# "Mawage" - speech impediment or just English dialect? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 29, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mawage-speech-impediment-or-just-english-dialect/815069 "2018-05-29T16:35:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mawage-speech-impediment-or-just-english-dialect/815069/21 "2018-05-31T18:48:09Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > Groucho Marx was from Manhattan, and he did the same thing. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4zRe_wvJw8) he is singing the famous song “Lydia the Tattooed Lady.” Listen and you can clearly hear him singing “Lydier, oh Lydia.” Curiously, it doesn’t happen every time, but it does happen with considerable frequency. from what I hear, he only does it three (or maybe four) times, all at the opening of the refrain “Lydia[r], oh Lydia” (but not on the next “Lydia, oh Lydia”; it’s just in the transition from the verse to the refrain.) He never says it as “Lydia[r]” if the following word starts with a consonant, but it just seems to me to be a flourish on the head of the refrain. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mawage-speech-impediment-or-just-english-dialect/815069/22 "2018-05-31T20:05:22Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Not to mention the tendency for certain New England accents to add an “r” where it does not occur-- China -\> Chinar. I did mention it, in the footnote. 🙂 I wouldn’t say “Chinar” on its own, but I would say “I went to China-ron holiday” or “China-ris a major manufacturer”, because of the vowel. Writing it down looks funny, but it’s just the natural speech pattern for much of England (and, by extension, Boston etc). ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mawage-speech-impediment-or-just-english-dialect/815069/23 "2018-05-31T20:10:25Z")
No thread on rhotacism is complete without [weleasing Woger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7_oNBT9wsc)! ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mawage-speech-impediment-or-just-english-dialect/815069/24 "2018-05-31T20:41:03Z")
Oliver Sacks spoke this way. “Bwain suwgewy”. I think it may be more of an upper-class affectation than a dialect. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mawage-speech-impediment-or-just-english-dialect/815069/25 "2018-05-31T21:37:54Z")
While I associate “fun with 'r’s” with Boston, my most memorable example was when I was in grad school and a student from Connecticut asked me “Hey **FtG** , can I bowwow a quahtah?” Not an ‘r’ in the whole sentence. OTOH, I had a co-author of a paper who was from Boston presenting it a conference and he’d say things like “The idear behind this is … .” Cringe. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mawage-speech-impediment-or-just-english-dialect/815069/26 "2018-05-31T23:57:54Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > So now I’m wondering about something else I’ve always considered a speech impediment. You know the wedding scene in _The Princess Bride_ where the clergyman starts off with “Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder today. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam…” The screenplay for _The Princess Bride_ was adapted by William Goldman from his own novel of the same name, and in the book the clergyman is described as having an impediment that had become worse as he aged due to hearing loss. What’s more, the specific way this character mispronounces words in the movie is taken from the book. The exact wording of the clergyman’s speech is slightly different, but he says “Mawidge is a dweam wiffin a dweam” on the page, with that spelling. So I’d be pretty sure the character in the movie, like the character in the book, is supposed to have a speech impediment and not simply a different accent than the other characters. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mawage-speech-impediment-or-just-english-dialect/815069.md?page=1)