How Do Americans Say Specific Words?

[AGBF]

While reading the on-line version of my local newspaper today, I came across this quiz which, of course, I had to take! It reminded me of several pronunciation tests posted on Pricescope in the past. The only fascinating thing I found out about my own pronunciation is that I have two anomalies in my speech that seem, on the surface, inexplicable. I would like to know why I say the two words I pronounce in the way that I do. I will tell you what they are.

For some reason I pronounce "syrup" and one other word (I now forget which) unlike everyone else in the United States except for a tiny group of people in Eastern Pennsylvania. The spot where people pronounce the word like me lit up in a different color. I spent my entire life in Connecticut. My mother, who taught me to speak, and my maternal grandmother were both born and raised in Connecticut. My father was born and raised in northern New Jersey, not Eastern Pennsylvania. I really wonder why there is a cluster that lights up in Eastern Pennsylvania! Who lives there?

Another thing that interested me was that only in my state (Connecticut) and Maine did we call what others called a traffic circle or a roundabout , "a rotary". Maine and Connecticut lit up like beacons saying, "Hey, we New Englanders know a rotary when we see one!"
If you like language, click on the link and take the quiz, then report back!

Deb/AGBF


How do Americans say specific words?...http://www.greenwichtime.com/news/slideshow/How-do-Americans-say-specific-words-63985.php

 

[yssie]

While reading the on-line version of my local newspaper today, I came across this quiz which, of course, I had to take! It reminded me of several pronunciation tests posted on Pricescope in the past. The only fascinating thing I found out about my own pronunciation is that I have two anomalies in my speech that seem, on the surface, inexplicable. I would like to know why I say the two words I pronounce in the way that I do. I will tell you what they are.

For some reason I pronounce "syrup" and one other word (I now forget which) unlike everyone else in the United States except for a tiny group of people in Eastern Pennsylvania. The spot where people pronounce the word like me lit up in a different color. I spent my entire life in Connecticut. My mother, who taught me to speak, and my maternal grandmother were both born and raised in Connecticut. My father was born and raised in northern New Jersey, not Eastern Pennsylvania. I really wonder why there is a cluster that lights up in Eastern Pennsylvania! Who lives there?

Another thing that interested me was that only in my state (Connecticut) and Maine did we call what others called a traffic circle or a roundabout , "a rotary". Maine and Connecticut lit up like beacons saying, "Hey, we New Englanders know a rotary when we see one!"
If you like language, click on the link and take the quiz, then report back!

Deb/AGBF


How do Americans say specific words?...http://www.greenwichtime.com/news/slideshow/How-do-Americans-say-specific-words-63985.php

Fascinating!

I say "syrup" the way you do, call traffic circles "roundabouts", say pecan as "picKAHN" and the second vowel in pyjamas as in "father" rather than "jam", and Mary/merry/marry are all slightly different to my ears.

I'm a mutt though - lived all over so the more impressive part is probably is just how much of the New England accent I've picked up! At least I still spell properly - mostly

 

[Skippy123]

Oh that is interesting Deb; my state borders Texas so I can see myself saying certain things both ways. Like for many people I have said you guys and you all. lol I noticed my state is 50/50 for certain things.

 

[Dancing Fire]

I don't think there are that many difference b/t Americans ,but when I go the watch forums where there are many members from Europe and Asia then it really gets crazy with pronunciation b/t all the watch brands.

How do you pronounce Cartier? Hermes?

 

[JewelFreak]

I'm not sure how accurate that is, Deb. I came out all over the map & I grew up in northern NY State. My mother was from Nebraska, but I didn't pick up her pronunciation -- like roof rhyming with crook, etc. Do you say seerup for syrup? I've never heard it anywhere but in ads! Ditto car-a-mel; always heard car-mel. Funny stuff. If you've lived around, you pick up other terms, like I tend to say freeway instead of highway after we lived in Calif.

DF: Carteeay and Air-mes. How do you say them?

--- Laurie

PS I used to like the Greenwich Time when I lived there, pretty good paper!

 

[madelise]

car-tee-ay and er-mess.


What do you call those little seafood critters, about the size of a shrimp but with a hardshell? Those miniature lobsters?

They're crawfish to me.

Relevent:
http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_66.html

 

[distracts]

Q: What do you call it when it rains while the sun is still shining?
A: The devil is beating his wife.

whaaaaaaaaaaaa? All of the others I have at least heard of but that expression is completely new to me.

 

[monarch64]

Deb, next time my husband and I drive through a roundabout, I am going to call it a rotary. He's from CT but I've never heard him say that term! We frequently have discussions about the roundabouts here in our town, mostly because they were poorly planned and executed (planting trees in the middle of a roundabout? why obstruct drivers' views? the list goes on...).

 

[monarch64]

car-tee-ay and er-mess.


What do you call those little seafood critters, about the size of a shrimp but with a hardshell? Those miniature lobsters?

They're crawfish to me.

Relevent:
http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_66.html

Ha, I live in one of the few parts of the country where they are referred to as "crawdads." I call them crawfish but I hear people say crawdad all the time.

 

[AGBF]

Do you say seerup for syrup? I've never heard it anywhere but in ads! Ditto car-a-mel; always heard car-mel.

It's funny, Laurie, because I have been told numerous times that I speak English without an accent and "television English", but I say both "seer-up" for "syrup" and "car-a-mel" for "caramel".

Deb

 

[missy]

Interesting. I say car-a-mel like you Deb and I say pecan as pickAHN like Yssie. And like Yssie I think Mary, merry and marry all sound different and I pronounce the second vowel in pajamas (the way I spell it lol no y) like father.

Thanks for the quiz Deb. I love things like this.

 

[Kelinas]

there are YouTube videos called "Accent tag" where people from all over the world say in English a.set list of predetermined things like

"what s the name of the 4 wheeled contraption that you.push in the store" Americans call it s shopping cart or a buggie, whereas Aussies call it trolleys.

really interesting

 

[JewelFreak]

It's funny, Laurie, because I have been told numerous times that I speak English without an accent and "television English", but I say both "seer-up" for "syrup" and "car-a-mel" for "caramel".

Deb

Aha! See what I mean??

How do you say Halloween? Rhymes with Pal or like Hollow-een?

In way upstate NY it was a rotary when I was a kid. Roundabout might have caught on by now, don't know. I call it a roundabout, but picked that up from living in Europe -- nobody knew what a rotary was.

--- Laurie

 

[AGBF]

"what s the name of the 4 wheeled contraption that you.push in the store" Americans call it s shopping cart or a buggie, whereas Aussies call it trolleys.

...or "a carriage". We once discussed this in Hangout, too. I have heard both "shopping carriage" and "shopping cart" used to describe that object. I have one on my charm bracelet, too!

Deb

 

[Dancing Fire]

DF: Carteeay and Air-mes. How do you say them?

--- Laurie

sounds good to me...

 

[missy]

"what s the name of the 4 wheeled contraption that you.push in the store" Americans call it s shopping cart or a buggie, whereas Aussies call it trolleys.

...or "a carriage". We once discussed this in Hangout, too. I have heard both "shopping carriage" and "shopping cart" used to describe that object. I have one on my charm bracelet, too!

Deb

I call it a wagon. My dh always thought that was pretty funny.

 

[LaraOnline]

Well I'm Aussie, so I got all the colours in that quiz - green (when there was no green visible on the map!), blue etc etc
Overall I got a lot of matches with Montana, other times South Carolina !
Florida - New York - it's a whirl around the US in 20 seconds!

* may-uh-nayze
* 'You' (not 'you guys') for a group including two other people besides yourself
* coleslaw is 'coleslaw'...always
* 'loy-yer'
* 'Cray -yon'
* 'bo' wie knife
* been rhymes with 'seen' - apparently only one mythical 'green' coloured person in the USA says 'been' that way? Couldn't find the locale on the map, it was so small!
* 'carra-mel'
* 'sneakers' - suddenly I'm down in Florida
* 'bubbler' - that's Wisconsin
* a long sandwich is just a sandwich, sorry Subway you can't change my culture
* 'Sih-rup' - oop! New York city!
* 'roundabout' - that takes me to Utah
* 'crayfish' - back to Wisconsin again!
* 'soft drink' - again, only a single mythical 'soft drink' person in the states, couldn't find the matching colour on the map at all
* 'PEE-can', that's New York State
* long second vowel for 'pyjaaaaamaaaas', so that's down in the South-Eastern quarter of the USA
* Mary/ merry/ marry are VERY different, that means I'm New Jersey
* 'sunshower' back to the bottom edge of Florida again

 

[JewelFreak]

I grew up in NY State & never heard PEE-can until I came south. It's pe-CAHN! And pajamma, not pajahma.

Yeah, marry/Mary/merry sound different from each other.

How about Colorado? I grew up saying Color-addo, but my sister who has lived there for 35 yrs says Color-ahhdo, as do most of her friends. Actually more correct, when you realize it's a Spanish word.

 

[VapidLapid]

A roundabout is a circuitous, indirect way to get somewhere. An intersection of roads all of which feed into one circle is a rotary, though I have heard them called traffic circles. But we are from the same town. The caramel thing really gets me though. Carmel is a lovely town in california or new york. Caramel is a three syllable word, as greenwich time says, though shows as only two.

 

[AprilBaby]

I've been in Chicago 28 years but my Philly diction shines through!

 

[partgypsy]

I'm from Chicago and some of the way I say things is uncharacteristic.
For example I say soda, when it's pop or soda pop in Chicago. However, my mom's parents are respectively from St. Louis and Wisconsin where they say soda, so maybe she says soda and I learned it from her.

I say car-a-mel, but then my Mom's an English teacher and that's how I was taught? Same with "sear"-up.

I thought it was funny to look at "the city", area around Chicago lights up with "Chicago" being the answer.

Also growing up, Washington was the state, never the city. If you were referring to the city you say "D.C." Now on the east coast people will say Washington for the capital and it throws me.

 

[JuneRose]

DF: Carteeay and Air-mes. How do you say them?

--- Laurie

sounds good to me...

Ah but it's Air-mez for Hermes actually...

 

[zoebartlett]

Ha, I didn't get it at first. I took the quiz and then looked for a summary of my answers and a score of some sort. I need to do it again.

I'm from northern New England. Here are my answers for some of them:

Pecan = pee-can (although occasionally I say pick-ahn)
I say traffic circle (maybe rotary sometimes), not round-about
marry and Mary are the same, merry is different
syrup = sear-up
mayonnaise = man-aze
cole slaw is never just slaw. "Cole" has to go first.
lawyer = loyer
been = rhymes with sit
carmel = carra-mel
rubber soled shoes are sneakers, not tennis shoes
a carbonated drink is soda, not pop. A coke is a specific brand of soda.

 

[packrat]

You'd have to go to a waaaaay bigger metropolitan area to find a traffic circle/rotary...I had to look it up, I didn't know what it was. We're simple folk and confused by these things. You can ask my dad about the time we were following him to Omaha and encountered something similar and we just went around and around and around. I would call it "What the F is this shit? Where are we going?" but that's not an option.

 

[woofmama]

You'd have to go to a waaaaay bigger metropolitan area to find a traffic circle/rotary...I had to look it up, I didn't know what it was. We're simple folk and confused by these things. You can ask my dad about the time we were following him to Omaha and encountered something similar and we just went around and around and around. I would call it "What the F is this shit? Where are we going?" but that's not an option.

LMAO! Just took the quiz with my husband. We have one of these circles near us. I asked him what he would call it and he said F***ed up!

In regard to the rest of the quiz- I'm a Chicago girl, born & raised. When I met up with Enerchi, Rosebloom and DeeJay, none of whom are Chicagoans, they all commented on my strong accent. Every one of my friends sound just like me. The answers in this quiz were spot on. Very fun!

 

[VRBeauty]

Where word usage and pronunciation is concerned, it seems I am very much a product of my environment!

 

[monarch64]

You'd have to go to a waaaaay bigger metropolitan area to find a traffic circle/rotary...I had to look it up, I didn't know what it was. We're simple folk and confused by these things. You can ask my dad about the time we were following him to Omaha and encountered something similar and we just went around and around and around. I would call it "What the F is this shit? Where are we going?" but that's not an option.

Hahahaha!!! The city planning department installed them HERE, population (minus students) 40k, and everyone went WTF? Then we got used to them. Then the students came back. Holy crap on a stick. Utter chaos ensued. I think about 10 of us in this town actually know how to navigate them. And then they went and planted effing trees in the middle. Because THAT helps with visibility.

 

[JewelFreak]

DF: Carteeay and Air-mes. How do you say them?

--- Laurie

sounds good to me...

Ah but it's Air-mez for Hermes actually...

No, it's actually an S sound, not Z. In French, at least.

Chicago accents are similar to mine from northern NY state -- we both do something odd with the short a -- in college my friends used to make me say "apple" & cackle like crazy: "yyyyaaapple." I worked hard to get rid of that but once in a while it comes out of my mouth without warning. Met somebody from Toronto recently & she said, "I knew you were from somewhere like Rochester; I can hear that little twang." Darn, foiled again!

--- Laurie

 

[Enerchi]

You'd have to go to a waaaaay bigger metropolitan area to find a traffic circle/rotary...I had to look it up, I didn't know what it was. We're simple folk and confused by these things. You can ask my dad about the time we were following him to Omaha and encountered something similar and we just went around and around and around. I would call it "What the F is this shit? Where are we going?" but that's not an option.

LMAO! Just took the quiz with my husband. We have one of these circles near us. I asked him what he would call it and he said F***ed up!

In regard to the rest of the quiz- I'm a Chicago girl, born & raised. When I met up with Enerchi, Rosebloom and DeeJay, none of whom are Chicagoans, they all commented on my strong accent. Every one of my friends sound just like me. The answers in this quiz were spot on. Very fun!

WHAT??!! You have an accent woofmama? I hardly noticed....

 

[AGBF]

Hahahaha!!! The city planning department installed them HERE, population (minus students) 40k, and everyone went WTF? Then we got used to them. Then the students came back. Holy crap on a stick. Utter chaos ensued. I think about 10 of us in this town actually know how to navigate them. And then they went and planted effing trees in the middle. Because THAT helps with visibility.

Monnie-Your story reminded me of when I was in a car with a tourist from England (this was decades ago, but I recall that his name was Martin). For some reason he was at the wheel. He was OK until we came to a rotary...when all hell broke loose! Of course, instinct took over. It made me vow never to drive in England ( or anywhere where people drive on the left)...and so far I never have!

Deb/AGBF