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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Question: does anyone pronounce
Wednesday any way other than Wens-day?
I'm surprised that our irish teddy bear has been quiet on this one. When I grew up in an Irish part of the North of England. The Irish contingent tended to say "wed-n-sday" with a definite "d", which reminds me of a another word "fil-um" for "film". So I'd say that asking someone to say "do you want to see the filum on Wed-n-sday" was a good way of spotting an Irish influence.
My knowlege isn't sophisticated enough to know if this was only Southern Irish Catholics or whether Northern Protestants would use the same.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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As for the aks for ask switch, I've observed this almost entirely among US blacks. I've also heard people use a short a, while others use a long a when saying "ask." Who says which?
In the UK, axe for ask is invariably an African Caribbean usage (or whatever the new version of Afro-Caribbean is), I used to hear it a lot when I lived in London. I also heard if from Southern Black Americans (again, I'm not sure of their current self-definition) from my days of working on the musical "One Mo' Time" (what joy!), I picked up a lot of useful language, most of it unrepeatable. At that stage realised that there were some words that were not OK to be used by a mere "honky" even in jest. Anyone for the black bottom?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>The change of tyu, dyu to chu, ju in British English has gone through three stages.
I'm definitely in the ju camp until I tried to say "During the day, the jury made their decision" in which case I repeat the sentance, "correcting" the "ju" to "dyu". I suppose we tend to change our emphasis in our pronunciation if we need to make a destinction clear.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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aunt An obvious example missed. The awnt, ant pronunciations for aunt I generally take to be a Brit/USN thing, although sometimes it just seems to be a matter of preference (or the haughtiness of class when used by the Blue Book society set here in the US).
In the UK it is just another of the North/South short vowel/long vowel divide.
I always find it interesting that in Scotland, a long vowel used by an English person is seen a sign of "snootiness" and "Englishness" whereas in the South of England, everyone would cut the Graaas, regardless of claaas.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Have any of you observed mispronunciations becoming acceptable in your lifetime? I'd be curious to read here about your observations. (I've read cross-references on this topic in the search section, by the way, but I'm raising this as a separate subject on how the unacceptable in our language have become (or are becoming) acceptable.
I suppose that we are much more aware of alternative pronunciations than the ones we grew up with, with we tend to regard as "correct". There is really nothing correct or incorrect about where the emphasis is placed in a word when two groups have developed independently and come up with a different interpretation. We spoke a long time ago about Bill Bryson's wonderful "Mother Tongue" and how some American words and speech are older than the words which replaced them in Britain (the use of gotten for example).
When I was young and foolish I would rail against American pronunciation of words. As an aside, I still dislike a fake accent. Compare Dick Van Dyke's "Mary Poppins" Cockney, widely regarded as hilariously bad, to Gwyneth Paltrow's heroic efforts. There are plenty of examples of Brits trying to sound American with greater or lesser success. This weekend there was a wonderful concert by Robbie Williams (the musician, not Robin, sadly he has never made it in the USA, and proved that even in a glamourous concert with black tie audience at the Albert Hall on BBC1 just after nine o'clock on a Saturday night, it really is Ok to broadcast the word f***, to link to an earlier thread ) singing Sinatra songs and varying between a "New Yoyk" accent and pure Stoke on Trent. It reminded me we don't grow up with the pure influences of our great grandparents. My parents sang "My Way" a lot more often than "The White Cliffs of Dover" and our ways of speaking evolved as a result.
One of the things that struck me in the early days of this group was whilst those of us in the rest of the world would recognise a North American variation as just that, a variation. Some of those from the US would fail to reciprocate. I think that we have moved on and I'm glad that it no longer only left to the Brits to point out our regional variations.
So part of the alternatives that we accept are to do with regional variations. I don't like the sound of "nucular", for example, but I no longer regard a person who uses it as an idiot.
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addict
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addict
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which reminds me of a another word "fil-um" for "film".
My grandfather (Phil, coincidentally) is of Irish descent and pronounces "film" in just that way, but other than that he has no trace of an Irish brogue. He also pronounces words like "bottle" and "metal" like "bah'll" and "meh'll" (with the ' signalling a glottal stop) which always sounds like an old-fashioned Boston accent to me. My brother and I rib him about his Boston accent by asking him if he got a "meh'll" (medal) for raising "cah'll" (cattle) in the "wah" (war). And, no he didn't.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dick Van Dyke's "Mary Poppins" Cockney, widely regarded as hilariously bad
About the same time as the Dick Van Dyke effort there was a widely used British version of a generic American accent that was perhaps equally humorous, combining a sort of rough approximation of a Texas accent with a rough approximation of a New England accent. There was a character in the movie White Nights who had that accent. He was supposed to be an American Embassy official who was from Minnesota. Interestingly, after a one week long trip to Russia in 1994 everyone seemed to have that accent back here in the States. The master of accents is, of course, Tracey Ullman, but she doesn't do accents, she does people and the people have accents.
Robbie Williams [white](the musician, not Robin[/white]
Robin Williams (of Robin and Linda Williams) *is a musician.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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lucy says: have noticed on some US television programmes that 'participants' often pronounce 'ask' as 'aks' ... Is this the norm?
IMHO, that pronunciation is exclusive to and common among members of the black community. lucy, as you watch the shows, let me know if this comports with your observations.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>Tracy Ullman Yes, I meant to mention her, one of our better exports. These days we only see her on Ally McBeal, her accent made her blend in too well. I still think the worst British accent is that dreadful woman from Frasier who claims to be British but sounds like no accent I have ever heard.Off topic, I know but an interesting exercise in where the boundaries lie, it looks like the Robbie Williams (a musician not the actor) concert got a bit of a response:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/tv_and_radio/newsid_1664000/1664540.stm
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veteran
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veteran
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Well, WON, after buttoning up my spats, adjusting my pince-nez and dusting off my beaver top hat, I have to confess that I use 'employe' to refer to one male, 'employes' for two or more males, employee' for one female, and 'employees' for two or more females or two or more of both genders. A European would probably use the masculine version for mixed gender, but I use the feminine because it's more familiar to most people than the masculine, which seems to be entirely unfamilar to you. Yet it has not been that long since it was downright incorrect to refer to a man as an employee.
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