You’re right. I should have said, “Human is not pronounced yew man, Terry Gross!”. Or perhaps more simply, "There’s an ‘h’ in human, Terry Gross!’ " Or even more simply, “Shut up, Terry Gross!” Which is what I often end up yelling at the radio when listening to Fresh Air.
Dialing it down a bit, I do know that it’s just a dialect difference, and there’s nothing objectively wrong with saying “yewmore” and “yewje”; but I find it grating as hell.
OK, you’ve given me the opening to post something I’ve wanted to but haven’t for fear of it being too off-topic.
I have noticed, and in a far more recent time frame (no more than two or three years), a weird pronunciation thing among a fair number of people. I don’t know if I can accurately describe it on the printed page, and I may not be choosing the best examples.
But it seems to involve dropping hard consonants in the middle of certain words. So “didn’t” comes out more like “dih-ent,” or “couldn’t” more like “cooh-ent.”
This is NOT the result of a regional dialect or simple careless, casual speaking. I’ve heard it from speakers who are obviously intelligent and otherwise quite well-spoken. But it ends up giving their speech an almost juvenile cast…not quite baby talk, but vaguely disturbing.
I still feel as if I’m not describing this well enough, and that I should be able to come up with better examples of this. The next time I hear this in action, and I know I will, I’ll post again.
Has anyone else heard something like this, and can you add to what I’m saying?
I have heard this, but I always assumed it was a regional thing. But you’re saying it’s not? You’re talking about what’s called a “glottal stop,” right?
I wanted to add more to the kill list:
“Collaborative,” but used as a noun, as in: “We need to find some more collaboratives,” instead of, “We need to establish collaborative relationships with more clinics,” or “We need to collaborate with more clinics.” In the grant writing world, I come across this a lot. It’s a wonder I have any hair left.
A close cousin is “partner,” but used as a verb, as in, “We need to partner with more clinics,” instead of “We need to establish partnerships with more clinics,” or “Bring on more clinics as partners.”
I’ve heard it from a number of people in my area, whereas I don’t recall ever hearing it prior to the last two or three years. But I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it on TV or radio of national origin too.
I always thought a glottal stop involved something you do in the throat. But the last entry on the page you linked to says…
…and I guess it’s something like this, as in those words the “t” sound isn’t really emphasized.
In my examples, my impression is that in addition to the consonant being omitted, the vowel that immediately follows is given more force than it would with a conventional pronunciation of, say, “didn’t.” And it does seem as if that may come from the throat.
Yes, “Oh no you dih-ent” and “Coo-ent care less”
Remembered a couple more:
“non-starter” This one makes me want to SCREAM.
And let’s give “leap of faith” a rest for a while. It’s been worn out from overuse to mean “taking a chance,” “venturing into the unknown,” hoping for the best," and a wide range of contexts far afield from what Kirkegaard meant (and he didn’t use exactly that phrase anyway).
Who in bloody blue blazes decided that “ask” can be used as a noun?
Ah, yes… The Ask.
I’m in the fund-raising business and one does hear it used that way.
Partly popularized by Sam Lipsyte, who wrote a funny, well-liked short novel by that name a couple years ago.
Haven’t read the entire thread, but …
I hate hearing single mothers refer to their young sons as “my little man”. To my ears, anyway, it just carries this implication that they’re putting an unreasonable expectation on a young child to fulfill the role of a man in their lives.
I’ve heard plenty of married fathers say this, specifically married black fathers.
“The plural of anecdote is not data”. Not only is that the exact opposite of the original quote, if you got no anecdotes, you got no data.
While it’s correct to say that one or two or even a hundred anecdotes are not sufficient data to support a claim, and that unverified anecdotes are pretty much worthless, if you’re going to tell me that X people in a clinical trial were given treatment Y and 52% responded favorably you’d better have X verifiable anecdotes to back that up. Otherwise I’m handing that number back to you and washing my hands, because you probably pulled those numbers out of your backside.
Thanks for reopening this thread! It saves me the trouble.
With Black Friday (also a phrase that can take a long walk off of a short pier) approaching, I’ve already reached my yearly limit for the term “doorbuster”!
The only thing that should be termed a “doorbuster” is… an axe.
Here’s a new wonderful one that’s popping up; “bae.” It’s the hip way to refer to your significant other and, according to UrbanDictionary, is either short for “baby” or stands for “Before Anyone Else,” which is even worse. It’s used like “baby” though, e.g. “Love you Bae!”
So far I think it’s mostly used on the internet, and if the CDC will drop the Ebola thing and concentrate on this new disease, maybe we can contain it there while we search for a way to eradicate it. If this shit goes airborne, we’re all gonna be in a world of hurt.
Boot scootin’ to refer to country/western dancing. Is this expression used outside of Texas? I hate it. Hate the very sound of the syllables.
I’ve heard it used lots of places outside of Texas, but not much outside of the 80s. Is it still used in Texas?
Boot scootin instantly makes me think of the motion one makes when it is discovered that one has stepped in some dog shit. Now that’s what I call boot scootin!
. . . we need to stop saying at the end of the day.
Seeing the press about “Joe Dirt 2” reminded me of another one.
Mullet
I was in high school and college in the 70s to early 80s. We did not wear mullets. We just wore our hair long in back. There was no cutesy name for it.
Mullet sounds like a type of fish. I’m glad that haircut was long in my past before finding out it had a name.
It’s not as bad as the hoodie. Sounds like something only babies and teenaged girls are supposed to wear.