Grew up in southern cal, have lived in DC area since 76.....have never heard anyone pronounce it with 3 syllables....always cab-net.

I grew up in northern Ohio but have been in Texas for 30 years (still no twang) and pronounce it with two and a half syllables, barely letting the 'i' in there. But Linelle has me wondering, how does everyone else pronounce cupboard - 'cup-board', or 'cubbord'? I use the latter and don't recall ever hearing anyone pronounce it with the 'p' enunciated.

Native of northeast Ohio. Two and a half syllables: "cab-bn-net". And "cubberd" for cupboard.

I grew up and live in northern California, my DH grew up in southern California. We both say caB net.

Here in Aberta I hear people say cab-in-et and cab-i-net but never cab-net.

When in doubt, check a dictionary. I don't think you'll find any that indicate 2 syllables...

Raised in western NY... currently near Annapolis, MD... went to college in Springfield, MO...... and I'm not sure I've even heard someone say "cab-i-net." It's a 2 syllable word for me - perhaps occasionally you might hear a slight hesitation between the 2 syllables.

Please, oh, please don't get me started on "warsh" etc. I get chills when I hear the "r" added in... and when the "h" is dropped out of "human." Literally chills.

Cab-net. But hey we call water "wudder" in Baltimore too

Never heard anything but 3 syllables from anyone from the US, UK, or Canada.

The only kitchen-related thing I've heard pronounced differently was from my Canadian mom who pronounces "disposal" funny, like dis-POH-ZAHL, emphasis on both the 2nd and 3rd syllables. Also, you don't "wash" the dishes, you "wash up" the dishes. Using "washing-up liquid".

Reminds me of the time I asked for some caramel on my ice cream. The conversation went like this:

me: I'll take some caramel.
him: What?
me: Caramel please
him: excuse me?
me: Caramel
him: Oh, I've never heard it pronounced that way before
me: How do you say it?
him: Kar'mul (heavy emphasis on the first syllable)
me: Huh. (I pronounce it kara-mel, silly me)

Breezy, If it's any consolation, I, too, pride myself on pronunciation, grammar, and word usage---but here in the lovely PNW I say it with only two syllables. My first thought when I saw the subject line was "uh-oh," and, sure enough, I've apparently been saying it wrong all along.

I'm from Southern California. We hear all kinds of things here, where people from everywhere else come to stay. Everyone I know has three syllables, but they're not even weight. Hard to write without IPA alphabet, but something like CAB'n'it. I've never heard it has two closed syllables like cab-net.

CARMul.

Definitely cubberd.

Mitten and kitten, also water, with a flap t (the way it's generally pronounced in the middle), rather than a glottal stop.

DisposAll was one of the original brands of disposers and is still a GE trademark. Many people say it that way (Dispose All) the way they say Frigidaire for refrigerator or Hoover for vacuum. It's not an alternate pronunciation of "disposal". :) "Washing up" with "washing up liquid" is what you do in England. The Canadian language seems to be kind of half British, half American.

PUMPkin, but my mother says punkn.

CALC-ya-Later

FWAHyay, but I think when I was a child I heard more FOYyay.

Pronounce the "h"? What's that? (Actually, I do know, some people say the "wh" as a voiceless "w", but I hear it so infrequently that it sounds funny.)

And of course it's a PAHtio. The word is Spanish. But I say PATeeyo with a flap t, but the "a" as in "pat".

LWO, adjusting to your customers isn't mocking. If you weren't doing it subconsciously, it would be a good technique to do on purpose. Adapting your accent means making your customers feel comfortable with you. That you're on their side. Literally, speaking their language. Since you're in a position of knowledge and authority, it means you're not talking down to them. Especially, where a broader accent might be taken as less cosmopolitan, and a media normalized accent might be taken as outlander, this is especially true.

Breezy, this is a fun thread. :) Thanks! You're fine. Good diction is about saying the word distinctly so that you can be understood, whatever your accent is. That is, it's not about how you pronounce it, but whether people can hear the way you pronounce it clearly.

Yea. I'm from RI originally and we have many interesting ways of pronouncing many words.

I think I was in my early teens before I realized my friend Tara was not, infact, named Terror.

We add rs and take them away in equal measure.

I have heard Cabinet pronounced as two syllables. I, on the other hand, use three. ka - bin - et.

Additionally, in RI cabinet is what most people would think of as a milkshake. And a milkshake is really milk with flavoring in it. Or at least that was true in the 80s. RI is not so provincial that it is entirely immune from national television - but you'd be surprised. To be safe - one should always ask for a frappe if that's what you're after.

I grew up in Washington and now live in California (Bay Area), and I say cab-i-net, but depending on the situation and context the "i" can get short to the point of nonexistince, along the lines of what davidro said.

I don't pronounce the H in what, where, why. I didn't know I was supposed to until a choir director pointed it out. Looked in Websters and what do you know! But why it is spelled WH instead of HW?

I grew up with CARmul, but have mostly switched to CARE-uh-mel as an adult, when I realized I was out of step with everybody else.

There are some New England things that I find interesting, like when Norm Abrams builds something with draws (drawers, which I pronounce like drores, with not quite two distinct syllables, but it does have an R). Or listening to a recording of JFK when he says "Idee-ers" (ideas).

Nu-cle-ar
"Kitten" and "mitten"? definitely have t's
Pump-kin, although if I'm using for a nickname (kid or cat), I say pun-k'n.
Cal-Cu-Lator

cab-i-net, but you hardly hear the i.

How about coupon? For me, it's always been "coo-pon", ("coo" like a dove would say). "Cyoo-pon" ("cyoo" like a cue ball) makes me grimace. Although trying to prove my point once, I looked it up and apparently either way is correct.

My MIL and SIL say "eye-talian" for Italian, like "do you have any eye-talian dressing?" I say, "Where's that from, eye-taly?" They also say thee-ATE-er instead of theater. It kind of cracks me up, since we all grew up in the Chicago area and I never heard anyone pronounce it that way except as a joke until I met them.

We have very Midwestern accents, which to us of course sound like no accent at all, just neutral. Once on vacation in the south, some kids overheard us talking and said "you sound like people on TV!" (although they said "teeee veeee".) We were utterly baffled and thought, please god, not like we're people on Jerry Springer, right? Later we met their parents, who told us, "You sound like people on the news!" Again, we were baffled, until they said, "You know, the people who SAY the news!" Apparently they thought we talk like newscasters. I still haven't figured out if that was a compliment, but it's better than being like the guests on Jerry Springer, right?

Chicagoans reminded me of when I was teaching a computer class to a bunch of drama majors back in my college days. They loved my "accent", which according to them was mid-Western or "neutral". They said that part of their acting training was to learn to mimic a mid-Western accent as a neutral base. They also told me that all the national news casters use a mid-Western accent (don't know if that's by design or not).

I've never lived in the mid-West. And in fact was not even born in the US (it was an English-speaking country though).

Now just as an odd polar opposite, a group that I voice-chat with in a video game (all Americans, mostly West Coast where I live, too) recently told me that I had a slight interesting accent and they were wondering where I was from. Go figure. Kara-mel! Kara-mel! That sticky brown stuff right there!

> "Washing up" with "washing up liquid" is what you do in England. The Canadian language seems to be kind of half British, half American.

Definitely closer to British in written form - Canadians use the same spellings as Brits do for words like colour, practise, or programme; and Christmas is on 25/12/11, not 12/25/11. But when spoken the inflection is closer to American, though still recognisably different. And at least in Quebec where I've spent most of my time there, there's all sorts of odd expressions that result from direct translations of French phrases (you don't turn off the light, you "close the light"). Still, I thought "washing-up liquid" was just an informal way of referring to hand dishwashing detergent (or whatever it's officially called) so it threw me off seeing it actually called that right on the label:

> They said that part of their acting training was to learn to mimic a mid-Western accent as a neutral base. They also told me that all the national news casters use a mid-Western accent

It used to be the conventional wisdom that national American newscasters had to have a midwestern accent, but I think by now that's been disproven. Peter Jennings became an American news anchor despite his Canadian accent, and Martin Bashir's obviously British inflection didn't stop him from becoming a major US newscaster.

Cab-i-net...three syllables, at least over here in eastern Washington. Much like Cab-er-net, as in wine :)

LWO- Finally, someone who knows what a chifferobe is! Up here, everyone says armoire, but chifferobe is a better desciption for my piece, from the 1940s.

I would like to think that I use three syllables, but I really seem to say CAB-NET. The middle third syllabe is almost there, could be there, but in regular conversation I'm pretty sure it only sounds like two syllables. (I'm Cdn)

Agree with lee676, the most apparent differences between American and Canadian english can be found in written form - colour, centre, neighbour, etc. But it is pretty simple to identify someone as an American through accent though. Foyer is an obvious one - I pronounce it FOY-YEI, but I think Americans typically say Foy-er.

Well, a chifferobe is technically a combination between a chiffonier and a wardrobe (drawers on bottom, hanging space on top) and an armoire is technically a cabinet with shelves behind doors. Since we have new, different kinds of furniture, like TV cabinets made to look like armoires or chifferobes, I don't think it matters much. Generally, the literature says "armoire" but that might be because it's fewer keystrokes, or sounds more Frenchified, for those who think that Frencher is classier. :)

Actually, drawers in a chiffonier are something "new" in the mid-19th century. Originally, it was a low piece of furniture which was either open shelves, or covered by a grating, hence "chiffon", meaning transparent.

I prompted my brother to say "cabinet" without saying the word myself. He's never lived anywhere by So. Cal. What he said was CAB-in-et. I'm thinking his pronunciation might be influenced by reading, because most people around here pronounce the final syllable as "it" (as in mitt) rather than "et" (as in "met").

When I was younger I used to think that KARMul was the cellophane-wrapped candy cubes and Care-a-mel was the gooey brown sauce you put on ice cream.

Until a few years ago I thought my Dad was the only one who called it a chifferobe instead of wardrobe.

A Canadian friend told me that about half the words which differ have the British spelling and half have the U.S. spelling. I'm not sure if that's accurate, but it makes sense because of the cultural pressures from both places. :)

Ghostly, you're right! KARMul is the candy! And, in fact, it's so messed up in my head that I would call the color CARE-a-mel, as CARE-a-mel walls would look nice with the granite, except in combining form, where I'd say a KARMul-colored pony. I don't often talk about the sauce, but what sounds right to me is to ask "Chocolate or CARE-a-mel?", but to offer "ice cream with KARMul sauce." I would never say "CARE-a-mel sauce". But if you asked me the flavor of the gooey brown stuff, I'd say "CARE-a-mel". It's definitely the construct state, which isn't usually a rule in English!

but what about grosheries or groceries?

I bet that "cab-net/nit" is (maybe was) a shortening of the word, so "cab'net." In the Oz books, written in the early 1900s, the little girl heroines always said "prob'ly." I immediately copied that because who could be cooler than Dorothy and Ozma? I did know, though, that the whole word was "probably."

About those drawers? At our house, "drawers" also referred to one's underpants, although sometimes it could refer to non-under pants. I was fairly old before I figured out that that wasn't a common usage in So. CA.

Suzannesl, my father always uses "drawers" to refer to underpants. One day when I was finalizing my kitchen layout I decided i liked my parents' cabinets (cab'n'ets, FWIW) with drawers instead of pullouts, so I called home to check on width and depth. Mom didn't answer so I told Dad " I just want to ask Mom how big her drawers are". He had a lot of fun with that....

LOL plllog, so it's decided, KARmul is a candy but CARE-a-mel is a color. I think I can live with that.

Cab-i-net - when I say it but I call them cu-berds usually, does that make me bad? I'm Canadian with an English background. I grew up in Quebec so that probably adds a certain je ne sais quoi to my language.

I was very embarrased to find out as a teenager that not everybody "lays the table" or wears a dressing gown. I have been known to say please close the lights. BUT who says De-troy-it? Besides my DH and my MIL.

Fun thread.

Draw-ers are things you draw, i.e., pull. You draw the enclosed cabinet shelves toward you. You draw on your underpants. Makes sense. :) Cindaintx, I can just imagine. ;)

Momo, if you want to get really picky technical about nothing, a "bathrobe" is what you put on your altogether right out of the tub, and may be terry cloth so you don't even have to dry off first. A dressing gown is what one might have worn over one's chemise and petticoats to entertain ones besties while setting one's patches and having one's hair done (not to be confused with a powdering gown which resembled the capes still in use at salons for keeping the gunk off one's clothes)--it's more of an around the house kind of notion, and with drawers on (not that they had any such garment back when they were first wearing dressing gowns). :)

Lots of family members from deeTROIT, but I never heard De-troy-it. :)

GRO-sir-eez, or sometimes GRO-sreez when said fast.

What all people don't lay the table? I know lots of people who say De-Troy-it.

What about orange? I've had a running "argument" with DH and even both daughters about that one for years. I grew up in PA with southern parents but have lived in the PNW for 30 years. DH grew up in PNW and says "or" for the first part of that word. I say "ar-enge". My contention is that the knock-knock joke about bananas would never work if one said "or-ange".

i live in central NJ. i am from central NJ, although i went to school and worked in NY. i don't have what most consider a joisy accent -since that horrible sound is actually a NEW YAWRK (brooklyn) accent. i have had many people ask if i am canadian (um, yeah. no.)

anyway, cab-in-et.

Coming to you from where the oranges grow: OR-inge

Well I did look it up in the dictionary--Merriam-Webster Unabridged Collegiate, to be precise and much to my amazement, the two-syllable pronunciation is the first one listed! I was so sure the "correct," or at least preferred would be the three-syllable version that I've been saying my whole life. But no, two syllables is first. I am shocked!

plllog- You must be in CA-how do people say it in Florida? (I ask because I think ar-enge must be an eastern thing, but maybe not).

In Ohio... and I say "CAB-net". Two syllables.

In CT it's three syllables: cab-i-net

I say it with three syllables but it appears that I place different emphasis on how I say it than most here have indicated. I seem to pronounce it (though after saying it so many times to see for myself, I wonder!) as ca-bi-net with very little emphasis on the middle syllable but I definitely pronounce the "i" ever so slightly.

I was born and raised in MD but my parents both had noticeable accents of their own - my father was from OH and my mom has a Boston accent. I grew up in a DC suburb where there were mostly transplants from other areas of the country, so I didn't have that Bal'mer twang found in many areas of MD. I don't feel that I have a very discernible "accent" - in fact, dh is from the San Francisco area and for the most part, I don't think you would be able to tell from the way that either of us speak that we grew up on opposite sides of the country.

We could follow Candice Olson's lead and say cabinetry (which sounds like "cabinechree" to me.)

I say cabinet with three syllables and orange with just one (ornge)! Those pullout things are drawers, not draws, and people cut coop-ons not Q-pons.

I also tend to drop middle and ending "t" sounds so mitten and kitten sound like mi'en and ki'en, and a catcher uses a mi'. "Party hearty" sounds like pardy hardy. Yet I cringe whenever HGTVers natter on about how they need a large living area for "entertaineen".

Oh my....these are tough... I live in the Boston area but did not grow up here....more southern CT and Westchester county, NY. In Boston there a words that inexplicably have r's at the end - like "idear" for "idea" or there are no r's at all - like "ah Cah" for "our car". Talk about a learning curve!

1. Cabinet - has 3 syllables - cab-i-net; but like some of the others here it is usually called a cupboard ...sounding a but more like "cubberd". FYI: In some parts of New England a "cabinet" is also a milkshake!

2. Drawers are both pulled out of a bureau, desk, etc and also can be worn (underwear).... or there are "droopy drawers" which is what you get when you wear sagging pants that let the underwear show (picture what some teenage boys wear)...I think of "Draw" as a verb.

3. And Lawjedi- Oh boy...Do I agree with you on "human" with the "h" dropped- I get apoplectic when I hear it...!

BP

"Cab-i-net...three syllables, at least over here in eastern Washington. Much like Cab-er-net, as in wine :) "

In my part of eastern Washington, we only use two syllables. ;) Maybe that is because I grew up in Oregon... or maybe it's because I'm the closest one to Hanford. Eek!

Cab-net! :)

I grew up in Southern NJ but then lived in central NJ when I went to college and for a few years thereafter. Then I moved to Northern NJ for a job and have lived now in Northern NJ for more years(think for 20 years) than I have ever lived anywhere. I have owned my home now for 14 years which is the longest I lived in any area in my life.

OK, when I moved to central NJ, I was teased that I had an accent and when I moved to Northern NJ, I was teased that I had a southern/Philadelphia accent. When I got down to Southern NJ where my family lives, they now have slight accents to my ear since I am used to how everyone sounds near me.

I pronounce cabinet with three syllables but then again I say home funny I am told since southern NJ sounds like Philadelphia. :)

Lynn, when I was in college in NYC, a couple of my friends (from NY and CT) used to always tease me about the way I say "home." I can't hear it and they would say back to me the way they heard me pronouncing it. But when I'd then say it out loud, it didn't sound the same way to me. That was the only word that anyone every commented about though once someone told me I had a Southern accent (one of my NYer college friends at the beginning of school), but I told them they had obviously NEVER been to the South if they thought my "accent" was Southern!

While I honestly don't think I have a distinctly regional accent (see my post above), I know that I do talk slowly. People used to say that to me all the time. I've always been a laid back kind of person so I guess it fits my personality. I don't really notice it much unless I hear myself on tape - just before the holidays I was interviewed on the news one day and it was not an easy thing to watch! I did talk noticeably s.l.o.w.l.y!

Very interesting thread especially considering the mix of accents & regional variation we have in our family (FL, NC, & NY), so I did some research:

From Dictionary.com:
cab-i-net
[kab-uh-nit]
I think it really comes down to how fast you say the word--the faster you say it, the less you hear the 'i' & it becomes 2 syllables vs. 3. The slower you say it the more pronounced the 'i' becomes and you end up with all 3 syllables.)

hu-man
[hyoo-muhn or, often, yoo‐]
I always hated when the 'h' is dropped. Had a highschool teacher for a year who dropped the 'h' & it made me nuts! I'm a fan of phonics, the 'h' is there for a reason-let's pronounce it.

car-a-mel
[kar-uh-muhl, -mel, kahr-muhl]
Pronunciation always seemed regional to me like pee-can vs pe-cahn. But using the rules of phonics, I have to hedge on the side of car-a-mel.

I-tal-ian
[ih-tal-yuhn]
Being 1/2 Italian, I can definitely say it's not pronounced eye-tal-yan

or-ange
[awr-inj, or-inj]
Seems like I use the first pronunciation for the color & the second for the fruit--go figure!

wash
[wosh, wawsh]
Definitely no 'r' in either pronunciation or the spelling

Some other interesting facts on the 'English English' language which American English is based on:

-"Many varieties undergo h dropping, making harm and arm homophones. This is a feature of working-class accents across most of England, but was traditionally stigmatised (a fact the comedy musical My Fair Lady was quick to exploit) but less so now.[12] This was geographically widespread, but the linguist A.C. Gibson stated that it did not extend to the far north, nor to East Anglia, Essex, Wiltshire or Somerset.[13] In the past, working-class people were often unsure where an h ought to be pronounced, and, when attempting to speak "properly", would often preface any word that began with a vowel with an h (e.g. "henormous" instead of enormous, "hicicles" instead of icicles); this was referred to as the "hypercorrect h" in the Survey of English Dialects, and is also referenced in literature (e.g. the policeman in Danny the Champion of the World)." Source: Wikipedia

-"A glottal stop for intervocalic /t/ is now common amongst younger speakers across the country; it was originally confined to some areas of the south-east and East Anglia." Source:Wikipedia. (i.e. the kitten, mitten references: pronounced as ki'en, mi'en)

-"The distinction between /w/ and /hw/ in wine and whine is lost in most varieties, "wh" being pronounced consistently as /w/." Source: Wikipedia

-"Most versions of this dialect have non-rhotic pronunciation, meaning that [r] is not pronounced in syllable coda position. Nonrhoticism is also found elsewhere in the English speaking world, including in Australian English, New Zealand English, and South African English, as well as most nonnative varieties spoken throughout the Commonwealth of Nations.[10] Rhotic accents exist in the West Country, parts of Lancashire, the far north of England and in the town of Corby, both of which have a large Scottish influence on their speech." Source: Wikipedia. (i.e. Norm Abrams reference on the word 'drawers': draw-ers vs draws).

I am from the PNW and say cabinet with three syllables. Although I agree with others' point that when speaking quickly that "i" goes by awfully fast.

New word question:

My mom took a college linguistics class once where the teacher was from back East and marked everyone's papers wrong for phonetically spelling "idea" as eye-dee-ah. He thought it should be eye-dee-er.

ROTFL!! Are you sure that wasn't a student TA grading the papers? The instructor wasn't qualified if he did that himself...

Except... If the instructor said "eye-DEE-er" aloud and asked them to write it in phonetic transcription, and the students wrote down "eye-DEE-ah", they would be wrong. The point would have been to listen to what he said, not the way they'd pronounce it.

hey breezy -

how are the kittens doing - we need pics! :)

Nor-cal/bay area here. Cab-i-net. I've said that word a lot in the past year.

BalTra: my dh from NY makes fun of my "wh" pronunciation daily.

I initially said I pronounce cabinet with two syllables. But now? Three. Thanks for the education.

Blended sound:

cabehnet