I don’t hear any of those as homonyms…I would term those pronounciations as failures. Who pronounces “Don” and “Dawn” identically?
I also don’t buy into the regional dialect thing. I went to school with southerners who had no problems with enunciation, blacks who did not say “axed”, and plenty of Chicagoans who did not “too and tree” their way through counting exercises.
It’s enunciation, it’s being aware that how you speak reflects on you personally, and holding your speech to a higher standard. Obviously, I don’t buy into the “right”-ness of linguistic slippage.
As far as the OP…at my last job, I had a girl sitting near me who always like to deflect a point of contention by saying it was “mute”. She also bemoaned the lack of empathy for our clients, calling it a “tapestry”.
Maybe I’m ignorant, but I’m under the impression that you bring and object to something, and you take and object away from something. So I would bring potato salad to the picnic ant take the empty containers with me when I leave. I don’t understand why your examples all need to be “takes.”
Just so you know, some of us intentionally errorize words and phrases for comic relief. Yes, we are errorists. :eek: I like “half of one, six dozen of the other,” and I go to “Radio Snack” if I need an amusing electronic doodad. I listen to “The Whistle and Padlock” on National Public Radio. My dad’s charming widow turns a euphemism back on itself to say it doesn’t mean “doodly-twat.” Caught in a mistake, she says, “Ohhh, I made a fox’s paw!”
Bring and Take are tricky, and they cause a lot of arguments. My own impression is that it depends on the location of the speaker. Take is away from the speaker, and bring is toward the speaker. So, when you call your mechanic to say, “I need to take my car in for a tune-up,” and he replies, “Sure, bring it in tomorrow morning,” both are correct.
I get popped on picture every time. I pronounce it pitcher. Also, growing up, for some odd reason I pronouned railroad like rale-road, emphasis on a long ‘a’.
Yes, right. And it also has to do with where the speaker is when s/he says it, as in bring it here / take it there, and come here / go there. If we’re to bring their potato salad to our next picnic, it sounds like the deli will be having our next picnic, but since it’s not, we should be told to “take” it to our next picnic.
I don’t have a drawl at all and I pronounce them all the same. I guess it’s pretty widespread.
Those are two different vowels altogether, actually. (“au” represents one vowel in this case.) I’m talking about phonetic vowels, ie vowel sounds, not “spelling” vowels; don’t let the actual letters representing the vowels confuse you, as they tend to mean almost nothing useful.
Why do you insist that other people who speak differently from you have “problems”? I’ll be honest, you’re really starting to piss me off, and I’m biting my tongue a fair bit at this point.
You’re talking about register, which refers to the conscious process speakers use to modify their language for the setting they’re in. Unless, of course, you speak the exact same way at an interview, in church, or when talking to your mother-in-law as you would at a Halloween party.
Who says language is “slipping”? Linguistic change, sometimes radical change, has been occurring for thousands of years. Of course, maybe you think it’s a travesty that “mice” is pronounced the way it is today, and that Proper English Speakers should pronounce it “meese” like those Proper Englishmen of the late 12th century, in which case I’m afraid I can’t help you.
OK, that’s funny.
Actually, no, we pronounce both the way you would say “Don”.
That’s it exactly. I am from west central Louisiana, and I have a noticeable accent (to people with a different accent, of course), and I spent the years from age ten to twenty in southeastern Pennsylvania. I’ve lost all that particular accent now, though I do use some Pennsylvania words, like “soda.”
It’s much easier for me to say the words than to describe how I say them, since I lack the linguistics background. I also pronounce poor/pore/pour all the same way.
Though my grasp of grammar is generally good, take and bring still confuse me.
That’s because the difference has been practically rendered meaningless in modern (American?) English. Many of us would love it if people could distinguish correctly between who and whom, but the language has moved away from that. C’est la vie.
I’d be happy to say “I need to bring my car in for a tune-up” as the implication would be I’m going to the person I’m talking to, and the car is coming with me; and he could say “Sure, bring it in tomorrow morning” or “Sorry, we’re booked up solid - you could bring it in the week after next, or take it to Smith’s if you’re in a hurry”.
I once managed a hotel near a famous medical center. We had a woman come in to rent a room because her husband had been admitted to the hospital with “cerebral hemmoroids” and they were going to do some “testes” later that day.
It’s a good thing I read the whole thread before replying! This mix-up got really weird when someone told me she “doesn’t like her guys so emancipated” as someone we knew.
Yeah, okay. I’m confused too now. Maybe it’s something like “take” is paired up with “go”, and “bring” is paired up with “come”?
