St. Patrick's Day question (Why "Paddy"?)

[WotNot]

@Gary_T

I can’t help but think there was more to this than just some T/D confusion (e.g., perhaps your pronunciation of some other portion of the word was unfamiliar to her). It beggars belief that she couldn’t make out that you wanted water.

You’re probably right, yes. Obviously, there’s considerable variation on both sides of the pond, but a typical American pronunciation of water might be “wodd’r”, whereas a typical British pronunciation would be “wawtuh”. The only sound they actually have in common is the initial “w”.

Having said which, it is a little surprising that a waitress couldn’t work out what was meant, in context. But njtt’s is the umpteenth example I’ve come across of exactly the same miscommunication, so it does seem to be common.

[Bayesian_Empirimancer]

Funny, I posed this same question last night. From the random bartender, so you have to take this with a gain of salt, Paddy is short for Patrick, and Patty is short for Patricia. It made more sense last night…

[Bootis]

@Monstera_deliciosa

Okay, this is GQ and that wasn’t a factual answer. Sorry about that.

An exact phrase search on Google turns up 49,200,000 hits for “St. Patty’s Day,” but only 372,000 hits for “St. Paddy’s Day.”

While google results don’t necessarily prove more popular usage (sometimes results can be swayed by one particular reference that dominates the results), I think in this case the premise in the OP is pretty much shown to be wrong

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Bootis

While google results don’t necessarily prove more popular usage (sometimes results can be swayed by one particular reference that dominates the results), I think in this case the premise in the OP is pretty much shown to be wrong

I concede I may have overstated the case. But the current St. Patrick’s Day Joke Thread has eight separate Paddys and no Pattys.

[pulykamell]

@Gary_T

Hmm. I’m American, and my experience is what Lamia describes, rather than what pulykamell and njtt relate. Part of it may be what part of the country each of us is in; there can be significant regional variants. I’m thinking also that part of it may be that the distinction between medial “t” and “d” is quite subtle. Someone who is accustomed to hearing a more pronounced differentiation may not perceive the difference, while Lamia and I may be trained through experience to detect it.

Whatever it is, it’s not unusual. Here’s the Wikipedia page on American English:

The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced the same. For many speakers, this merger is incomplete and does not occur after /aɪ/; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with [əɪ] and rider with [aɪ]. This is a form of Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect /aʊ/. In some areas and idiolects, a phonemic distinction between what elsewhere become homophones through this process is maintained by vowel lengthening in the vowel preceding the formerly voiced consonant, e.g., [læ:·ɾɹ̩] for “ladder” as opposed to [læ·ɾɹ̩] for “latter”.

(Emphasis mine.)

So there’s rules where it occurs and where it doesn’t.

What I should actually say is that “latter” and “ladder” have the same sound in the way I articulate it and in the way I hear most Americans articulate it, but it’s neither quite the unvoiced “t” or the voiced “d.” It’s an alveolar flap vs. a voiceless (in the case of “t”) or voiced (in the case of “d”) alveolar plosive. It sounds to many speakers like a voiced “d”, because it is indeed voiced. (And, interesting to me at least, I do pronounce “writer” and “rider” differently, with that form of Canadian raising mentioned in my accent.)