, that it only works with three digit highways! Never, have I ever said “take the 17” or “take the 7.” No, but I will say “take the 416” or “take the 417.”
Hmmmmmmmm…
In most of the US, we do these as two-sylalble words, using the “zh/sh” sounds for zi, and si:
breʒɚ
gleʃɚ
What you’re describing is a 3-syllable word, with the middle syllable using the "i’ as an actual vowel:
breziɚ
glesiɚ
Regarding the British “r” at the end of words that end with “a”…
This example always stuck out to me. In Oasis’ song Champagne Supernova they clearly say “supernover.” Is he exaggerating that on purpose?
Start listening at 1:00 here:
rocking chair - do you watch much MTV? Specifically, Real World or Road Rules stuff? Because there’s a woman on those shows named Evelyn that pronounces it that way. But she also goes by “Ev”.
No, that’s how he speaks. It’s is called the “non-rhotic intrusive R”. It only occurs when a word ends in a vowel, and the next word begins with a vowel.
So the reason Liam does that there is because the next word is “in”. “Champagne supernova[r] in the sky”. If the next word had been “fish” or something, it would have been merely “Champagne supernova fish the sky” or whatever.
It annoys the tits off me, even though I’m English, because I’ve had speech training, and also lived outside the country for a long time. Most people don’t notice it. I hear it on the BBC news all the time these days.
(Speaking of annoying, would a passing mod PLEASE remove that fucking apostrophe from the thread title. My blood pressure goes through the roof every time I see it in the “new posts” list. It’s going to give me an aneurism.)
Oh, the “Merry/Marry/Mary” thing. In some places, like New York, there’s a distinct difference in the pronunciation. Here in the Midwest, it’s all the same.
By the way . . . one of my favorite newspeople is CNN’s Richard Quest. Where is his accent from?
I’ve known a number of North Jerseyans who would pronounce “leg” as “layg”. They don’t draw the word out as long as a Southerner would, but it’s a very similar vowel sound.
The one that drives me nuts is the Central New Jersey tendency to pronounce “water” like “woot-er,” using the same vowel sound as in “foot”. I’m happy to have escaped Trenton without that particular inflection.
Haha, yes, I still think of the Perfect Master’s name as “Sessill”, despite having previously learned from the Dope that it is Seessill.
Ooh, that business of “Gram” for “Graham” does annoy me. Well, I try not to be irritated by it, but it does grate rather. A sister-in-law (originally from New York City and later lived in Boston, in case that is relevant information) does this and I think I have managed never to comment upon it to her, but oh, it’s hard. Plus, she seems to have, on marriage, changed her own name to this name that she cannot even pronounce. Eek .:eek: A very nice woman and a good friend for many years, but grrr at the pronunciation. (In fact, it was she who inadvertently first caused me to find the S.D.M.B., so you see, a very good and useful person indeed.) 
This post sent me idly wondering about Gram Parsons. Equally idly, I just went a’Googling, only to learn that Gram Parsons’ original name was Cecil. Oh, noes! All things are going in a circle here! 
Very informative. Thanks.
My mother was born in Hawaii, a navy brat, and moved to SoCal as a young child. (age 6, IIRC.) She’s lived in the Los Angeles/Orange County areas for the rest of her life, going on 78 years now. Can anyone tell me where her pronunciation of the following words comes from?
Washington – WARSH-ing-ton
washing machine - WARSH-ing machine
coupon - KYOO-pon
I’ve been told that it could be a New England influence, as she has many relatives in & around the Boston area, but she’s never lived there. I don’t share these pronunciations with her, but then I’ve always been very cognitive of pronunciations, working in the telephone customer relations field. I tend to pronounce cities as the caller does.
For example, I would say loo-EE-zee-ann-a (Louisiana) but if speaking with a native of that state, would default to LOO-zee-ann-a. New Orleans, normally Noo OR-lens becomes NAR-lens. Moscow (MOSS-cow) becomes MOSS-co.
Anyone?
In L.A. we’d say ‘Take the 5’ or ‘Take the 10’.
One way I would go to work would be to take the 10 to the 405 to the 105 to the 605 to the 91 to the 5 and then exit at The City Drive. 
(Usually I’d take the 10 to the 405 to the 22, but the other route was sometimes faster.)
Part of this, I think, is because all our provincial highways that are designed and constructed from the outset specifically as limited-access freeways have 3-digit numbers in the 400 series.
There are a number of other freeways which are widenings of older provincial highways or are municipally-owned, and are not 400-series highways; these tend to have names and are referred to by those names, even if they also have provincial highway numbers in places.
For example, differing overlapping parts of the Conestoga Expressway in Kichener-Waterloo are Highway 8 and Highway 7. And the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto is municipally-owned and has no provincial highway number.
And Highway 115? It’s kind of an anomaly. Between the 401 and the Highway 35 interchange, it’s a ‘RIRO expressway’, and has driveway accesses. Only between Hwy 35 and Peterborough is it built to full limited-access freeway standard. But because of the driveay accesses on the southern part, it can’t carry a 400-series number.
Which of those are freeways?
Hmm, sorta-kinda. Actually it tends to depend on the sound of the word that comes after it. For example, I’ll almost always say ‘vAHz’ for vase, but depending on the sound of the sentence, sometimes it’ll be ‘vAY’zz’. (Neither of these are the ‘VAYsse’ I hear on US television.)
Now I’m sure you’ve mostly hung out with eastern states folks. They do some weird shit with words. (If you don’t believe me, get them to say ‘mall’ or ‘castle’ sometime.) FWIW, this is the South Aussie version - at least for the city area; all bets are off for rural versions:
Vye-ta-min
Dye-na-stee, although I’ll concede we’ll sometimes (rarely) switch to ‘dinastee’. Guaranteed ‘dye-na-stee’ if you’re talking Ming vases; optional switcheroos for just about anything else.
Meh-moe (or mem-oh, if you like, but I think there’s a kind of a huff in there actually)
Vah-RYE-uh-tee (or v’rye-it-ee, if we’re being lazy and dropping letters)
Most South Aussies alternate between ‘en-ve-lope’ and ‘ohn-vel-ope’ for envelope, and you’ll often find them switching rather randomly between ‘sked-jewel’ and ‘shed-yule’ for ‘schedule’. It’s not a posh on/posh off thing, it’s purely contextual.
Having moved to the eastern states this year, the biggest flaw (and boy, is it a big one) I’m noticing in my own speech is a real tendency to drop the entire middle out of words. I tend to say *lil *instead of ‘little’ (worse, sometimes I say ‘liddle’, and I *really *hate that), mu’l instead of ‘muddle’ and something like leh’rr instead of ‘letter’.
It’s bloody awful, and it’s become quite bad now that I’m starting to suffer from a hybridising of the SA and Tassie accents. It’s making me think more about what I’m actually saying, though, so hopefully it’ll be a good thing in the long run. :smack:
There’s an example in a P.G. Wodehouse story that goes something like this:
I suspect that Bertie’s usage of “sore” is an Americanism picked up from detective novels or the movies
I noticed also that my Cassell’s German-English dictionary, which uses a UK standard of English pronunciation guidance considers that ‘R’ following a vowel simply lengthens the vowel and is not heard as an ‘R’.
It also says “gotten” is “archaic and Amer.”. Forsooth!
My dad was born and raised in Iowa, as were his parents, and he pronounces them that way also. He’s never been to New England nor are any of his relatives from there. My relatives in southern Indiana also pronounce them that way. It drives me nuts.
Not much help but just thought I’d share.
Kinda like how, as a kid, I thought there was a specifically American name, Tam, or perhaps Taam. Quite distinct from Tom. That’s because the woman holding up her skirts in the Tom and Jerry cartoons never said Tom. Took me years to realise it was just a difference in pronunciation.
Like the OP, it’s just one of those things. I liked the film Little Lord Fauntleroy when I was a kid, and they made a big deal about him being Sess-il not See-sil, as he’d grown up with. Then Maurice, as used in Bewitched. It’s usually pronounced Morris in BE, stress on the first syllable, and is a lower-middle-class nerdy name, not posh, and I had no idea it was the same name as the French sounding Ma-Reese, stress on the second syllable.
I once spent about a hundred posts telling people that no, British people do not randomly add a r after the end of words. I included cites to reputable journals and all. A couple of years later, I did the same for about ten posts. The exact same songs were cited in those threads as in this. They even insisted that the intrusive r was there when Noel was just saying ‘Champagne Supernova’ with no vowel after it, even though he draws out the aaa for ages. Even on this board, the myth lives on. British people add an r after some vowels. It doesn’t matter what anyone says.
The actual pronunciation doesn’t annoy me, however - it’s slightly easier to say a melded ‘supernoverin’ than ‘supernova glottal stop in.’ English has tons of melding sounds. YMMV. It’s certainly not wrong, or anything speech training should take out of you.
Another SoCal resident chiming in here. They ALL are. I don’t think I’ve ever been on 'em all in the same day, but I can see how it’s entirely possible, without much effort. I used to drive the 22 to the 405 to the 105 to LAX every day, and now I rarely venture west of the 605.