The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Herr Dunkel]

winter: /ˈwɪntər/ > [ˈwɪ̃ɾ̃ʁ̩ˤ(ː)]~[ˈwɪ̃̂ːʁˤ]
winner: /ˈwɪnər/ > [ˈwɪ̃ːnʁ̩ˤ(ː)]~[ˈwɪ̃̂ːːʁˤ]
correctly: /kəˈrɜkli/ > [kʰʁ̩ˤːˈʁˤɜʔkɰi(ː)], carefully /kəˈrɜktli/ > [kʰʁ̩ˤːˈʁˤɜʔktɰi(ː)], more carefully /koˈrɜktli/ > [kʰɔːˈɰˤɜʔktɰi(ː)]

Travis, you are the winner of this year's "Weirdest English Dialect" competition O_o

[Travis B.]

winter: /ˈwɪntər/ > [ˈwɪ̃ɾ̃ʁ̩ˤ(ː)]~[ˈwɪ̃̂ːʁˤ]
winner: /ˈwɪnər/ > [ˈwɪ̃ːnʁ̩ˤ(ː)]~[ˈwɪ̃̂ːːʁˤ]
correctly: /kəˈrɜkli/ > [kʰʁ̩ˤːˈʁˤɜʔkɰi(ː)], carefully /kəˈrɜktli/ > [kʰʁ̩ˤːˈʁˤɜʔktɰi(ː)], more carefully /koˈrɜktli/ > [kʰɔːˈɰˤɜʔktɰi(ː)]

Travis, you are the winner of this year's "Weirdest English Dialect" competition O_o

Mine seriously is not that weird; it is a Inland North dialect with some oddities, yes, which I just happen to also transcribe rather narrowly.

If you are anywhere from between eastern Minnesota to upstate New York you should be able to hear people who speak dialects that are not all too different from what I speak, and many of the individual features of it radiate out into a wider area than that and leak into what is supposedly "General American" in actual speech in that area. (Hell, you hear such features out in Maryland, which has received many internal immigrants from the Inland North area.)

[communistplot]

winter: /ˈwɪntər/ > [ˈwɪ̃ɾ̃ʁ̩ˤ(ː)]~[ˈwɪ̃̂ːʁˤ]
winner: /ˈwɪnər/ > [ˈwɪ̃ːnʁ̩ˤ(ː)]~[ˈwɪ̃̂ːːʁˤ]
correctly: /kəˈrɜkli/ > [kʰʁ̩ˤːˈʁˤɜʔkɰi(ː)], carefully /kəˈrɜktli/ > [kʰʁ̩ˤːˈʁˤɜʔktɰi(ː)], more carefully /koˈrɜktli/ > [kʰɔːˈɰˤɜʔktɰi(ː)]

Travis, you are the winner of this year's "Weirdest English Dialect" competition O_o

Mine seriously is not that weird; it is a Inland North dialect with some oddities, yes, which I just happen to also transcribe rather narrowly.

If you are anywhere from between eastern Minnesota to upstate New York you should be able to hear people who speak dialects that are not all too different from what I speak, and many of the individual features of it radiate out into a wider area than that and leak into what is supposedly "General American" in actual speech in that area. (Hell, you hear such features out in Maryland, which has received many internal immigrants from the Inland North area.)

I personally have a hard time trying to imitate your pronunciations, but yeah you're right Upstate New Yorkers speak funny like that as well.

Is it just me, or do all of the ones here, with non-rhotic dialects, associate rhotic dialects with rural farmers?

[Astraios]

Is it just me, or do all of the ones here, with non-rhotic dialects, associate rhotic dialects with rural farmers?

Farmers, Americans, Scottish and Irish people, and pirates.

[communistplot]

Is it just me, or do all of the ones here, with non-rhotic dialects, associate rhotic dialects with rural farmers?

Farmers, Americans, Scottish and Irish people, and pirates.

Mostly farmers though, and it's not all Americans, just those out west, who all invariably live on farms in some capacity, and I guess upstaters too, hey we hae to get apples and pumpkins from somewhere right?

[Bob Johnson]

Is it just me, or do all of the ones here, with non-rhotic dialects, associate rhotic dialects with rural farmers?

Farmers, Americans, Scottish and Irish people, and pirates.

Thank you, I am now envisioning a posh pirate speaking RP. YAHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

[Travis B.]

Is it just me, or do all of the ones here, with non-rhotic dialects, associate rhotic dialects with rural farmers?

Farmers, Americans, Scottish and Irish people, and pirates.

Mostly farmers though, and it's not all Americans, just those out west, who all invariably live on farms in some capacity, and I guess upstaters too, hey we hae to get apples and pumpkins from somewhere right?

Not all Americans who live away from non-rhotic speaking areas of the East Coast are farmers, I should note... LOL...

(Even being from Wisconsin, which certainly does have a farmer stereotype coming with it, I am from the city (Milwaukee in my case), and now I live out in the Greater DC area in Maryland, most certainly not working as a farmer there either...)

[Astraios]

Mostly farmers though, and it's not all Americans, just those out west, who all invariably live on farms in some capacity, and I guess upstaters too, hey we hae to get apples and pumpkins from somewhere right?

No, mostly Americans.

Thank you, I am now envisioning a posh pirate speaking RP. YAHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

xD LOL.

[Grimalkin]

A stereotypical impression of a person from East Anglia is usually something along the lines of 'yarr I'm a farmerr, this is my tractorr', always replete with heavy rhotacism. Which is funny because East Anglia is fully non-rhotic and has been for some time.

[finlay]

A stereotypical impression of a person from East Anglia is usually something along the lines of 'yarr I'm a farmerr, this is my tractorr', always replete with heavy rhotacism. Which is funny because East Anglia is fully non-rhotic and has been for some time.

It's more associated with the west country.

[communistplot]

A stereotypical impression of a person from East Anglia is usually something along the lines of 'yarr I'm a farmerr, this is my tractorr', always replete with heavy rhotacism. Which is funny because East Anglia is fully non-rhotic and has been for some time.

That's how I think of Californians (which is one big weed farm anyway), or Idahoans though they are fully rhotic.

[Jadyndar]

Weed farm?



Does that look like a weed farm to you?

EDIT: On-topic, I'm a Californian with a rhotic accent. So are most of the people I talk to every day. None of them grow weed AFAIK.

[Bob Johnson]

Psst: Cali != LA

[communistplot]

LA? That quaint little hamlet? xD But yeah, basically does look like a giant weed farm.

[finlay]

A stereotypical impression of a person from East Anglia is usually something along the lines of 'yarr I'm a farmerr, this is my tractorr', always replete with heavy rhotacism. Which is funny because East Anglia is fully non-rhotic and has been for some time.

That's how I think of Californians (which is one big weed farm anyway), or Idahoans though they are fully rhotic.

Are you from, like, the same world as the rest of us? Most of America is rhotic; and the non-rhotic sections (e.g. the South, New York City) seem to be the ones that are generally considered lower-class..

[Herr Dunkel]

New York City... considered lower-class.

Elaborate

[finlay]

Labov did a famous sociolinguistic study about it in the sixties by testing store workers in a lower, middle and upper class store on how they said "fourth floor", and whether, if they were non-rhotic, they would "add back" the rhoticity when asked to repeat for clarification. It's not a perfect study, but it was a new field at the time. Basically he found that rhoticity was most common in the upper class store, but that the middle class people would correct their non-rhoticity more often than the upper class people, a phenomenon known as the cross-over effect (because of the shape it makes on a graph), said to showcase the middle class's insecurity or something.

It's not really the city itself that's considered lower class, it's the feature in the context of the city*. So maybe badly worded on my part. I'm also not sure if this is still the case, since I guess it's approaching 50 years since the study was originally conducted, if I've got my years right.

*ie non-rhoticity in NYC is a lower-class feature, but in London it's a normal and/or higher-class feature. ie features have different sociolinguistic connotations depending on location.

[Herr Dunkel]

You worded it a bit off, but, yeah, Wikipedia confirms this:

Many professional class New Yorkers from high socioeconomic backgrounds often speak with less conspicuous accents; in particular, many, though hardly all, use rhotic pronunciations instead of the non-rhotic pronunciations, while maintaining some less stigmatized features such as the low back chain shift and the short-A split (see below).

[communistplot]

A stereotypical impression of a person from East Anglia is usually something along the lines of 'yarr I'm a farmerr, this is my tractorr', always replete with heavy rhotacism. Which is funny because East Anglia is fully non-rhotic and has been for some time.

That's how I think of Californians (which is one big weed farm anyway), or Idahoans though they are fully rhotic.

Are you from, like, the same world as the rest of us? Most of America is rhotic; and the non-rhotic sections (e.g. the South, New York City) seem to be the ones that are generally considered lower-class..

Actually, I guess I would be considered lower/working class.
But yeah, I've seen the Labov study. Also, non-rhoticity was more widespread on the East Coast until fairly recently, think last 50 years, when NY started to lose it's dialectical influence after WWII for the more dialect neutral inland regions. Like most of my older relatives from South Carolina, they're all from the Columbia area, speak with non-rhotic accents while the younger ones speak with rhotic ones.
But yeah, non-rhoticity is considered a sign of either foreigness, because all Brits are non-rhotic amirite? Or a sign of being uneducated and is often mocked. (particularly out west (I've never gotten in trouble for the way I've spoken anywhere along the EC)

[finlay]

A stereotypical impression of a person from East Anglia is usually something along the lines of 'yarr I'm a farmerr, this is my tractorr', always replete with heavy rhotacism. Which is funny because East Anglia is fully non-rhotic and has been for some time.

That's how I think of Californians (which is one big weed farm anyway), or Idahoans though they are fully rhotic.

Are you from, like, the same world as the rest of us? Most of America is rhotic; and the non-rhotic sections (e.g. the South, New York City) seem to be the ones that are generally considered lower-class..

Actually, I guess I would be considered lower/working class.
But yeah, I've seen the Labov study. Also, non-rhoticity was more widespread on the East Coast until fairly recently, think last 50 years, when NY started to lose it's dialectical influence after WWII for the more dialect neutral inland regions. Like most of my older relatives from South Carolina, they're all from the Columbia area, speak with non-rhotic accents while the younger ones speak with rhotic ones.
But yeah, non-rhoticity is considered a sign of either foreigness, because all Brits are non-rhotic amirite?

You're not right. I'm a Brit with a rhotic accent. 95% of people from England and Wales are non-rhotic, but there are still pockets of rhoticity in the Southwest and parts of Lancashire, as I mentioned before. You might find a small number of rhotic speakers in East Anglia too, but they're even more rapidly declining. Virtually all of Scotland and Ireland are rhotic apart from posh people who wish to sound like they're from England (but there are posh Scottish and Irish accents as well which are rhotic).

Most commonwealth English, with the obvious exception of Canada, is non-rhotic (South Africa, Aus, NZ, India).

[communistplot]

A stereotypical impression of a person from East Anglia is usually something along the lines of 'yarr I'm a farmerr, this is my tractorr', always replete with heavy rhotacism. Which is funny because East Anglia is fully non-rhotic and has been for some time.

That's how I think of Californians (which is one big weed farm anyway), or Idahoans though they are fully rhotic.

Are you from, like, the same world as the rest of us? Most of America is rhotic; and the non-rhotic sections (e.g. the South, New York City) seem to be the ones that are generally considered lower-class..

Actually, I guess I would be considered lower/working class.
But yeah, I've seen the Labov study. Also, non-rhoticity was more widespread on the East Coast until fairly recently, think last 50 years, when NY started to lose it's dialectical influence after WWII for the more dialect neutral inland regions. Like most of my older relatives from South Carolina, they're all from the Columbia area, speak with non-rhotic accents while the younger ones speak with rhotic ones.
But yeah, non-rhoticity is considered a sign of either foreigness, because all Brits are non-rhotic amirite?

You're not right. I'm a Brit with a rhotic accent. 95% of people from England and Wales are non-rhotic, but there are still pockets of rhoticity in the Southwest and parts of Lancashire, as I mentioned before. You might find a small number of rhotic speakers in East Anglia too, but they're even more rapidly declining. Virtually all of Scotland and Ireland are rhotic apart from posh people who wish to sound like they're from England (but there are posh Scottish and Irish accents as well which are rhotic).

Most commonwealth English, with the obvious exception of Canada, is non-rhotic (South Africa, Aus, NZ, India).

If you'd read that again you'd notice the sarcasm. I'm just saying that non-rhoticity is very heavily stigmatised here.

[finlay]

If you'd read that again you'd notice the sarcasm.

I guess. I'm all one for dry humour, but I reckon you could have racked it up a notch or two.

[communistplot]

If you'd read that again you'd notice the sarcasm.

I guess. I'm all one for dry humour, but I reckon you could have racked it up a notch or two.

Well I'd like to think I'm more a Dane Cook than a Bill Maher. ;D

[finlay]

I have no idea who those people are.

[communistplot]

Well the first is an incredibly bad comedian and the second and incredibly good one.