That’s isn’t, doesn’t, wasn’t as I’ve heard them pronounced by people from Kansas, Arkansas, and Wyoming. The “s” is missing. Actually, they sound more like idden, dudden, and wudden now that I think about it.
Is this sort of pronunciation common to those states or to a larger region? Just curious.
Yeah, I’m from Arkansas, and I talk like that if I don’t watch myself. I think it’s definitely something that’s not necessarily just a southern/midwestern/great plains accent, but perhaps just kind of American Informal, for lack of a better term. My WAG is that it’s rooted in the Scotch-Irish Appalachian thing that migrated westward, but I could easily be wrong about that.
In New York we miss a few ‘s’ too. I-nt (ain’t works in a pinch), don’t (as in "no it don’t) and wa’-int. Funny, New Yorkers don’t have the time to enunciate all the letters but have plenty of time to insert extra syllables.
I learned talking in Alabama, and I say idn’t, dudn’t, wudn’t about half the time.
Since we’re on the Dope, and it’s a welcome place for being pedantic, Dictionary.com tells me that it’s the substitution of a stop consonant for a sibilant in anticipation of the ‘articulatory posture of the tongue for the ‘n’ sound.’ In other words, we’re lazy.
Sure, absolutely. I hear that out West (Oregon) all the time. Not exclusively, of course, but I use it myself, I hear other people use it, and it sounds normal enough to me.
I wonder if it’s one of those things like ‘soda’ and ‘pop’. It threw me off when I first heard it. I pictured him going past the house, but then talked about going home from there later. I was very confused for a bit.
I’m from Pennsylvania and while it wasn’t (wudn’t) the norm to talk that way, I’ve heard it a few times and probably done it a few times myself. Usually in very casual speech where I’m not making any particular effort to pronounce my words correctly.
Now that I live near Warshington, I don’t do it any more :D.