With CNN on in the background all the time, I’m noticing the way some Texans pronounce things.
Warder = water
-dee = -day, as in Mondee (Monday), Tuesdee (Tuesday), etc.
Oal or ahl = oil
Any others?
I have lived in Texas for most of my life. I do not pronounce any of those words that way.
The TV is misguiding you. Texas is too big and diverse to have one single accent.
They are interviewing RURAL people. Rural people pronounce words in odd ways everywhere from Texas to rural parts of Northern states.
Plus, I think TV producers get off on airing footage of Southerners sounding like hicks.
While I do admit, we have trouble pronouncing the word “pie”, for the most part urban Texans speak without much of an accent.
Unless they went to Texas A&M…
I did say some Texans. Do you really think CNN are doing it on purpose?
Anyway, I was just making an observation; not poking fun.
Sorry. A little sensitive about the subject.
And no, I don’t think CNN is purposely saying let’s make the South look dumb.I think they interview dozens of people and say, “This middleman guy is wearing a suit and is fairly well spoken…nah…bring me the guy with 4 teeth, the overalls and who sounds like Boomhauer!”
Let’s face it. Four tooth, overall wearing Boomhaur’s make for better television…
That’s actually the one that Merriam-Webster lists first.
Now, I did always wonder where a goofy name like “Oail” (aka Bum Phillips) came from. Maybe they were trying to spell “oil.”
I noticed that you asked about Texas pronounciations, not whether most people pronounce things like that. True, you’re only a little more likely to hear someone talk with a "Texas accent’ in this state than you are to hear Buck Owens on the radio in Bakersfield, but some people still talk that way, and others still bring out an accent from time to time in the way that others might wear a tux when the occasion calls for it. So, with that said, and in the spirit of celebrating what makes us different:
(First, the obligatory)
Howww-DEE! = “Hey, it’s good to see you again!” (usually an affectation.)
pShh-ee-uhht = “Don’t get me started…” (I only know one person who actually says it this way.)
Personally, I might say ‘oil’ and ‘Wednesday’, or say ‘o-ul’ and ‘Wens-dee.’ It depends on how I’m speaking at the moment. I also ‘warsh’ my clothes, though that may be because my grandmother was from Minnesota.
I also have some family friends who spoke exactly like Charlie Pride, which is a little ironic considering that they were racist until they saw the world outside their home county (Come to think of it, they also say shit with three or four syllables.)
The Texas state legislature seems to be a breeding ground for bad accents. Way back when, Molly Ivins made the clain that this was because the lege was controlled by rural legislators and no one wants to come off as correcting the speech of the folks who control the various subcommittees. Thanks to them, a lot of legal folks get a “purr dah-m” to cover their daily expenditures, and lawyers across the state select jurors during the “vor-darr” part of a trial.
Finally, the ‘Texas accent’ of talking through gritted teeth (i.e., ‘Tek-shush’) seems to be a bad impersonation of John Connally. It’s possible that it’s a local accent somewhere, but George W. Bush is the only other person who I have heard that talks like that. My guess is that Connally had power along with the impediment, and others copied the latter in hopes of gaining the former.
My grandmother, who was born and raised in West Texas, always pronounced ‘eggs’ as aigs.
In my experience as a fifth-generation Texan, the accent you are referring to is a rural accent.
Like small towns in any state, there’s a definite difference.
I was raised in South Texas, and people from out of state always give me crap for “not sounding TEXAN,” b/c they’ve heard the cliches and exaggerations and assume that everybody “down here” talks like they’ve got a mouth full of marbles.
FTR, I have relatives who talk that way…but I find it as jarring as anybody else. Kind of like if I assumed everybody in New York talks like Rosie Perez. (My bad if she isn’t even from NYS, but I always assumed so.)
However, in the spirit of fun, I will share with you my first experience in rural Texas English. (Specifically, one of my aunts in West Texas giving directions to the wedding.) It was scalded into my memory banks immediately, at the age of eight. I’d never heard anything like it in my life.
“Ef yew git past McDownauld’s yew’ve gow-en tew faw-ur.”
(If you get past McDonald’s you’ve gone too far.)
I’d never heard anyone make “far” into a two-syllable word. Much less “gone.”
I may never be the same.
Mr. Athena lived in Texas for many years. His will occasionally lapse into a rural Texas accent, mostly when he’s had a few beers and wants to play counterpoint to our Yooper impressions. He always gets a good laugh when he starts pronouncing “homosexual” as “home-mox-shul”, accent on the middle syllable. I dunno if it’s authentic rural Texas or not, but it’s pretty damn funny.
Also, don’t bother with trying to pronounce German vowel combinations correctly. New Braunfels (a small city north of San Antonio) is pronounced “New Bronfuls.” Boerne (west of S.A.) is pronounced “Burn-ee”, and Waelder is pronounced ‘Welder.’
The Guadalupe River runs through New Braunfels. There’s a long history of calling it the “Guadaloop”, which is a little embarrasing considering that it was named for the sighting of the virgin Mary.
Koenig Lane in Austin is pronounced more or less correctly (“Ke-nig”), but tell it to all of the folks not from around here who do radio and TV commercial voiceovers.
While doing his On the Road series, Charles Kuralt stopped at the Dairy Queen in Mexia and asked a kid working there how they pronounced the name. She answered “DEH-REE QUAIN” (fwiw, Mexia is pronounced “Muh-HAY-yuh.”)
ah, cornflakes, you sound like a Central Texan. Howdy over thair! I don’t know how Gruene is pronounced in German, but we say “green.”
I have been away from my home state for many years, but New Englanders laugh when I say “water.” It’s “war-ter,” which causes mirth among the Yankees. I’ve been known to break out into a “fiddin’ta” every now and then, as in “I’m fiddin’ta get me a six-pack of Shiner at the u-tote 'em,” which is grammatically and physically impossible in Massachusetts.