# The R in Wash **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 27, 2008, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910 "2008-03-27T14:14:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MadTheSwine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MadTheSwine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadTheSwine)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/1 "2008-03-27T14:14:38Z")
I have heard folks say "warsh , sawr ,airier(area), favre. Ok,so that last one i’m just funnin’, but why do they do this? Is it regional or whart? ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/2 "2008-03-27T14:44:51Z")
Regional. I grew up in central PA and learned to say it that way. My first-grade teacher was not impressed when I raised my hand to correct the way she had spelled “wash” on the blackboard. (I got better). Friends from Illinois also put the extra R. I live near our nation’s capital now and can’t say I’ve heard that R in many years. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/3 "2008-03-27T14:56:36Z")
That’s one I don’t understand. I can understand dropping an R, like with the Boston accent, because it’s actually a little easier to say “cah” or “numbuh” than “car” or “number”, but I can’t understand why someone would ADD an R to make the word MORE difficult to say. ---
**Author:** ![essell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/34f0e0/32.png) [@essell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/essell)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/4 "2008-03-27T15:05:31Z")
[QUOTE=Mosier] That’s one I don’t understand. I can understand dropping an R, like with the Boston accent, because it’s actually a little easier to say “cah” or “numbuh” than “car” or “number”, but I can’t understand why someone would ADD an R to make the word MORE difficult to say. [/QUOTE] A common mistake you can spot all over the SDMB in all kinds of debates. You assume that everything people do is chosen. Sometimes we’re just creatures of Herd & Habit. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/5 "2008-03-27T15:18:45Z")
WAG that just popped into my head: With ‘wash’ the mouth is opened a bit, and then it needs to close and the tongue needs to be reshaped. ISTM that some people may have had some trouble making the transition and it ended up as an r-sound, and eventually a regional accent. As for the other words, I don’t know. (Man, it’s hard to compose a message when your coworker is trying to engage you in conversation!) ---
**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/6 "2008-03-27T15:43:46Z")
Total WAG, but perhaps it dates back to British rule and has something to do with the way the British (specifically a London accent, I think?) pronunciations of both short AW and AR/OR sounds are very similar. (War, door, water, fort, wash, etc.) ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/7 "2008-03-27T16:31:11Z")
[QUOTE=Mindfield] Total WAG, but perhaps it dates back to British rule and has something to do with the way the British (specifically a London accent, I think?) pronunciations of both short AW and AR/OR sounds are very similar. (War, door, water, fort, wash, etc.) [/QUOTE] But “wash” in a southern English accent is pronounced “wosh”, to rhyme with “posh”. There’s no “a” vowel there at all. ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/8 "2008-03-27T17:07:30Z")
My dad says it that way. He grew up in Detroy-it. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/9 "2008-03-27T17:52:59Z")
My dad grew up in Iowa…he says “warsh” and has a hard time pronouncing “aluminum.” ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/10 "2008-03-27T18:09:59Z")
I think **Mindfield** is close. The /r/ started out as coloring of the vowel after a [w]. [W] has a funny effect on following vowels in English. Compare: bar car far war charm farm harm warm barn tarn warn For the /sh/ after a short /a/, we have: bash cash crash dash gash hash mash etc., and wash. I know the /a/ before /r/ isn’t the same as the /a/ before /sh/, but in both cases the [w] does something different to its short /a/. In this case, I suspect it caused [an r-colored vowel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-colored_vowel), which in turn became a real /r/. In contrast, it may have been [rhotacism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotacism), where the /sh/ sound morphed into something that would cause an /r/ to show up. And I can remember my older relatives from Central Ohio doing this. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/11 "2008-03-27T18:44:11Z")
Here in Boston they classic accent frequently drops the “R” in the middle of a word. “I Pahked my Cah in Hahvahd Yahd” or, as happened to me: "It’s on Weston Road I can’t find it. It’s right on the map – Weston. Weston? W-E-S-T-O-N? No, _Weston_. W - E - S - T - E - Ah - N." I figure they save up all those dropped "R"s and use they at the ends of words that don’t have them, like “Saw” “I Sawr him” This lets you distinguish between the tool and the past tense of “See”. Although I confess that I still don’t understand “Seen”, as in “I Seen him, too.” ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/12 "2008-03-27T18:48:06Z")
My grandmother grew up in Rochester, NY. She used “warsh.” Oddly enough, my mother, who also grew up in Rochester, or nearby, doesn’t use that pronunciation. ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/13 "2008-03-27T18:55:31Z")
[QUOTE=Mama Zappa] Regional. I grew up in central PA and learned to say it that way. My first-grade teacher was not impressed when I raised my hand to correct the way she had spelled “wash” on the blackboard. (I got better). Friends from Illinois also put the extra R. I live near our nation’s capital now and can’t say I’ve heard that R in many years. [/QUOTE] This last part is odd. I’ve lived in Northen Virginia my whole life and I grew up saying “Warshingon” and “warsh”. When I first heard people saying it without the r, probably about 15 year ago or so, it sounded very strange to me. One thing I have noticed, is that I hear it a lot less now than I did back then. I’d tended to attribute that to the large influx of people from all over during the dot com explosion in the Dulles Coridor. As for why it’s said, I’ll let the experts or wikipedia explain the origins, it just feels easier to say. It intuitively feels like a slight slur because the r sound is kind of between that ah and sh formations… at least how I pronounce them. FWIW, a little bit of effort has generally “fixed” that bit of my speech, though I still pop the r in it from time to time. ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/14 "2008-03-27T19:08:28Z")
I lived in Ohio until first grade. We all said ‘warsh.’ I’ve since stopped saying it, I think my sister still does. We had a joke that ‘warshing’ something got it cleaner than ‘washing’ it. ---
**Author:** ![ShermanAter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ShermanAter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShermanAter)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/15 "2008-03-27T20:04:18Z")
I live in Washington State and have no idear why some folks pronounce it Warshington. ---
**Author:** ![Velma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/85e7bf/32.png) [@Velma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velma)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/16 "2008-03-27T20:06:13Z")
My Dutch grandma said “warsh” and also took out the “thrash.” ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/17 "2008-03-27T20:21:03Z")
I’m from Ohio. My family’s dialect was to say _wash_ as “woish”. When in high school, we trained ourselves to “wahsh” (“ah” being the same vowel in _cot_ and _caught_) to match what we heard on TV. The local dialect varied among “wahsh”, “warsh” and “woish”. A word that is pronounced similarly is _war_. I say it as “wor”, as do most people I know, even here in California. Other interesting pronunciations I grew up with: _mature_: natively “mator”, now I say “machur” _perfect_: “perfek”, now “perfekt” _ancient_: “ainchent”, now more like “ainshent” _what_: “wut”, becoming “hwut” And the infamous _nuclear_: “nucular” vs “nucleear” (I still say the former, because my PhD in physics beats your prestige dialect. 😛 ) ---
**Author:** ![BaneSidhe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c5a1d2/32.png) [@BaneSidhe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BaneSidhe)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/18 "2008-03-27T20:24:31Z")
I know someone who can’t pronounce “aluminum” at ALL. The “warsh” probably comes from the same school of thought that puts a “B” in “Baptist” rendering it “Bab-tist.” ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Socks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a8b319/32.png) [@Captain\_Socks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Socks)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/19 "2008-03-27T20:35:56Z")
[QUOTE=Mama Zappa] I live near our nation’s capital now and can’t say I’ve heard that R in many years. [/QUOTE] I’m from near DC, and I put in the r, and so do both my parents, and I’ve heard many people in DC/Baltimore put in 'r’s on words like “wash”. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910/20 "2008-03-27T23:47:59Z")
Here in Southern Indiana: You go **acrost** the street. You measure the length, width and **heigth.** There’s one **pacific** guy I had in mind for the job. You **warsh** your truck. You buy a can of **pop.** They put your groceries in a **sack.** [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-r-in-wash/442910.md?page=2)