I’m from the NE too and this one depends on the situation. I usually say “intressting” but if I am skeptical it becomes “very IN-teresting”, accompanied by a hairy eyeball. 
Cotton. Go ahead, say it.
If you are like most people, you probably said “cah’ un”, with no ‘T’ sound at all.
When she was still preschool, my niece mentioned my current (at the time) cat’s name as “Cot-ten.” That really grated on my ears, but it made me start thinking about English words and pronunciation and the like.
There are also words that have multiple pronunciations, and if you pick the wrong one for your target audience, you will get weird looks.
A former brother-in-law pronounced “accoutrement” as “a-cooter-ment,” which I found distressing (but turned out to be correct!); “a-coot-re-ment” is the other correct pronunciation; “a-coot-re-mon,” which is how I had heard it spoken before, is NOT one of the listed pronunciation, according to M-W.com.
Now, let’s try “acumen.”
Thanks. I feel (with all due respect to my brother, in most ways an excellent guy) that only semi-literates pronounce “battery”, in any of its meanings, as “bat-tree”.
You Yanks are weird – but no doubt you think the same about us…
nuclear
missile
d&r
Same with mitten and kitten as mentioned upthread. I never thought a thing about mih-en and kih-en until a Montana native came east and pointed it out. I still think mitten and kitten with the t’s are affected. :smack:
<raises hand>
Interestingly enough (or not), I always pronounced it correctly. But I was only exposed to the word through writing - no one I knew actually used it. Then in junior high or high school I started noticing it being used and everyone pronounced it the way you are familiar with (in US south east, if it matters) and for a little while I thought I’d just been pronouncing it wrong for years.
The *ool words pronounced as a double syllable.
My ex husband was from the Midwest (kind of) and he pronounced words such as tool, school, and pool with two syllables. As in skoo - uhl, too - uhl, etc.
Me? skuhl, tuhl, etc.
One syllable.
Perhaps this is a regional dialect of sorts. I can’t remember if I heard it from other people in my travels.
It never really bothered me until I heard HIM saying it.
Then you don’t know me.
And how about “February” and “library” and “temperature”? I pronounce all the R’s.
I wonder if the “mischievous” thing is regional. Without giving away more detail than you’d like, where are the “MISS-chiv-us” folks from?
Another big deal in my native accent is the pronunciation of water. Forget the T, it’s wooder all the way. Also, creek is pronounced crick.
Northeast US - my parents are from Penna and I grew up in NY State.
Err, no, I would say cot’n. Not cot-ton, but there certainly is a T in there.
I pronounce it that way, and I’m from Chicago.
No wooder or crick for me, either.
Interesting stuff, guys. A couple of comments:
- A link, I don’t know if anyone posted yet, to a relevant link from SMBC about a glottal stop:
- Isn’t there something to the idea that humans are naturally lazy? In terms of speaking, won’t we cut corners if it’s easier (for example, the word comfortable?) I mean, do words get distilled down because we just don’t want to work at them? Is it by a certain class of people for a certain reason?
I mean, the poor of England arguably worked less at their consonants and vowels than did the nobles and aristocrats. What’s the reason for this?
- I know a woman who has absolutely PERFECT diction. I can’t get over the smoothness of her voice. She is elegant and you should listen to this woman. Though she’s speaking in front of a crowd in the clip, she speaks the same way all the time. Here’s a link:
- I’m currently doing a lot of Yiddish music. They swallow a lot of their consonants. So a word like oybn (which means over) is not pronounced oy-bin. You’re supposed to smush the bin sound to sound like b-n. Like, just no vowel between the b and the n.
This was brought to mind when people brought up the word “cotton”. Pronouncing the hard “t” makes you sound like the woman in the clip I provided, although IMHO her voice is beautiful.
I’m from Indiana, and as I said, have always pronounced it “MISS-chiv-us.”
I’ve always heard that words with a “t” in the middle, like water or bottle, are one of the points of distinction between American and British accents. The British tend to pronounce the “t,” while Americans are more likely to pronounce the middle consonant as something closer to “d.”
Thanks for clarifying. I was going to ask what words you thought you were referring to in your first post because I had no idea what you meant.
In my dialect the t-sound in mitten, kitten, and battery are equally strong. It’s a full glottal stop.
Just please don’t imitate my MIL.
The brand of soup is pronounced “Camp-Bell’s”. With a distinct pause so the “p” and “b” are clearly distinguished and separated.
And “Connecticutt” is pronounced with the middle “t” very distinct: “ConNECT-ih-cuht” or occasionally “ConNECT-ih-kitt” when she’s feeling really lazy.
Neither ought one sit upon the davenport in the parlor.
She’s sweet and sincere, but it comes off as a grating affectation.
I think I know what you mean! I don’t think most people say “cah-un” unless they have Down’s Syndrome or something. It’s more like “cot’n”, like you said. I don’t know the word for it but maybe some speech/linguistic people do. It’s like a “soft” t. You probably place your tongue slightly differently than when you say “Cot-ton”.
This “soft” t is used in Spanish, I know. Also in Hindu- I know because I knew this woman named Ameeta. It took me awhile to say her name correctly- It wasn’t “Amee-TA” and it wasn’t “Ameeda”. It was something in between, similar to the “cot’n” sound.
I’m sure some Indian languages must have a character for that particular sound.
Speaking of cotton, there’s that other way to pronounce it- seems like a PA regional pronunciation- that sounds like “Codden.” That one does make me wince.
I do, and I don’t have Down’s. It’s not a t, it’s a glottal stop.
For me, it’s mih-en, kih-en, and baddery. (same a as bladder) 
Mature: MaTOUR drives me insane (perhaps because my mother pronounces it like this). Sounds pretentious imo. I say machure