LOL I think you are referring more to the Boston accent, with the lack of R’s. I wasn’t born in Mass and have found that the Boston accent isn’t really as prevelant in Boston as it is in the surrounding areas (my theory is that with Boston being such a college town, the constant influx of new people keeps the amount of people with the boston accent down).
Good call on the other ones though - I hadn’t even thought of them.
Add ‘chemsfed’ (and maybe it doesn’t even have the ‘s’) for Chelmsford to the list.
I once had my english teacher (either ninth or tenth grade, I forget which) try to convince me that refrigerator had a ‘d’ in it simply because its pronounced with a ‘d’ (well, it ends up that way, anyway).
We have a Cherry Quay Road in my town. After 37 years of hearing people say “Cherry Kway Road”, I’m convinced that I’m the only person in town who doesn’t mispronounce it.
I’m also convinced that people hate it when you tell them that they’re mispronoucing the name of their street.
Despite dictionaries and people who know how to pronounce it, after this much time you have to accept that for this street it is indeed Cherry Kway Road and not Cherry Ká Road. This is how a language changes and evolves.
[Mitch Hedberg] Next time you spell xylophone, spell it with a “Z”. If someone tells you that you spelled it wrong, say, “No I didn’t.”[/Mitch Hedberg]
You beat me to it. I had a Kindergarten teacher who always pronounced “February” in a way that emphasized the r. I’ve been saying it that way ever since, and any time someone questions my pronunciation, I ask them to spell the word. Out the dozen or so times that this has happened, only one person actually spelled it correctly.
[Pirates of Penzance]
When you said “offen”, did you mean “orphan” � a person who has lost his parents, or “often”, frequently?
[/POP]
Hmmm. Pronounce ‘quay’ in Britain anything other than ‘key’, and you’ll get funny looks. But when I go elsewhere, I accept they’ve got different pronunciations (and impressed a whole bunch of friends by getting Norquay right first time, thankyou SDMB!)
On the other hand, when people get pronunciations wrong around here, they’ll be corrected, and I don’t see why they should be offended. (Have a go at Monewden and Debach, if you want )
It’s funny how Britain has happily adopted some modern creations of ‘ize’/‘ise’ verbs (computerise, privatise, prioritise), but others have become Americanisms through no fault of their own.
The field having to do with stars that is a legitimate science should be spelled “astrology.” Then, of course, the field (if “field” is even the right word) we currently call “astrology” which has to do with star signs and such, would probably be referred to as “astronomy.”
I have no idea how we would make the switch without confusing everyone, though.
Through. Talk about a word that’s longer than it needs to be. Fast food joints all over the country have a “drive-thru,” and I really wish that this spelling would catch on in everyday use. For a while I used the spelling “thru” in my posts in the SDMB, but it didn’t catch.
