# Where are you from in the US if you pronouce "room" as "rum"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 24, 2004, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095 "2004-06-24T22:52:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2004, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/1 "2004-06-24T22:52:01Z")
I mostly notice Sam Waterston from _Law & Order_ pronouncing it this way. “Detective Logan’s a Mick. I’m a Mick sir. And if you don’t shutup, I’m going to lose control and throw you out of the rum.” His Bio says he’s from Northern Mass, but I know several people from that area and I’ve never heard them pronounce “room” that way. Is it some upper-crust thing? Yale thing? Do any Dopers pronounce it that way? Just curious. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2004, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/2 "2004-06-24T23:00:01Z")
> [@Dooku](#): > > I mostly notice Sam Waterston from _Law & Order_ pronouncing it this way. “Detective Logan’s a Mick. I’m a Mick sir. And if you don’t shutup, I’m going to lose control and throw you out of the rum.” > > His Bio says he’s from Northern Mass, but I know several people from that area and I’ve never heard them pronounce “room” that way. Is it some upper-crust thing? Yale thing? Do any Dopers pronounce it that way? Just curious. I think it’s more “r[shwa]m” than “rum,” FWIW. I know people who pronounce “roof” and “root” the same way. ---
**Author:** ![AwSnappity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a3d4f5/32.png) [@AwSnappity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AwSnappity)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2004, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/3 "2004-06-24T23:13:17Z")
My friend says that, and her family is from New Hampshire, although she has lived most of her life in Illinois (I can assure you it is not a midwest thing). ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2004, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/4 "2004-06-24T23:18:19Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > I think it’s more “r[shwa]m” than “rum,” FWIW. I know people who pronounce “roof” and “root” the same way. I think most Americans pronounce roof and root the same (except for the last two letters). I know I do, although I don’t pronounce room the way the OP describes. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2004, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/5 "2004-06-24T23:36:45Z")
I pronounce roof the same way as hoof, but I pronounce root the same as hoot. All my brothers do too, so I guess we picked it up growing up in the Midwest. I agree that when Sam Waterston says it it’s more like the way I say “roof” and “hoof”, but I also pronounce rum the same way. To listen to him saying it in the quote I used above go to [this](http://www.armchairnews.com/losounds/) site and play “mick.wav” ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2004, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/6 "2004-06-25T03:12:53Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > I think most Americans pronounce roof and root the same (except for the last two letters). I know I do, although I don’t pronounce room the way the OP describes. I can’t remember which way I’m supposed to pronounce it. “Route” I say both “root” and “rowt,” “root” rhymes with both “foot” and “hoot,” and the same with “roof.” I usually say it to rhyme with “foot”… I think. “Room,” however, gets the “oo” sound. As for the OP, the people I knew who pronounced room similar to “rum” were all from Buffalo, working class. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2004, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/7 "2004-06-25T03:42:14Z")
The results of the [American Dialect Survey](http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/staticmaps/q_25.html) don’t seem to show any obvious clustering. ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2004, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/8 "2004-06-25T04:07:00Z")
I’ve heard both forms in California and it doesn’t seem to matter where the people hailed from. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2004, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/9 "2004-06-25T04:26:07Z")
I wish I knew of some way to insert IPA characters into posts. I haven’t seen the show, so I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about. This may or may not be helpful. This is a simplification, but there are sort of three “u” sounds in Enlgish. I’ll try to pick words that have pronounciations that most people agree on. First we have /u/, as in the word “who”, “you”, “moo” (like a cow), “oooo, i’m telling!” (little sister), etc. Then there is the schwah-like /^/, as in “up”, “tummy”, and “under” Finally we have /U/, as in “hood”, “could” (i don’t say the /l/, do you?), and “book”. Most places I have lived, people prounce “room”, “roof”, and “root”, with /u/. I spent some time about an hour south of Chicago, and people instead used the vowel /U/. I have not noticed this pronounciation in the central east coast, the southwest, or the west coast (although on preview I see that BobT has). I have not spent much time in the southeast, northwest, or extreme northeastern US so I can’t comment about those places. **Dooku** , if you really want to know about how they say things at Yale and no one answers, you can bug me in the fall after I start there. I never thought of it as an upper crust thing, because Kankakee IL is most definately not upper crust. PS. **John Mace** , I don’t think **lissener** was saying that it’s unusual that people pronouce “roof” and “root” the same way, but that for those two words people use the vowel that is questioned in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![StephenG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7feea3/32.png) [@StephenG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StephenG)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2004, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/10 "2004-06-25T05:28:14Z")
I don’t think the shortened vowel is a Massachusetts trait, either. As a Mass. native, I’d use the same vowel ( **Ruken** ’s /u/) for “who”, “roof”, “root”, “route”, “room”, and “hoot”. “Hoof”, “foot”, and “could” all get /U/. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2004, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/11 "2004-06-25T05:43:10Z")
> [@StephenG](#): > > I don’t think the shortened vowel is a Massachusetts trait, either. > > As a Mass. native, I’d use the same vowel ( **Ruken** ’s /u/) for “who”, “roof”, “root”, “route”, “room”, and “hoot”. > “Hoof”, “foot”, and “could” all get /U/. I’m originally from MA, and the only thing I’d add (and it might just be me) is that “route” gets pronounced differently if it’s a verb. It’s “\*Root \* 66”, but it’s “Please \*rowt \* the red wire under the blue one”. After all, Cisco makes _Rowters_, not _Rooters_. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2004, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/12 "2004-06-25T12:44:22Z")
My grandmother, born and raised in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (something like 30 miles north of Philadelphia), pronounced “roof” as “ruf”, and “food” as “fud”, etc. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2004, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/13 "2004-06-26T01:35:13Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > My grandmother, born and raised in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (something like 30 miles north of Philadelphia), pronounced “roof” as “ruf”, and “food” as “fud”, etc. Yes, that pronunciation sounds a lot like some of my Pennsy relatives. ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2004, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/14 "2004-06-26T04:44:12Z")
I can hear my high school math teacher saying it “rum”. She was from southwestern Pennsylvania. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2004, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/15 "2004-06-26T13:29:18Z")
For me, from Southern Ontario, the vowels in “roof”, “root”, “hoof”, and “hoot” are all pronounced the same, **Ruken** ’s /u/. **John Mace** , I pronounce “route” and “router” in two ways, but differently than you describe. If it has to do with the rotating power tool used to cut grooves in wood, I say “rowt”; if it has to do with maps, paths, or networks, I say “root”. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2004, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-you-from-in-the-us-if-you-pronouce-room-as-rum/252095/16 "2004-06-26T18:16:19Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > I think it’s more “r[shwa]m” than “rum,” FWIW. I know people who pronounce “roof” and “root” the same way. I do! ‘Rufe’ and ‘Rute’. Is that what you mean?