GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Jonathon on June 14, 2005, 01:52:49 PM
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"Social security." I dread saying it because I always botch that first s. It drives me crazy.
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Ancient. I never knew I was saying it wrong until Jonathon pointed it out, and ever since then I've been paying attention. No one says it the way I do. I say angk-shent. As in, the first syllable is like the one in anxious. And now every time I hear someone say anxious, I think "Hah! There's someone who pronounces it the way I do!" and then I remember it's the wrong word. Oh, dear.
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No one says it the way I do.
That's not true. Your mom does.
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I always botch that first s.
Thocial Security?
Focial Security?
Ocial Security?
Banana fanna fority?
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More like "shocial security."
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If I say "Shocial" I want to follow it up with "Shecurity."
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But by that point, I've usually made a graceful recovery.
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I hate trying to say the word, rural.
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Heh. I have a hard time pronouncing "rural" as well.
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Jonathon can probably think of more words I can never say right than me. He studied us, ya know.
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I can't think of anything that I have a hard time saying.
Mary?
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You have a hard time saying "Mary"?
That must be awkward. Do you say it incorrectly, or do you simply say some other name?
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I'll assume you are joking.
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You have a hard time saying "Mary"?
That must be awkward. Do you say it incorrectly, or do you simply say some other name?
He says it like "merry." How embarassing. :blush:
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My grandmother's name is Merri.
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How about Canadian as: Canahdian or realtor as: realator.
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I can never decide how to say words like "futile" and "docile." Is it "few-tile" and "doss-ile" or is it "few-tul" and "doss-ul"?
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Both.
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Another few-tile attempt to get a straight answer out of a linguist. ;)
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If you want to side with the majority of American English speakers, go with the schwa pronuncations. However, both are regarded as correct, and I don't think there's any sort of regional distinction.
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I pronounce the w in sword.
:cries with relief:
It is my secret pain.
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I pronounce the L in Salmon, unless I make a specific effort not to.
(Come to think of it, I may finally have been trained out of that one . . . )
-o-
There are a few other words (really common ones) that I pronounce exactly as written that a lot of people apparently don't, but I can't remember right now what they are. Just that I get funny looks sometimes.
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I prounounce both Rs in February.
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Both or all 3?
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???
:blink:
You just blew my mind.
What are you talking about?
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I generally do too. That's exactly what I'm talking about: Rs and Ls that other people don't pronounce, I generally do.
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Testosterone.
*Shudders*
And nuclear. I admit it. I used to be able to say it correctly. Than the whole "nuc-u-lear" "nuclear" thing came up and I now always say it wrong :angst:
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As long as you don't say "supposably".
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Rire. Kills me everytime.
As far as my native language, however, I'm so smooth I never mess up.
:P
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if you want to hear some sickening pronunciations, visit southern utah. You hear some greats such as,"take the pitcher off the wall." "let's go to the mou-en" and, "I'm goink to the store."
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:blink:
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That's my specious little sister.
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Oh, sure, Porter deletes his post and leaves mine hanging there.
I guess I assumed it was your wife. I couldn't remember your wife's name, but I saw that pattyshmack was a neb.
I have to admit that all those pronunciations bug me, but especially the last one. It's bad enough to pronounce a g that shouldn't be pronounced, but then to turn it into a k . . . *shudder*
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yeah it's almost like,"oh, I am just so cute so I am goink to talk like I have a low IQ!" What-ever.
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If you really believe what you are saying, then that's pretty snobby. Accents are determined by where you are from, not your intelligence.
The fact that some people don't feel the need to sound like you dosn't mean they aren't as smart as you.
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Accents aren't just determined by where you're from. They're also determined by socioeconomic status, race, gender, education, the accents of your parents and peers, and whatever affectations you may have.
I've lived most of my life in Utah, and I'm pretty open and forgiving when it comes to accents, but the one she's describing still manages to grate on my ears. (It's not just a southern Utah accent, by the way.)
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let me clarify myself (maybe I should be more specific) certain people in southern Utah (specifically teenage girls) tend to talk snobbish and they say things to sound cute when they actually aren't. Trust me I am from the area and don't necessarily talk like that. Therefore, it is totally not an accent. Maybe I shouldn't have assumed you knew anything about that area.
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Oh, it's definitely an accent. It's just not specifically a regional accent. It's a regional accent used by a certain class of young girls in Utah. I don't know if it exists in Salt Lake, but I've definitely heard it in Provo and Orem.
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The "young girls" thing is found in most other languages too. Consider the valley girl. (just an interesting observation) And I think accents go further than even the regional. They are found in any group really. Almost, to define yourself, which is just fine. But just so we don't fall off the specificity ladder, in general, the dialect I referred to is almost like a learned group talk to define who other people aren't. (hopefully that made any sense at all)
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What's a "mou-en" supposed to be?
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It's where you swallow the "t" in mountain and replace it with a glottal stop. It's actually pretty common throughout the country, and most people do it to some degree or another. Even those that mock ignorant Utahns for doing it more than they do.
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I'm always a big fan of sentences like "The car needs washed."
We had neighbors who talked like that. I was talking to the wife once, and she actually said "isn't," stopped, and corrected herself with"ain't." Since then, I've always wondered if that whole way of talking was just an affectation.
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My sister-in-law and I debated about whether mayonnaise was pronounced exactly how it was spelled or how me and my brother say it,"man-aize." She got out a dictionary and well I have to say the proof was in the pudding and she was right (or was it mister Webster?). Of course she mocked us for our ignorance but it was all in good fun.
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You know, the reason a Webster's dictionary is remarkable is because it is based on usage instead of classical etymology.
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It's where you swallow the "t" in mountain and replace it with a glottal stop. It's actually pretty common throughout the country, and most people do it to some degree or another. Even those that mock ignorant Utahns for doing it more than they do.
I thought we figured the difference was whether the glottal stop was followed by a syllabic n or followed by a vowel and then n.
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You know, the reason a Webster's dictionary is remarkable is because it is based on usage instead of classical etymology.
And yet Merriam-Webster's doesn't have the "man-ayz" pronunciation. Someone's been slacking!
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I pronounce it "man-ayz".
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I most often hear either "man-ayz" or "mayn-ayz."
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My wife's gonna hate me for this:
She's got this funky accent that makes her say "mee-an-ayz." She also says family: "fee-am-lee," and pants: "pee-ants."
But, that's just one more reason I love her. (And because she's sitting right here.)
On a side note, Boise is said "boy-see" with a hard "s." Not "boy-zee" with a lazy "z."
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Did you marry a New Englander? I assumed your wife was from southern Utah like you.
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It's a rogue accent.
Yes, she's from Utah. I'm not sure where she got it from.
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Weird. Does she pronounce any other vowels differently, or is it just the short a sound? Where are her parents from?
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Her dad's from Podunk, Idaho and her parents live right next to where her mom grew up (in Podunk, Utah).
Her family lived in Texas for a few years while she was still growing up. Maybe that's where it's from.
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I don't think so. That accent is characteristic of the Northern Cities Shift, which stretches from New England out to the Upper Midwest. Mackillian has it. :fear:
My only answer is that your wife is just plain weird. Of course, she married you, didn't she?
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You have a good point, Jon.
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That sounds more Chicagoan than New Englander to me.
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Actually, I think you're more or less right. The biggest centers of that particular shift are Chicago and Detroit, though it spreads out to Minneapolis and Syracuse, so I guess it's not really a New England thing. But I do know that Jamie does the a > ee-a thing.
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It's settled, then: Jamie is weird.
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Wow, I'm totally confused.
Are you talking about my wife? Or another Jaimie?
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Maybe we're talking about all Jamies. :P
I was specifically talking about mackillian, though.
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I get that with candy. It may only be with back consonants. It does not feel unnatural to say mayonnaise that way. Though I doubt I would do that saying Brad. (I was born in Maryland and grew up mainly by D.C.)
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I cannot say "processor." And for some reason "word processor" is even harder than "food processor." :blush:
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Well for the longest time I couldn't say Laura right. I would always say "Lara." I also can't say Asterisk.
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Whenever I try to say my dad's insurance company - Horizon Blue Cross, Blue Shield - I can't. It's the Blue Cross that gets me every time.
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I say everything correctly. It's the rest of y'all that don't follow suit.
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Last night I tripped over the word etymological.
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Pshhh. That's an *easy* word to say...
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Well, it was uncharacteristic for me to trip over it. Maybe I was just tired. :)
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I tripped over it trying to read it.
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:lol:
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For a while I had trouble with "georeference". This was something of a problem at my last job, as I had to talk about georeferenced data fairly frequently.
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:lol:
Thinking back on it, several (bigger) words ending in "ology" or "ological" trip me up. There's just something about how they flow.
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Some of them are tricky to pronounce. :)
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Specificity. Cruel, cruel word.
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Ottawa.
Now, I can pronounce it two ways, actually:
1. Ottawa (with the t)
2. Oddawa
The second is the way people expect it to be said. The first is the way I would prefer to say it because I happen to have learnt it that way. When people ask me where I'm from, there's always an internal struggle between Ottawa and Oddawa before something mangled comes out.
If I do say Ottawa, people always ask where, or repeat "Oshawa"? which is another Ontario city. Then I have to say Oddawa. No one expects the ts in Ottawa.
If I say Oddawa, chances are it'll be so mangled that I'll end up repeating it anyway before someone graciously translates and saves me from being more embarrassed than I already am!
It's a loosing battle and I think saying "the nation's capital" would be a little pretentious.
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I didn't know Ottawa was the capital of Canada :blush: I guess I would have thought it was Montreal. I'm as bad as those people who think New York is the capital of the U.S.
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Or that Salt Lake is the capitol of Utah.
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Um . . .
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uh...it's not?
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When I looked at the map I realized that if I were to be asked the capital of Canada, and said "Montreal", I then would have said "Toronto" and still been wrong. I mean, I sort of know that Quebec is kind of crazy french separatist land so I don't think I would have guessed that, but I would have been stumped at that point.
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SM -- it is.
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Actually, it's the capital. The capitol of Utah is that domed building on the hill in Salt Lake City.
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I had no idea that there were two different words.
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I had no idea that there were two different words.
You must've skipped 3rd grade.
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Wow, I've never heard Montreal as an answer before. Toronto is the usual one.
Nope, Ottawa, which is about four hours' drive north of Toronto and right on the border between Quebec and Ontario (across the river is Hull in Quebec which is a) the ugliest city ever excluding the museum of civilization and b) will probably, in 50 or so years, become the entertainment side of the city), is the capital of Canada. Toronto was considered to vulnerable because it's so close to the U.S. And Montreal is in Quebec and it was Queen Victoria who decided where to put the capital.
To be frank. ;)
Ottawa's not so large as Toronto (even including all the amalgamated suburbs it's still only a million people). However, Ottawa has the parliament buildings on top of this awesome cliff/hill over looking the Ottawa River which puts it in a very majestic position because everything slopes up to the parliament buildings. It's very nice to walk around on Canada Day :D.