Okay, this is actually something that keeps getting me into trouble. People insist I pronounce words like dagger wrong. I say dayger. It’s not an exaggerated DAY-ger, but it’s close (ASCII is woefully inadequate for representing sound). They say it’s more like dahger, where the dah sound is like the beginning of dad.
It’s the same with other words containing the -ag sound: bag, snag, magazine. I do, however, say ahgriculture.
I figured it might be a regional thing so I asked around and I’ve had a few people in western Canada agree with me, but not all. Since I grew up in Winnipeg and Calgary, might this be it? Or am I just a freak?
it’s a regional thing. canadian english and united states english are different. i pronounce it the way it is phonetically spelled in webster’s collegiate dictionary.
Rhymes with “stagger”, “bagger”, “nagger”, “dragger”…
There is a word, “Dago”, pronounced “day-go”, meaning person of Italian descent (not a compliment). Maybe while you were growing up you got hold of this word and combined it with “dagger”.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Notthemama, I just learnt that word “dago” but I was told it applies to anyone of either Italian, Spanish or Portuguese descent and it derives from the Spanish name Diego.
Yes, it is hard to get at pronounciations in writing, isn’t it. It looks like you’re using a long A as in day. It’s a short A as in Mack, hack, shack, lack, pack, brat, map, trap.
It’s kinda weird that I’ve been mispronouncing such a common phoneme for such a long time without realizing it.
Dagger with a short A still sounds a little stilted coming from me. Dahger. Dahger. Hum.
It’s not really an accent. Maybe it is. That’s what I’ve been trying to determine. But it’s not an accent if I’m the only who says it like that. Then it’s a mispronounciation
Maybe something’s wrong with the way I hear the sound. Because, listening to recordings, I sometimes actually hear people saying something close to dayger. I think.
Sigh. Good thing for written media.
``You’re just an empty cage girl if you kill the bird.’’ – Tori Amos.
My background is in acting and performance (before I became an underpaid screenwriter :)), and we learned that certain words, for whatever reason, are pronounced randomly in various locales.
For example: The substitution of “ay” for the short “A” and “E” (e.g. “hat” and “beg”) is common in the Rocky mountain region and in California. Such as: “bayg of groceries” and “tape maysure.”
Not weird, just regional. Which of course brings up another basic truism: There’s no such thing as an accent, only dialects. To say “accent” implies that there’s a “right” way to speak a language, and every other way is “with an accent.” Rather, there is one central language form, and many different variations of dialect, none of which is necessarily more correct than any other.
Don’t feel too wierd…I am from California and I say “dayger”. I also say “bayg”. I’ve never even heard anyone say it the other way and if I did I’d think they were affecting an English accent and laugh at them. So there.
Hmmm…Los Angeles native here - I don’t say “bayg” or “maysure”, never have. Not that I think it sounds that off or freaky. But that’s not how I say it. California’s a big state, perhaps other areas use this pronunciation.
