Ask Lemmy

It's "Zed" not "Zee"

Boston accents are funny. When my mother says, "where are the cah-keys". My dad and I always say, "your car keys or khakis?"

We recently moved to a new area and there is a nearby town called Monticello. The locals all pronounce it mon-tee-sell-oh and will correct you if you say mon-teh-chel-oh. Doesn't quite fit the question cause I think the locals are insane for that 😅

I haven't lived there in a while and I don't pronounce it that way anymore, but where I grew up, water is universally pronounced "wooder".

Crayon: crown

Caramel: CAR-mul

Pecan: peh-CAWN

Charlottesville Virginia has a road spelled Rio but locals pronounce it with a long I (rhy-oh). Bonus points, the name originated from the road being route 10, marked with signs that said R10, which eventually became Rio.

The single syllable words "four" and "hour" are actually the two syllable words "fohwer" and "ower".

The words "anything" and "nothing" are pronounced "owt" and "nowt".

The word "the" is not pronounced "t'", it is simply replaced with an unvoiced glottal stop. The word "t'" is thus, actually, short for "to the".

E.g.

Goin' t' shop. Wan' owt?

means

I'm going to the shop. Do you want anything?

We also pronounce "bus" as "buzz", too.

We also use "was" and "were" the wrong way round and say "pants" instead of "trousers". The rest of the country seems unaware of that last one, and will accuse you of talking American.

I think "buzz" is used a lot to people near Manchester too.

People from Bolton (UK) get very defensive about the exact pronunciation of Bolton too. I heard this conversation several times between two colleagues:

Colleague 1 (c1): "... that's because you're from Bolton"
Colleague 2 (c2): "It's not Bolton, it's Bolton"
C1: "What? That's what I said, Bolton"
C2: "No, you said Bolton, it's Bolton"
C1: "You're saying the same thing, Bolton"
C2: "No, Bolton"
C1: "That's what I'm saying!"
Me: "what. the. FUCK"

If you've ever seen Brooklyn Nine Nine and Jake would say "Nikolaj" and then Charles would correct him saying the exact same thing, it was exactly like that, but saying "Bolton" instead.

Also I heard several people from Wigan say "A packet of crisp" and not "A packet or crisps".

Also forgot about this one: I used to live in South Wales, and people would say "Premark" instead of "Primark". They'd think I was the weird one for saying it like Primark.

I'm told there are differences between "merry", "marry", and "Mary", but I don't believe it.

Bavarians pronounce Chemie, China, Chlor, and others with CH starting, with a K! KEMIE, KINA, KLOR!

Bavarians there is so much go hate about you!

My kid got a worksheet on the long A sound. She got through most of them but was stumped on the "lobster". I looked at it - Lobster, Crawfish, neither of those have a long A sound, what the heck?

Hours later it occurs to me.

OH, Craaay-fish? Who in the world calls them that? Nobody here. Where was this printed?

As I live in the south I hear my "how are you all doing" morphing into "howya'lldoin" and there's nothing I can do to stop it

Melbourne.

Now most will read that and go Mel bourn. But in Australia we say Mel Bin.

A really easy way to tell if someone isn't an Aussie while there.

Elemen-tary or documen-tary

The tary pronounced like Terry. Apparently this is unusual outside of this region.

Boston area doesn't use "r".

The famous: "Can't pahk(park) your cah(car) in Havid(Harvard) Yad(yard)".

Port Dalhousie (dal-oo-sy) in St Catherine's. When it should be port (Dal-how-sy)

Semmel

For some reason almost every person in my city says "seen" where they should say "saw". Drives me bananas.