If anyone said “war-duh” to me, I’d assume they were speaking Arabic. It doesn’t sound like anything in American English, but the Arabic word for ‘a rose’ is wardah.
I’m willing to believe that it sounds closer to water than “war-tuh”, in the US anyway.
It is how they say it in Georgia. How about “warder”, if you don’t like my original representation?
The Baltimore equivalent is “whuoo-der.”
I’ve never heard “wardah,” but a lot of people around here say “whuoo-der.” And you get your “whuoo-der” from the faucet in the “zink.”
Warder is a different word in English. But water doesn’t have an r in the first syllable.
Maybe he was in jail. Or how about maybe “wadduh”? Except I always thought that was more of a Brooklyn pronunciation.
I agree this is absolutely common in various parts of the US – I know I think I’m saying “water” but it just slays my European colleagues when they hear “waddar” instead. I can see why someone would write it as “warder” too, but I think it’s almost more like “wa(r)dar” if that makes sense. Now that it’s been pointed out to me, I hear it too when I say it. I read a neat article once on why the pronunciation evolved that way, but of course as these things go I can’t find it now.
Likewise, I’ve trained my ESL students to stop me and ask for clarification if I say something that sounds like “pardy” when I am talking about a “party.” Obviously I try to stick to something as close as possible to American broadcast English in class, but sometimes it comes out.
Great Lakes region in terms of my own accent/dialogue – back to the OP, I say “offen” and also learned in school that “often” was either what an uneducated person would say to try to sound educated, or British English.
That pronunciation of /t/ is perfectly acceptable in Standard American English (including American “broadcast” English). I, for one, think I would be a little put off by a broadcaster artificially tweaking it. Then again, maybe they do it all the time and I just haven’t noticed. It may be confusing for ESL learners, but then again, so is the conjugation of “to go”. (I could be in the wrong here, though–I’m no expert on second-language acquisition.)
As a radio announcer and newscaster, I pronounce it without the “t”. All professional speakers I know of pronounce it that way.
55 northeastern NY. “Offen,” which is the older pronunciation by far. Despite the parallel to “oft,” the word was pronounced “offen” as far back as Chaucer’s time. My 1936 Websters Third only lists “offen” as the pronunciation, with a note that the “t” is pronounced by some pockets of dialects.
The “t” was pronounced as time went on as people changed pronunciation to match the spelling. “Comfortable” (three syllables) and “victuals” are other words like this.