I always say “day”, too.
So in sports, you should “bring it” to home games and “take it” to road games.
Not really. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota have more in common with the New England states than with the Midwest.
I personally find that people around here (northern Arkansas) say something that sounds more like Wuss-CON-sun (all real words.)
The people from Wisconsin whom I have heard pronouncing their state’s name invariably pronounce it as “Wuh-SCAN-sn” with a pronounced whine.
Thanks for the term!
And yeah, there are exceptions even to my simple rules. Later that very day I found myself texting to a fellow keyboard player: “Going to jam, bringing keyboards” so he’d know he didn’t have to bring (take?) his.
lol
Wait. What? <looks it up> Mind blown.
You just don’t want to get victuals all over your cummerbund.
For what it’s worth, M-W gives cumberbund as a secondary pronunciation. And I see Firefox underlines neither.
What about the way Americans say “barbiturate”? Is that one consonant just silent, like the T in “often”?
Also, “ophthalmologist.” And “turmeric.” Do they just have silent letters, or does most of the country mispronounce them?
I thought Canadians were bad in general with the letter T, but it’s sounding from this thread like Americans are even worse. I, and everyone I know definitely pronounce the “t” in “often”. We all say “…day” too.
However, most Canadians pronounce t in the middle of words a the letter “d”. Water, butter, later, brutal…all said with a “d” sound. We don’t tend to drop things altogether, just replace them. “Often” seems to be an exception though, and I hear the “t” sound there.
Most people I know say “groceries” as “grosheries”, and “asphalt” as “ashphalt”. I don’t know why. I don’t do it and my wife is trying with some success to stop.
A peeve I remembered today: the news people on CBC pronounce “news” almost as a 2 syllable word…it sort of sounds like “knee-use”, which aggravates the hell out of me.
I agree 100%. It’s the engineer in me I guess. Optimist says half full, pessimist says half empty, and process engineer says the glass has 100% surge capacity.
/r/ often gets dropped when it is near another /r/. And /fθ/ (phth) is a difficult combination to say, and I don’t believe anyone around here ever says it, so it becomes /pθ/ (pth). The /l/ (L) has the same problem as the /r/–too many together are hard to say. /ur/, when followed by a vowel, seems to be hard to say as well.
And, yes, all of those are standard pronunciations.
Wow. I never knew that word had an “r” in it. Not sure how I missed that my whole life.
Lets not forget the whole tohMAto - tohMAYto debacle.
In my mind it’s tohMAto, though I mostly say it the other way since I now live in SC and I’m tired of the weird looks I get. FWIW, I grew up in southern CT.
I don’t know what you mean by “mispronounce.” The standard American pronunciations of those words have no silent letters.
In other words, if you are asking whether the “R” in “turmeric” is pronounced, the answer is yes.
[Cummerbund.]
It is indeed a wonderful word. Edward Lear wrote a mock-tragic-horror poem with that title, full of deliberately misused words from India; about the beautiful heroine’s falling victim to the dread people-eating monster the Cummerbund. First verse:
“She sate upon her Dobie
To watch the evening star,
And all the Punkahs as they passed
Cried ‘My ! How fair you are !’
Around her bower, with quivering leaves,
The tall Kamsamahs grew;
And Kitmutgars in wild festoons
Hung down from Tchokis blue.”
I listen to CBC Radio all the time, and I’ve noticed it too!
Having never heard the word pronounced my entire life until recently, I always thought the capital of Australia was pronounced can-BEH-ruh. Then I met someone from Australia, who said he was from “the capital, CAN-bra.” To which, I thought to myself, “But, that’s not the capital, the capital is. . .(long pause). . . oh.”
By the way, is it “CAN-bra” or “CAN-buh-ruh”? It sounded more like he pronounced it as 2 syllables rather than 3, but Merriam-Webster online gives a 3-syllable version.
Going back to “hyperbole,” Natasha Bedingfield had a #1 hit in the UK and Top 20 in the US with “These Words,” in which there is a spoken section where she says there is “no hyper-bowl to hide behind.” Considering how many hands (and ears) a major-label release must go through before making it to the public, I’m surprised that it wasn’t fixed.
It’s really only funny if you know what the words actually mean.
Dhobi = laundryman
Pankha = fan (the kind that keeps you cool)
Khansamah = cook
Khitmutgar = waiter
Chowki = prison
That reminds me of one of my favorite Jeopardy moments. The answer was “This is how you pronounce the capital of Kentucky.”
The first contestant rang in and said “What is ‘Loo-ee-vill’?”
Alex said “No.”
The second contestant rang in, and tried to go a little more slack-jawed, and said "What is “Loo-a-vull’?”
Alex said “No,” looking slightly disgusted.
The last contested rang in, and tried to sound not just slack-jawed, but drunk, and maybe a little, umm, “special.” She said something like “What is ‘Laahhh-uhh-vlll’?”
Alex could barely contain his disdain when he informed them the correct question was “What is ‘Frankfort’?”
Maybe she was looking for something to hide behind literally, like, I don’t know, a human-sized bowl? You never know what might be backstage from some leftover set.
I’m sure a lot of producers don’t even listen, considering the garbage lyrics that have been part of popular music since I don’t know when. If producers made it their business to say “‘Song she brang me?’ that’s not even correct grammar.” Or “Why don’t you change that to ‘I’m proud to be in America, where at least I know I’m free,’ because ‘where’ is functioning as a pronoun of place, and needs an antecedent, which ends up being ‘I,’ since ‘American’ is an adjective, not a noun,” probably a lot of hits would never get made.
They just record it, market it, and think about the “pompatus” of love. All the way to the bank.
Just between you and I. :smack:
Thanks ! “Chowki” is the one which had always puzzled me, till now – had no idea what it meant. Hence, no doubt, the British slang expression “chokey” = prison: the word from India, plus the figure-of-speech bonus, of imprisonment feeling like a choking experience.
Britain and India, in their long love-hate relationship, have always enjoyed taking the piss (in the main, affectionately) out of each other. I’ve always liked the mostly-nonsense British nineteenth-century pseudo-Indian jingle: starting off from the name of Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebahoy, a well-known (Parsee, I believe) Indian philanthropist of that era.
“Jamsetjee ma Jejeebahoy,
Jabbery dhobi poori [fried bread snack]
Ikey sikey pikey crikey,
Chillungowallabadoorie”.