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Sibyl
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01 Dec 2014, 3:53 pm

eric76 wrote:
I used to know a woman from Alaska who pronounced Alaska as alasker. I think she probably picked that up growing up in Massachusetts. Do New Englanders often replace the 'a' at the end of a word with "er"?



I'll ask her.


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eric76
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01 Dec 2014, 4:02 pm

Sibyl wrote:
eric76 wrote:
I used to know a woman from Alaska who pronounced Alaska as alasker. I think she probably picked that up growing up in Massachusetts. Do New Englanders often replace the 'a' at the end of a word with "er"?



I'll ask her.


Have at it. Her name is Susan.



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01 Dec 2014, 4:07 pm

I have a habit of over pronouncing words. I like to try and say words by pronouncing even the silent letters.

I don't know why, I've just always done it.


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01 Dec 2014, 4:08 pm

I have a heavy Southern US accent. We tend to drawl everything with heavy emphasis on vowels, and extra vowel syllables added in. I can drop my accent to the point that people from other parts of the country can't tell where I'm from, but sometimes they can't quite understand me either, probably because my consonants aren't as crisp as they are used to hearing.

We have all kinds of offbeat ways of pronouncing things in the South so I feel like I'm in pretty good company here.

But it's interesting how different communities have their own dialect. Sometimes I meet people who have much heavier accents than I do and I can hardly understand a word they are saying. They sound very fluent in whatever it is they are speaking. :)



eric76
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01 Dec 2014, 4:10 pm

babybird wrote:
I have a habit of over pronouncing words. I like to try and say words by pronouncing even the silent letters.

I don't know why, I've just always done it.


I sometimes pronounce every letter in words like "knight" for fun.



eric76
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01 Dec 2014, 4:15 pm

dianthus wrote:
I have a heavy Southern US accent. We tend to drawl everything with heavy emphasis on vowels, and extra vowel syllables added in. I can drop my accent to the point that people from other parts of the country can't tell where I'm from, but sometimes they can't quite understand me either, probably because my consonants aren't as crisp as they are used to hearing.

We have all kinds of offbeat ways of pronouncing things in the South so I feel like I'm in pretty good company here.

But it's interesting how different communities have their own dialect. Sometimes I meet people who have much heavier accents than I do and I can hardly understand a word they are saying. They sound very fluent in whatever it is they are speaking. :)


If you really want to have fun trying to follow someone speaking in English (in this case British English), try listening to Guy Martin. He's a motorcycle racer. Just search for him on youtube. In some interviews on the TT races, I could pick out maybe about one word out of five.

A physicist I used to know said that when he was an undergraduate, he had a prof who could identify quite precisely where one grew up by listening to them speak, often down to the individual county. He did have trouble when someone moved during the period at which one's accent develops.



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01 Dec 2014, 5:30 pm

eric76 wrote:
If you really want to have fun trying to follow someone speaking in English (in this case British English), try listening to Guy Martin. He's a motorcycle racer. Just search for him on youtube. In some interviews on the TT races, I could pick out maybe about one word out of five.

A physicist I used to know said that when he was an undergraduate, he had a prof who could identify quite precisely where one grew up by listening to them speak, often down to the individual county. He did have trouble when someone moved during the period at which one's accent develops.


LOLOLOL he's like a natural born Monty Python character. :lol:



kraftiekortie
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01 Dec 2014, 6:41 pm

Yep..."Alasker" for "Alaska" is an example of an "intrusive r" (i.e., an "r" sound which is not supposed to be there.

This exists in many non-rhotic (an accent where there is little pronunciation of "r" when this pronunciation is indicated). Like Bostonian: "Paahk the cah in Hahvahd Yaahd," meaning "Park the car in Harvard Yard."

It's almost as if one has to "make" up for much of the "r"-less pronunciations--hence, the "intrusive r."

Another common one is: "I have a great idear" (idea)



DevilKisses
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01 Dec 2014, 8:58 pm

I do have trouble. Especially when I have to order from starbucks. They always like to use pretentious sounding foreign words. I could learn the "proper" way to pronounce them, but that might still confuse people. I wish they would just keep everything in English.


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kraftiekortie
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01 Dec 2014, 9:53 pm

Those might be the name of the coffees. If they are "pretentious"-sounding, that can't be helped.

One cannot change the name of the coffees; some are from foreign lands. That's just the way the cookie crumbles.



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01 Dec 2014, 10:29 pm

I think some people are born with a muscle/nerve problem that makes it impossible/very hard to pronounce certain sounds. It's a problem with controlling the tongue movement to produce a sound. I have heard about a person who cannot pronounce 'r' because of that.

English is used all over the world and there are so many regional accents/dialects. Most people are used to hearing 'wrong' pronunciations.

A US person pronounced the word pipette 'pie-PET'. Is that the standard way to pronounce it in the US? Some here were laughing about it.



kraftiekortie
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01 Dec 2014, 10:30 pm

What's a "pipette?" Never heard the word in my life.



eric76
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01 Dec 2014, 11:10 pm

jk1 wrote:
I think some people are born with a muscle/nerve problem that makes it impossible/very hard to pronounce certain sounds. It's a problem with controlling the tongue movement to produce a sound. I have heard about a person who cannot pronounce 'r' because of that.

English is used all over the world and there are so many regional accents/dialects. Most people are used to hearing 'wrong' pronunciations.

A US person pronounced the word pipette 'pie-PET'. Is that the standard way to pronounce it in the US? Some here were laughing about it.


That's the way I have always heard it pronounced.



eric76
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01 Dec 2014, 11:23 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
What's a "pipette?" Never heard the word in my life.


A very thin glass tube with a tiny opening on the end. One use for them is in the construction of what is called a patch clamp for use in neuroscience research.



ReticentJaeger
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01 Dec 2014, 11:45 pm

Ghoti, your username and avatar fit Adamantium's post. :lol:



eric76
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01 Dec 2014, 11:53 pm

In many cases, my pronunciation of words sound too close to related words or are indistinguishable from them.

One pair of words that has given me a number of problems is "tire" and "tower".