The other day I heard Miles O’Brien say something that made me think he’s from Michigan. I looked up his Wiki bio, and sure enough. It was a word like “sick” being pronounced “seck”.
In New Brunswick, people can’t put LM together, they say “fillum” and “ellum”.
Broadly across the south, the medial T is always way overpronounced, like “ought-toe parts”, even when there is no southern accent.
In Missouri, if you are waiting for someone to do something, you might tell a third party to “see if he won’t” do it. “Le’t see if McGee might not try to steal second base”. There are several other Missiouriisms, which are actually Stl Louisisms, not used in Kansas City. I can’t think of what they are right off hand, but I always catch them when I hear them.
Wisconsin people speak with a very staccato enunciation of every separate syllable, I can tell Wisconsin people after just a few words. In Wisconsin, you don’t go “to” someplace, you go “down by” it. I have to go down by WalMart.
Sure it’s not the word choice itself? Here, it’s “the shore” and people have to pause and think if you use any other word. I think that if I said we were going to the ocean there’d be an assumption we were headed to the Mass or Maine coast.
I find that the name of the state is itself a dead giveaway. It seems to me only natives pronounce it that way, everyone else has major or slight variations that tell me they’ve never lived there.
OregonWe had some childhood friends from Vashon Island, Washington, and they had a peculiar way of saying “wash” that I’ve never heard elsewhere. However, it doesn’t seem endemic to the whole state. Anyway, they said “wuhsh” (i.e. the vowel sound was like “uh”), Maybe they learned it from one or both of their parents, I have no idea where they were from originally.
Only on the east coast. When I first moved out to CA, I was kidded to no end for talking about “going to the shore”.
In MA, there are lot of towns that non-locals never pronounce correctly.
Peabody (it’s PEE-b’dy, not PEE-body)
Worcester (It’s WUHS-ter, not WOR-sest-or)
Billerica (It’s bill-RI-ka, not BILL-er-icka)
And for RI, I think finally found one. Thames St, in Newport. It’s pronounces just as it’s spelled, not like the river in England.
In SoCal, it would be the city of San Pedro. Locals all know that it’s PEE-dro, not PAY-dro.
Thames Street in Newport is pronounced just as it’s spelled, just like the Thames River that flows by New London, Connecticut.
When I first moved to Connecticut, I was stationed at the submarine base in Groton (across the river from New London). I’d been to London, England before, and knew how the river was pronounced there, so in my first days in Connecticut, I asked someone what the name of the river was. They replied, “You mean the Thames?” (pronouncing it just like it’s spelled). I said, “Yup…thanks very much.”
So there’s that, but I have an even better contender: the pronunciation of Berlin, Connecticut. Although it was named after the city in Germany, it’s pronounced with the stress on the first syllable (i.e. BER’-lin).
Another funny pronunciation is the town to the north, New Britain, which is pronounced (especially by the residents) as “New Breh-EN.”
Lastly, there’s Hebron, Connecticut, which is pronounced “HEE-brun”.
P.S. I’m originally from Texas, but have lived in New England now for more than 20 years.
The same is true of Berlin, NH. There’s a similar pronunciation for Milan (MY-lan) and it appears that the change may have occurred during WWII, but the historic record isn’t very clear.
In Maine there Calais (Cal-lus).
But city/town names can easily be learned by folks from away. It’s the words used in regular conversation that give away people’s upbringing.
Jimmies. New England isn’t a state, but it’s small enough that it could be, and you can generally tell if someone is from New England if they say jimmies (what the rest of you call sprinkles) for the little candy pieces spread on cupcakes. Discounting, as it were, those folks in Southern CT who are mostly New Yorkers anyway.
Well, pronouncing “Havre” correctly (“HAVE-ur”, or /ˈhævər/) places you pretty explicitly in a specific region of Montana, but that’s too specific. Knowing that a certain mountain range is called the “Bear Paws” instead of the “Bears Paw” places you in the same region.
Pronouncing “Helena” (“HELL-in-uh”, or /ˈhelənə/) correctly might be a bit better, but I’m not sure how often that’s mispronounced. What’s most indicative of being a Montanan is knowing that there’s usually no reason to know how to pronounce Helena, because it just isn’t that important or interesting of a town other than the few times the state government does something interesting.
