# Your Pronunciation **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 23, 2021, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375 "2021-08-23T15:27:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/221 "2021-09-09T19:55:30Z")
There’s one particular context where I always screw up. In the hymn “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” there is a line that goes like this: _All hail the pow’r of Jesus’ Name! Let angels prostrate fall;_ Every single time I sing that hymn in church I am thinking “don’t say prostate…don’t say prostate…don’t say prostate…” all the time as the dreaded line approaches. Then I sing out “Let angels **prostate** fall;” (grrrrr…) I guess it’s like how driving instructors say “look where you want to go, not where the danger is”. I should be saying to myself “say prostrate, say prostrate, say prostrate” ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/222 "2021-09-09T19:58:04Z")
I intended “You **can** can tomatoes, can’t you.” If the second word is unstressed, as in "You can can **tomatoes** , can’t you, then it is either a schwa or, more likely, k’n with a vocalic n. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanubv.2/32/3260_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUBv.2)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/223 "2021-09-09T20:06:12Z")
> [@mikecurtis](#): > > Whenever these “what’s your pronunciation” topics come up it makes me wonder about “vernacular” vs “real” pronunciation. For example, having grown up in the Chicagoland area, in everyday speech I’ll say “yer” “dere” and “fronchroom” but when asked I’ll say they’re pronounced “your”, “there” and “front room”. > Does this happen to anyone else? Or is your vernacular pronunciation perceived to be the “real” one. > Another example would be the Mary/marry/merry thing. In everyday speech those three words are almost indistinguishable coming out of my mouth. But if I were to enunciate each of them separately, they would be recognizably different yet still very close together. (And murray, would def not be one of them). And I would call the enunciated versions the “real” ones. Good question! Along the same lines, in cases where words like “bad” and “sad” don’t rhyme due to dialect, how was it taught in school? Did the teacher have the same dialect and that’s how you learned it, or do you know the more conventional pronunciation but just grew up saying it that way because everyone around you does? I suspect it’s the latter but my accent is (purposely) pretty neutral so I don’t recall personally experiencing that. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/224 "2021-09-10T15:35:02Z")
I doubt it was ever taught. Why would it be? It was just what everyone said and the way I learned to speak. Probably my parents and all my friends spoke the same way, so why would a teacher even mention it? As I said above, all this is documented in a Wiki entry on Philadelphia accent. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/225 "2021-09-10T15:47:23Z")
In my experience, teachers just pronounced things in whatever their accent was. There is no “right” or “wrong” in that. I was not even really aware of my (slight) accent when I was growing up. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanubv.2/32/3260_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUBv.2)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2021, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/226 "2021-09-11T00:10:20Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I doubt it was ever taught. **Why would it be?** It was just what everyone said and the way I learned to speak. Probably my parents and all my friends spoke the same way, so **why would a teacher even mention it?** As I said above, all this is documented in a Wiki entry on Philadelphia accent. I’m not sure I understand these questions and I hesitate to even address it because now I feel like I’ve inadvertently stumbled into “correct” and “incorrect”. That’s not my intention. I’m just picturing the early days of learning where the teacher is trying to illustrate sounds by drawing different words on the chalkboard (just a crude example). My teacher would have written a list of three letter words that ended with “d” and had “a” as the vowel. “bad” and “sad” would have both been on the list. I’m assuming she was teaching the curricum(?) In others words, isn’t there a standard that educators use, regardless of the local dialect? Again, not judging, just interested and trying to understand. I did look at the Philadelphia accent entry on Wiki. Very interesting. I recall working with a woman with that accent and it fits. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2021, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/227 "2021-09-11T00:45:58Z")
Ah, now I understand your question. You mean at the very beginning when we were being taught phonics. That **is** an interesting question and one that had never occurred to me before. You are really asking about first and second grade and my memory doesn’t go that far back. I do remember thinking that the pronunciation of vowel + r was more or less random, not depending much on the vowel. But that is true in every dialect of English as this whole thread illustrates. As far as the words ending in ad, I didn’t realize that until much later reading about phonetics. Interestingly, I do not know how I should pronounce “Mad men”. It is a pun based on the words Madison (Ave.) and mad. But for me, the pun is lost as the vowels are different. The first one has a lax a, the second tense. And you have to trust me that these really are quite different, Sorry I didn’t quite understand the point you were making. Of course, the whole business of phonics is very complicated in English. I have read that the five (or six) vowel letters have to stretch to fit 22–24 (depending on dialect) vowel sounds that English has. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2021, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/228 "2021-09-11T01:20:42Z")
> [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](#): > > I’m just picturing the early days of learning where the teacher is trying to illustrate sounds by drawing different words on the chalkboard (just a crude example). My teacher would have written a list of three letter words that ended with “d” and had “a” as the vowel. > > “bad” and “sad” would have both been on the list. I’m assuming she was teaching the curricum(?) In others words, isn’t there a standard that educators use, regardless of the local dialect? Again, not judging, just interested and trying to understand. I’m not Philadelphian or Canadian. But, as I said, much of the Midwestern US accents have the same vowel tensing that Canadians do when the h **a** ppy vowel is used before an N or M. The words “man” and “mat” do not have the same vowel, but “mat” and “mad” and “match” and so on all do have the same vowel. However, when I was taught phonics in school, no such distinction was made. When we were sounding out the letters, we said “m-a-p map” the same way we said “m-a-n man.” (We didn’t say the letter em, but the sound mmm.) I went to a Montessori school, and those schools have these little booklets that would consist only of word following the phonics rules we had already been taught. I remember stumbling on the word “blanket.” To me, the a in bl **a** nket is very different from the vowel in c **a** t. It’s not even the same as the vowel in man. It’s the vowel in mate. I remember my teacher getting frustrated with it, not understanding how I could sound out “b-l-a-n-k-e-t” but not understand the word was “blanket.” Due to the way the Montessori works, the result was that I was unable to complete my lesson that day. By the next day, I just said “blanket” even though it seemed like that couldn’t actually be the word, and we moved on. (The way Montessori works is that each student gets these small micro-lessons that cover a small part of a topic. You get taught it one day, and then they check if you still understand it the next day, before moving on. And each lesson builds on the previous lesson, so they can also tell if you forget anything from the past. My teacher was frustrated because I had learned the a (/æ/) sound a long time ago, and had no problem with it in other words. Even though she also said the word “blanket” the way I do, I guess she just didn’t notice the difference.) So, anyways, at least for me, the phonics lesson did not include these differences. I just picked them up on my own. I always noticed that “man”, “blanket”, and “happy” all had different vowels for the a, even though I was not specifically taught them. ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2021, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/229 "2021-09-11T01:35:38Z")
> [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](#): > > now I feel like I’ve inadvertently stumbled into “correct” and “incorrect”. That’s not my intention. Neither was it mine… My question was more along the lines of…does anyone else pronounce words differently in their everyday lives than they would if they where giving a speech or a presentation at work, or the like? And if you do pronounce them differently, which would you consider the more “real” pronunciation? And I put real in quotes because I get that there is no real way to pronounce a word. I guess it’s more of an “informal” versus “formal” thing. For me, the formal pronunciation does not feel like I’m putting on airs, but like I’m pronouncing it properly. Whereas, while the informal flows more easily from my tongue, it does feel lazier and less proper. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2021, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/230 "2021-09-11T13:23:59Z")
I certainly don’t pronounce anything differently when I lecture, not that I am aware of. But I am reminded of a lecture by Richard Feynman that I went to. He lectured in pure Brooklynese. Then he took questions. In answering, he lost the Brooklyn accent and sounded more like west coast, which I assume he had adopted. Not sure what point he was trying to make. But it was striking. ---
**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:** [September 12, 2021, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/231 "2021-09-12T14:40:11Z")
> [@mikecurtis](#): > > For me, the formal pronunciation does not feel like I’m putting on airs, but like I’m pronouncing it properly. Whereas, while the informal flows more easily from my tongue, it does feel lazier and less proper. I certainly do change up my Chicago accent when I’m speaking in a more formal register, but it’s still detectable that I speak with a Chicago accent, especially in my vowels. But I’ll add the "g"s on the “-ing” words, clean up my “str” sounds (I say “shtree” when talking quickly), watch the “th” sounds to keep them from dropping into "t"s and "d"s, clean up some of my vowels (they have a tendency to reduce to schwa sounds in rapid speech), etc. and choose a different vocabulary and grammar (but that’s outside the scope of pronunciation.) That said, if you’re a keen listener who knows accents, you can still definitely hear it in my vowels. People from here will say “oh, you have no accent” when I speak formally, but people from outside here can usually tell. ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2021, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/232 "2021-09-14T19:01:31Z")
I don’t know if these words have been covered yet. I’ve tried to keep up with the posts. Years ago, my daughter brought home a school worksheet. They were learning long and short vowel sounds. There were pictures of items on the sheet and she had to indicate whether it was a long or short vowel sound. There was a picture of a paper bag and another of a price tag. Her answer for both of them was a long vowel sound. The teacher marked them incorrect. I didn’t understand why they would be wrong. Apparently, most of us in my area are pronouncing those words wrong with a long A. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2021, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/233 "2021-09-14T19:12:32Z")
> [@TRC4941](#): > > There was a picture of a paper bag and another of a price tag. Her answer for both of them was a long vowel sound. The teacher marked them incorrect. Long A: day Short A: cat Do you pronounce the A in bag and tag as you do in say or day? ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2021, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/234 "2021-09-15T03:04:22Z")
> [@TRC4941](#): > > There was a picture of a paper bag and another of a price tag. Her answer for both of them was a long vowel sound. The teacher marked them incorrect. I didn’t understand why they would be wrong. Do you pronounce those words “bayg” and “tayg”? ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2021, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/235 "2021-09-15T12:39:41Z")
And this must fall into the Mary-marry-merry hole because where I come from it’s pronounced ex-peh-rih-ment. ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2021, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/236 "2021-09-15T14:15:15Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > > [@TRC4941](#): > > > > There was a picture of a paper bag and another of a price tag. Her answer for both of them was a long vowel sound. The teacher marked them incorrect. I didn’t understand why they would be wrong. > > Do you pronounce those words “bayg” and “tayg”? Yes, that’s how I pronounce them ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2021, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/237 "2021-09-15T14:21:08Z")
I grew up pronouncing “salmon” as [sal . mon] and not [sah . mon]. I’ll never change. LOL ---
**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:** [September 15, 2021, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/238 "2021-09-15T14:23:21Z")
I was about to ask if you were from the Upper Midwest, only to see that earlier in this thread you mentioned Minnesota, so that all makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2021, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/239 "2021-09-15T14:29:20Z")
That’s a common thing here in the south. People also call cummerbunds cumber buns 'round here. ---
**Author:** ![alovem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@alovem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alovem)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2021, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375/240 "2021-09-15T16:46:30Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#): > > And this must fall into the Mary-marry-merry hole because where I come from it’s pronounced ex-peh-rih-ment. Maybe we pronounce it the same and you’re just choosing a different way of dividing up the four syllables in written form. Your “peh-rih” and my “pair-eh” might be very similar or the same. It should be noted, however, that Merriam-Wesbster, Cambridge and maybe other dictionaries put the r in the second syllable. By the way, since you mentioned the merry-marry-Mary thing: I’d heard about a distinction but never understood it because I’ve always pronounced all three about the same. I was going to post to that effect here a couple of weeks ago but decided not to since others had already said something similar. So, I recently had the opportunity to ask somebody who lives on the East Coast where the three words are pronounced differently, and I finally understood as soon as I heard him say “marry,” with the short a. I really won’t even notice if someone says it that way naturally, but if it seems in any way to be an affectation, it sounds awful to my ears. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-pronunciation/949375.md?page=13)