Coming in late: I pronounce "chalk" as "chawk" (same sound as in dawg).

I was unable to listen to Kath's sounds on this computer, but I've read all the posts here. Yes, "dror" for "draw" would be yet another example of the intrusive R to this American ear.

As for the "hoose" for "house", and "oot" for "out", etc. it's an excellent observation that this is also heard in parts of Scotland, as well as Canada (think the late Peter Jennings), and my own Tidewater, VA. (e.g. both Canada and this part of Virginia were settled early on by great masses of Highland Scots and Scots-Irish).

Frieda, the "ruff" sound is sort of like the other pronunciation of "roof" that I was unable to spell, only it is a bit softer. So glad someone brought up pronunciation of "root." I think it was first in either W. VA or PA that I first heard it pronounced as "ruht," which would have it rhyming with "foot" and "soot". (I always have pronounced root as I do "fool", with the same sound as in "ruthless." )

Vee, how do you pronounce "Norfolk"? You know, we here in Tidewater also have a "Norfolk" and the pronunciation is quite problematitical. Outsiders say "Nor" (as in "north") and "folk" . But the way to tell a native speaker here is that it is pronounced something like "Naw-fik". Come-heres drop their jaws when they first hear this, but they quickly get used to it and learn not to bat an eye....

Mary. Norfolk is pronounced much as you say it in VA Nawf/Norf (both sounds are the same here) .. uk, the word 'folk' is, on its own, said so it rhymes with 'yoke'.
The same goes for the county of 'Suffolk' (south of Norfolk). We say Suff ..uk

root is another funny word around here. If you are talking about the part of a plant below ground, it is rute-long u sound-as in ruthless. But if you are going shopping at Root's Farmer's market, the name rhymes with foot. Also, a pig will root (foot) around to find some roots (ruthless) to eat.
Unless you are Amish or Dutchy-then it is always root (foot)

It's how we tell the long-timers from the incomers!

Oh what fun! I thoroughly enjoyed this thread & have a place name to add for it's eccentricity. Mosheim, Tennessee- pronounced moss-hime-It really gives tourists a hard time!I enjoyed listening (and watching) Kaths video & have had fun sitting here pronouncing words & seeing who I match with etc. We also have Elizabethton,TN which would seem straight forward enough but the emphasis is on BETH. e-liz-a-BETH-ton. Well as I say outloud, it's actually e-liz-a-BETH-"tin" not "ton"! The ABC show, Lost has characters from Australia, England, Scotland and several parts of the the US. Does anyone else watch & if so, are these accents accurate?
Susan

Vee, yes, we not only spell and pronounce things differently, we also hear things a bit differently. The hearing part can be due to slight individual anatomical differences and how environment and the aging process is affecting a person's hearing. Some of the hearing part, just like pronunciation, is culturally influenced. However, these individual differences aren't usually insurmountable: we can agree that certain sounds are reasonably similar enough to lump them together. That's why phonological surveys are determined by consensus: there are routinely three surveyors. Of course ideally the more surveyors the better to gain greater accuracy, but unfortunately more than three overwhelm the folk being surveyed.

Twenty-five to thirty years ago my transcription accuracy was judged to be excellent, but transcription style has changed, my skills have been fallow at intervals, and age has caught up with my hearing. Just so I didn't have only my own ears to judge Kath's pronunciation of chalk I asked my mother (age 87, but with excellent hearing for a woman of her years), my niece (age 16), and my employee Mrs B (in her thirties) to listen to Kath's package. I asked them to listen and give their opinions separately so they wouldn't be predisposed or influenced by each other. I wrote on paper to instruct them to pay particular attention to the rock/chalk/jayhawk part and how Kath pronounced the middle word. Kath, you are famous!

The result: My mother detected the 'l' as ever so slight.
My niece said there was a faint influence of the 'l' on the vowel.
Mrs B didn't hear the 'l' in Kath's pronunciation but she said it (the vowel) was definitely different from the way she thinks she says 'chalk'. (I agree that Mrs B and Kath pronounce them differently.)

Take what you can from this little experiment. Since three of my surveyors (including me) are family related, we may hear things similarly simply because of our relationship. Mrs B is our foil.

So, Kath is right, I think, in that what I hear as 'l' in her 'chalk' is in fact contrast from what I am accustomed to hearing in American pronunciations.

Whew! I am long-winded, but I thought it might be of interest. :-)

I think this came up in another thread, the Australian accent has the intrusive "r" on the ends of words ending in a vowel sound (eg, "draw") only when it is succeeded by a word beginning in a vowel sound. So, if one asked, "what are you going to do now?" one might be answered either, "draw pictures of cats", or "dror a picture of a cat". Similarly if the verb has "ing" aded, the "r" will be inserted- "draw", "droring".

Colleen, thank you for reiterating that connection between the intrusive 'r' and what comes before it, a word or syllable ending in a vowel sound, and after it, another word or sound that begins with a vowel, because that's really the key. Still, when Kath linked the a-ending words with the word or (e.g., India or Cuba), she kept the a-ending of India distinct, without an intrusive 'r'. Very interesting.

Getting back to something else Kath illustrated (quite deliberately, I'm sure) is what instigated these latest pronunciation threads: the possibility of rhyming thought with court, which is a head-shaker for many Americans. The first few times I listened to you, Kath, I didn't pick up on thought/court because your 'court' is the same as mine and pretty much the same as most Americans I've heard, with the r-sound distinct. In my imaginings of English-English, as Vee described the rhyme scheme, I thought if there's an r-sound in thought ('thort') it would be more obvious. Perhaps not and maybe that's why it took me a while to figure out how thought could rhyme with court.

organic bassetlvr, if I'm ever in Tennessee, I'll try to remember the shibboleths of 'moss-hime' and 'e-liz-a-BETH-tin'. Gotta love 'em! Texas is full of 'em, too; such as, Boerne (BUR-nee), Mexia (muh-HAY-uh), and my favorite: Refugio (ruh-FEAR-ee-oh -- talk about an intrusive 'r'!)

Thanks for that Frieda, I'm happy to know I am instructing Americans in Australian pronunciations *g*

I have a problem, too, with the term intrusive r, (although I realise it is legitimate) because it seems to imply that it is incorrect pronunciation, rather than just a difference in accent. Something like extra r sounds less pejorative to me.

Personally, I have always found the letter "r" to be rather a bully-changing vowel sounds just by its presence-how many other consonants are that pushy? And when it pushes in when it isn't even in the spelling....that's "intrusive!"

I'll grant you that "c" and "g" are schizophrenic, and "m" is clearly one-upping poor "n", (that last from a kindergartener who asked if "m" was the big brother), but I can't think of another consonant that has so much of an effect on the letters around it.

Kath, in neutral linguistics, the choice of terminology, is supposed to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the term intrusive r can connote a pejorative sense even when one is unintended. The older term for the phenomenon of the r-sound appearing when it is not in the spelling was invasive r and that offended enough sensibilities that it was changed -- but hardly for the better! But for now the accepted term in linguistics is intrusive r and when I refer to it I mean it only in the descriptive sense. Perhaps what can be construed as pejorative is actually a sense of wonder and puzzlement for how and why the r-sound has such an effect, as Cece described.

Cece, leave it to a kindergartener to be so logical and succinct! Schizophrenic 'c' and 'g'...they sure are. 'T' and 'd' are troublemakers too. Americans often fall into the trap of pronouncing the German th-spelling (e.g. Neanderthal) as the soft /th/ of thorn when in German the th-sound is the same as our Am-E 't'. The Irish also pronounce the th-spelling as /t/; example, the Irish rock group Thin Lizzy is pronounced 'Tin' Lizzy in Ireland although they were happy enough, when they were all together, to be called "Thin" by American fans -- their name was a bit of intentional double entendre anyway.

So, does anyone know how we got to the Boston "Cell-tics?" And this in an area settled heavily by the Irish!

Back to the meaning of the word 'cheesy'. I had always used it to mean of poor quality, shoddy, or cheap. However, my daughters and their friends (now in their twenties) have always used it as I used to use the word 'corny', meaning trite and sentimental. In my area at least (California), the meaning has shifted.

I would love to see that map of Pennsylvania issoglosses. Is it available online? Rouan and I grew up in Pennsylvania with parents who grew up in Boston. I suspect our accent is a very dilute blend of the two. I became veery aware of pronunciation differences when I was a college student (Penn State) and met students from all over the state, and New Jersey and New York as well.

Rosefolly

Chris, like the Boston 'Sel-tiks' so are the Glasgow 'Sel-tik'. I had to go to Google, as you may already have done, for an explanation. Apparently 'Sel-tik' is the older pronunciation of Celtic that came into English via the French. Sometime around 1900 the 'Kel-tik' pronunciation became fashionable among academics because someone traced the French derivation to the Latin 'Keltae' which itself came from the Greek 'Keltoi'. Those who were already saying 'Sel-tik' before the academics decided to do the shift to the k-sound carried their pronunciation to such places as Boston or retained it in places such as Glasgow.

Rosefolly, there probably are isoglosses available online for Pennsylvania dialects/accents, but the ones I was looking at recently are in a manuscript of an unpublished study. I'm sorry that I whet your interest and now can't deliver you to a place to view them.

The acquisition of our accents really interests me. I remember a lecture I heard on the subject giving the breakdown of influences: Around 40 percent is familial (or from the persons who raise us), 45 percent is from peers, and 15 percent from our individual idiosyncrasies (idiolects) and other sources.

Rosefolly, come to think of it, I've heard that shift in meaning of 'cheesy' to trite and sappy. My children are boys and I have seven nephews but only one niece, so those who have more girls may get wind of these shifts in meaning quicker.

I'm ashamed to admit that I, queen of Googling, didn't Google "Celtic."

As to the acquisition of accents -- My niece was born in the Canal Zone, spent her learning-to-talk years in Colorado and returned to Tennessee at 8 with the strongest southern accent of the entire family. The constant in all that was that she grew up on army bases which I suspect are overwhelmingly populated by Southerners.

I'm sure we acquire our accents/ways of speech as babies with our Mother's milk. I remember reading/hearing that the US Sec. of State Henry Kissinger, still spoke with a noticeable German accent because he had arrived in the US after the age of about 5 years so the accent of his parents always stayed with him.
I have a friend who has lived in Canada since the '60's and still sounds as English as the day she boarded the boat.

Below is a site where you can hear various regional English, Scottish, Welsh accents plus RP English.
It makes interesting listening and even gives eg's of how young people (especially females) now speak . . . sloppily!
Maybe there is something similar for the US/Canada/Australia?

Here is a link that might be useful: Sounds Familiar

I think we often are unaware of how we sound to others when we speak. It was only after I was taped for a mock job interview that I realized there was no "soft" southern accent, but instead a small, slightly nasal twang. The only way I've been able to explain it to myself is that at Univ. I had a room-mate from New York City. I copied her style and I may have tried to copy her accent as well. Part of the 45 per cent peer group?

No one answered the query I made on either this or a similar thread re the Valley Girl style of speech in the US. How did this originate? And why did it "catch on"? Was it from a TV show? And is it the accent I hear among the youth around me that is especially high pitched and shrill?
I hope someone can elaborate....

Well, like the Valley girls, you know, like they talk with this really like slow draggy kinda way, like as if they was like really wasted, kinda like um they had spent all day laying on the beach in the sun. And like everything they say just really goes around and around in a circle so they say the same things again in like a really sleepy way like they were wasted. Except when a whole lot of them get together to go shopping and then like they get all excited and are just so happy to be on Rodeo that their shrieks like break the store windows. You know? But like, really only the California Girls talk that way and they kinda don't anymore either 'cause its really last year.

Britney Spears. The Miss Teen America contestant whose painfully inept answer to a question was all over YouTube last year. The movie Clueless. Shrill and brainless. It reminded me of the 1920s when the aristocratic youth deliberately spoke with working-class accents as a reverse snobbism. Or now, when "street-talk" comes out of the most unexpected mouths-suburban preteens in private school uniforms.

Thanks, Vee, for the link to regional English dialects/accents. I listened to about six of the segments and will return to listen at length to the others. I have yet to find anything online similar to it for American English, although there must be some because I heard plenty of regional Am-E recordings when I took university classes -- I even participated in making such recordings.gives eg's of how young people (especially females) now speak . . . sloppily!Don't you suppose, though, that they think older people speak like hidebound sticks-in-the-mud? :-)

Generally children who learn a second language will acquire the accent of their teachers or of whatever group they are immersed in -- I think up to around age 12, give or take a couple of years. I have Polish friends who moved to Dallas, Texas in the late 1970s with their two sons, ages at the time of 7 and 2. The father spoke some English, the mother and kids none at all. Within three years the father's English had improved but his accent was still heavy; the mother who didn't work outside her home still barely spoke English at all; but the boys sounded like Texas kids and translated for their mother. To the mother's profound dismay the boys were losing their proper accents in Polish, replaced with Texas-accented Polish. Both boys are now men and you can't distinguish them from most north Texans (evidence of peer influence); their parents' English will always be Polish-accented.
I think we often are unaware of how we sound to others when we speak.Mary, this is so true. There's a classic linguistics experiment with new students: Sound recordings (no video) are made of each person's voice in the class. Then in an isolation booth or small room, the recordings are played for a student to identify the speaker's distinctive accent/dialect features and also who that speaker is. More than half of students fail to identify themselves: "Gee, I don't know who that is." Some suspect the strange speaker could be themselves but they are amazed and more than a few are appalled!

cece, thanks for the enlightenment re Valley Girl Speech. I was trying to relate it to the new (to me) shrill, high pitched female voices I hear daily around me at the Univ. I think this is a phenomenon of only about a decade. I've worked at colleges and Universities most of my life and suddenly am picking up on this youth-speech, spoken no matter what part of the country the female student comes from. For the most part, the students are White, upper class. Even the daughters of my friends now speak with this same accent. The guys speak with the same accent, but they are never shrill. I'm wondering if it came about through the homogenization of speech, via television programs in the US. Any ideas, Frieda, and others?

Watching a BBC film yesterday, I noticed the difference in the pronunciation of the word "privacy." The Brit was pronuncing he "i" as in "live", whereas an American would pronounce the "i" to rhyme with "lie."

Mary, I am not around large groups of young women enough lately to place this shrillness you describe. I suspect I would recognize it, though, if I'm ever in a situation to hear it. However, my first thoughts are that it has something to do with many young women's profound need to fit in to whatever the prevailing cultural in-group is.

Valley Girl-speak was certainly popularized through the media and I figure this newer phenomenon is, too, because it seems to be non-regionally specific. I recall a similar manifestation among girls/young women of my birth cohort (baby boomers) in the late 1960s -- suddenly it was fashionable for girls to speak as if everything puzzled them or they had vacuously never considered thinking about anything outside their ken (I think we can blame Goldie Hawn in Laugh In). This type of "silly-talk" and variation in intonation has a long history and for some reason crops up periodically amongst females. Of course young males have their own verbal cultural expressions and need to fit in, but fashionable rises and falls in pitch seem to be more female centered.

I fondly recall the late Marty Feldman (he of the thyroidal eyes) as an Academy Awards presenter. He told the audience to take "LEE-zher or LEH-zher, whichever's your pleasure."

woodnymph-DD is in grad school at a large eastern US university, and when we visit her we also witness the shrill shrieking of the young undergrads-but it was ever thus with American teenaged girls moving in packs. Sort of a warning/attention-getting/mating call. It is at its worst during sorority rush time. My mother used to complain about it when I was in high school. (LONG ago) DD does not believe that she ever made those noises, but I remember taking her soccer team out to dinner at tournaments-and how gratefully the chaperones accepted a table across the room from the team. When we chaperoned DS's teams, we also sat across the room-but not for the noise-more for the highjinks teenaged boys get up to with food.

frieda and cece, thanks for your input. At least I know I'm not imagining this co-ed speech. I just had a brainstorm: with all the equally shrill cell phone rings, now ubiquitous, even in the Library, maybe their voices just got higher and higher, to compete with that ringing.
:-)

I've read that kids are downloading high frequency ringtones that adults can no longer hear. Teenage sounds may be at the annoying edge of our hearing range, but not of theirs, apparently.

Oh! Now I know what woodnymph is talking about -- that shrillness of girls and young women when they are in each other's company, excited or just voluble...I always call it 'squealing'. It's nothing new, but our awareness of it and annoyance with it might make it seem that way because of the physical changes in our hearing as we get older. I thought, at first, that Mary/woodnymph was describing a voguish change in accents of young women influenced by the media but that's another phenomenon entirely -- a contrived one rather than a natural one.

Frieda, I hope you are still here. I just heard the "beyond" pronunciation this morning without the "y". It was amazing to me. The speaker was a young college professor from Schnectedy, New York, and is somewhere in her thirties. She very clearly said something like "be-ahhn."

Also, yesterday I watched a documentary on President J.F. Kennedy. He was speaking of the Cuban Missile Crisis and I noted, with interest that he put the intrusive R on the end of "Cuba", pronouncing it "Cuber." Loved JFK but that grated on my nerves anew....

I would have thought it was almost impossible to say the word 'beyond' without pronouncing the 'y'.

Chris here in the UK there are serious medical concerns as so many young people can no longer hear 'high frequency' sounds because of the extreme amplification of pop music at concerts/discos etc.

Mary you must find English accents unpleasant/difficult to listen to as we all use the intrusive R every time we speak.

Mary, thank you for letting me know about the y-less beyond pronunciation you heard. It's very helpful. I will add it, along with the speaker's profession and location, to my notes. So far, it seems to me that most of the pronouncers are young professionals and associated with the northeast part of the US. Of course that may be because professionals are mostly what we see (hear) on television, and a lot of the broadcasts originate in that section of the country. Talking media people have a great deal of influence (perhaps the greatest) on how pronunciations spread, so I expect this different "beyond" will soon be heard, if it isn't already, in other regions of the US as well.

Vee, treat the 'y' as silent and go immediately to the 'on' part. It's not impossible, just unusual and a bit strange to those not accustomed to hearing it (like me). The terminal d-sound also seems to be omitted by some, but that's not so unusual.

When the English use the intrusive R, it sounds normal for them (though I think Americans still notice it); but when Americans use it, it pricks up American ears because it's not common except for the likes of the Kennedy clan and some other New Englanders. It doesn't annoy me, even when a Kennedy says it; but I've heard others say it's an unpleasant accent to them, although I'm not sure why.

That intrusive R is very common in a Boston accent. My mother had it. You sometimes hear it on the public radio show 'Car Talk', which comes from Boston. It makes me smile. One of the two brothers sounds just like my uncle.

A pronunciation that grates my ear is the word 'our'. I was raised to say it exactly like the work 'hour', but I often hear it said exactly like the work 'are'. And yet I hear it said that way so frequently that I sometimes start to slip into it myself. Now that is humbling.

Rosefolly

Rosefolly, that 'are' for our is right up there for me with 'all' or 'awl' for oil. I also catch myself saying them like that because I've been around so many people using those pronunciations.

Here are some questions:
How do you pronounce often? Is it with or without the 't' sound?
How about salmon and almond? With or without the 'l' sound?
These might be a bit too regional but if you have any ideas about how you think you've heard them pronounced, please comment: Bayou and pirogue?

Often definitely without the t.
Let's see, the fish is sa-m'n, with the 'sa' like Sa-turday, and the nut is ar-mnd (no l sound in either).

I don't know what pirouge means or is, and have never heard it, but I would say bye-you having heard it like that (I would swear Linda Ronstadt sang it like that, but I might be wrong).

Frieda, As usual Kath and I agree on the various words you mention.
Bayou and pirogue are not words that come into everyday English speech.
The site below might interest you although I haven't had time to 'play' there yet. There must surely be similar sites dealing with other 'accents' . . . just a matter of locating them.
Where are the cut glass Katherine Hepburn/Eleanor Roosevelt type accents? Do you still hear them in New England?

Here is a link that might be useful: Boston Accent

pirogue: pi (i as in "it") row gee (g as in get, long e sound)-I have a Polish brother-in-law!

bayou: bye-yew-the "y" sound on both syllables

often-no t
salmon: no l
almond: no l, but no r either- a (short a)-mund

I thought of you yesterday Freida-one of my students said he had read "be-ond" page 100. Age 12. Watches a LOT of television! South-Central PA.

(I have no idea why the word television is showing up underlined and green in my preview screen-I did not format it that way if it is still there!)

How do people pronounce gyro? (As in: lamb, roasted on a vertical spit, then thinly sliced, topped with onions, and usually served in a sandwich of pita bread.) I hear it pronounced so many different ways, I don't know what is correct (I suspect the answer is multiple, an ethnic pronunciation, and a regional one, but I dunno).

I can't tell whether I pronounce often with "t" -- I think I do, but it is barely vocalized so you almost don't hear it.

Salmon - no l
Almond - pronounced with the l

Attached is a link to an article I read recently on a somewhat related topic: Computer Zeroes in on Oldest English Words. Thought some of you might enjoy it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Computer Zeroes in on Oldest English Words

Vee, one can still hear the Roosevelt/Hepburn type speech among older New Englanders, but it is definitely dying out, being replaced by the "newspeak homogenization" of TV pundits. I wonder if some day we will all sound alike, with the same accents?

My mother has begun, in the last few years, pronouncing the "l" in salmon, and I find that bizarre. I suspect it is because her mind is going and she simply reads the "l." What's even more bizarre is that those around her have begun to say it that way also. Mom was always the smartest person anybody knew and the tendancy was to assume she was always right. No more, alas. And I do not correct the pronunciation of adults no matter how much I mentally cringe.

Now that you ask, I say AH-mÉn and I realize I drop the d.

How do you all pronounce caramel?

Cece: Great! More fodder. Thank you for noticing and reporting your student's pronunciation.

Georgia, yep, gyro has multiple pronunciations. I learned in Greece that it's said something like YEE-rahs (with the 's' being soft or sibilant). I've heard it pronounced in the US as JI-roh (singular) and JI-rohz (plural). Many Greek words ending in 's' confuse English and American-English speakers who assume that the words are plural (though they aren't) so they drop the 's' to make it what is logically singular in English. Thus, particularly in American-English it's 'gyro', singular, and the 's' is added back to make plurals.

The same thing happened to kudos in American-English, and thus we hear such abominations as "He deserves a kudo." Kudos is pronounced by most Americans as KOO-dohz or KYOO-dohz, while the Greek is more like KY-dahs.

Vee, the 'cut glass' variety of accent associated with Katharine Hepburn and Eleanor Roosevelt is also known as the 'chewing glass' accent. It's sometimes disparaged by some Americans as an affectation (even when the speaker learned it in earliest childhood) and sets some listeners' teeth on edge. I don't know how common it is or remains in New England. I can't say I've heard many New Englanders who sound like Ms Hepburn and Mrs Roosevelt -- I think it's an older accent that was once considered prestigious but has probably now lost much of its allure to be copied by younger folk in any great number.

I'll get back with you on the pronunciations of often, salmon, almond, etc.

Thanks for the links. I haven't followed them yet, but I will!

My apologies for being in such a rush above.

Re often, salmon, almond: Many American immigrants, such as my own family and my DH's family, in the first generation learned a lot of English words by reading them first, not by hearing them spoken. They made common mistakes of trying to pronounce every letter in the spelling and later when they learned that some letters were silent, it annoyed them, such as the case of often: Why put a 't' in the spelling if it's not said with one? Very logical, actually, isn't it?

Of course spelling and pronunciation are often anything but logical. I grew up hearing SAL-muhn and AL-muhnd (AL is the sound in Alfie), and in our rather homogeneous community the pronunciations were perpetuated by the succeeding generations. So much so, in fact, that it became a distinctive feature of our dialect/accent which eventually spread westward so that many American westerners say the 't' in often and the 'l' in almond, but interestingly salmon again shed its 'l' sound among most American-English speakers. I dropped the 't' in often and the 'l' in salmon and almond when I went off to college in a different part of the US. My ears always perk up, though, when I hear the jingle:
Sometimes you feel like a nut;
Sometimes you don't.
AL-mond Joy's got nuts;
Mounds don't.My DH swears that I'm more interested in television commercials than regular programming; but it's only because the ads, since they are repeated frequently, probably are bigger promoters of certain pronunciations.

Kath, indeed Linda Ronstadt sang "Blue Bye-you." I figure that's the preferred pronunciation of most people, or at least the one most familiar. However, I have heard another pronunciation and it might ring a bell with some of you. Do you know the lyrics of "Jambalaya" by Hank Williams, Senior?
Good-bye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, weÂll have big fun on the bayou.Many people remark, including some Cajuns, that Williams mispronounced "bayou" to rhyme with "pirogue" and "my oh." BUT, I had an interesting conversation with a couple of elderly Cajun gentlemen (this was in the 1970s) about how bayou should be pronounced. They claimed that youngfolk with book learning "was messin' up" the Cajun words by trying to say them as spelled. They agreed with Mr Williams about bayou but said he got pirogue wrong: Williams' lyric has it PEE-roh while the Cajuns would've said PEE-rohg. However, I can't take those venerable gentlemen's pronouncements as the last word because you ask any two south Louisianians how to say those words and they'll disagree or shrug and say "either way."

Houston, Texas is known as the "Bayou City." Definitely Bye-you (By-yew) there.

Cece, I hadn't thought of the Polish pronunciation because I think I've seen it usually spelled pierogi, though variations are probably to be expected.

Frieda, I do know that song by Hank Williams and can hear his pronunciation clearly in my head *g*.

Caramel? KA-ru-m'l, with the first a short as in Kath.

And that lamb dish is an interesting one. Here in South Australia it is called a yiros, which is obviously much closer to the original Greek pronunciation. However, I had one in Sydney two weeks ago, and it was called a kebab (which is what I would called cubes of meat skewered on a stick) and I have seen them in Mel-b'n written as giros, but pronuunced yiros. Coincidentally perhaps, Melbourne has more Greeks than any other city except Athens.

As an aside, there was much merriment in Australia when Sydney was announced as the winner of the bid for the 2000 Olympics, and was pronounced Sid-en-ee.

Here is another one: athlete. Many people in Aus say ath-e-lete, athough they don't say ath-e-letics.

Another question for you: what is the origin of Americans saying swim team and swim meet? This is something that grates on me, and has been picked up in Australia. Luckily it is the track team, because I can't really imagine anyone would say run team or throw team. Is it just an abbreviation, or is there a grammatical reason for it?

freida-you're right! I looked at that word and thought of the Polish food-mea culpa! (but I do think the local diner spells it wrong...I'll have to check next time we eat there.)

I also pronounce the "L" in both almond and salmon. Don't do the "T" in often, however.

I just met a woman in my classes who is about my age and who also grew up in Georgia. I recognized her accent immediately and noticed she also speaks with a very slight nasal twang as I do. So I wonder where that twang would come from, in GA? (By the way, within a state in the US, there can be more than one different accent.) For example, my late grandmother, who lived all her life in south-central Georgia, left out the "R" altogether in many of her words. She pronounced "church" as "chuch", and "girl" as "gull". I found this very strange, but when we would visit her in her tiny village, most of the natives also left out the "R", and my own father would lapse into this at times.

Woodnymph, did you grow up in the hill country of Georgia? I know the East Tennessee accent is very nasal and twangy, and since the Southern Highlands extend to Georgia.... If my accent had been a soft southern drawl I probably wouldn't have worked so hard to get rid of it, although Dolly certainly did okay by it.

Kath, many Americans say ath-e-lete and ath-e-letics. There are certain consonant combinations that some Americans find hard to pronounce unless they stick in an intervening vowel. The th/l is one of those combos, but personally I think ph/th is a killer; e.g., ophthalmologist, naphtha. I can say them, but I always have to will my tongue to cooperate with me.

Re swim team and swim meet: I think they're just abbreviated forms. Same thing with swimsuit (though it's still a bathing suit to me). I don't know why swimming needs to be shorter but who knows about sportswriters and sportscasters. :-)

Chris, did you alter your accent on your own or did you do it with a speech coach or other speech professional? I did not get professional help but over time and taking a lot of university classes and becoming aware (self-conscious) of my own accent, I changed it...somewhat. I know there are legitimate reasons for getting rid of certain distracting dialect/accent features (or at least covering them up), but I always admire the persons with chutzpah enough to let their accents become their trademarks: Good for Dolly!

Frieda, professionals. Speech Therapy in 1st and maybe 2nd grade, then speech and theatre classes when I was in middle school and high school. I was on the debate team and in community theatre so I received feedback regularly. Then I spent years on the rubber chicken circuit for work (I realized one childhood ambition of growing up to be like the mother in Cheaper by the Dozen. She lectured regularly, didn't she?) and had professional feedback at least once a year. It would be nice to think my regular accent wouldn't matter, but I was well aware that most of the country think Southerners are dumb as dirt to start with and I already had one strike against me being a woman in a man's field.

Frieda and Chris I was really surprised to read that anyone in the US bothers about speech/elocution classes-lessons, although it makes sense as Chris describes, when undertaking lectures etc. and voice projection and so on is needed.
I had got the impression from this thread that, in the US, the way you speak and the grammar you use is such as individual thing, that whether you came from the Boondocks or the Bowery no one would think less of you . . . because you are all so very much more equal than we are in the snobby UK. Am I wrong?

Oh Vee-if only it were so! The way one speaks marks one here just as it does elsewhere. There are widely held misconceptions about every accent but the one that is "normal" where you are. Gender magnifies it.
Put two nuclear physicists side by side, and make one a Boston male and the other a Southern woman....and many people will automatically assume she's dumber. Give her blonde hair and she's toast.

Chris, I think you have hit the nail on the head. I spent a lot of time in North Georgia and I had forgotten about the Southern Highlands, which would probably extend down to the Atlanta I grew up in. Thanks for the insight. (Thankfully, my twang is not as strong as Dolly's!).

Does anyone else here find that they tend to take on the accents of those with whom they are speaking, gradually? (I've lived in New England, for example, and with a New England husband. I found I was losing my southern accent over the years. On the other hand, when I would visit some relatives in NC, I would have to change back a bit in order to be understood. Some of my cousins in the Piedmont area of NC still use almost a foreign sort of English to me).

Chris, I understand your perfectly logical explanation, but I'm curious about one more thing, unless I'm being too nosy: Was your regional accent already considered an albatross to you, in particular, so that you needed ameliorative instruction as early as the first grade? I ask, primarily, because I think you and I are around the same age. Speech therapy became common for some schoolchildren in later decades, but I didn't realize it was already full-fledged in regions outside the ivory tower corridors in the 1950s and '60s -- especially for the purpose of softening regional accents.

Vee, it's as Cece says, unfortunately. However, I think Eastern Seaboard Americans are more preoccupied with the status recognition of accents than are American midwesterners and westerners. The easterners have had longer to entrench. Americans can be as snobby as the English, except it tends to be directed toward other Americans: Chris has already mentioned the snotty perceptions of some Americans toward Southerners. Americans, however, are often enamored with English accents -- sometimes absurdly so, thinking even the accents of your thickest countrymen, Vee, sound oh so refined. Of course they don't always distinguish one English accent from another, especially not to the sensitive degree the English are attuned to picking out each other's verbal peccadilloes.

Woodnymph, I have that tendency to take on an accent, but with me it's usually only temporary because in most cases I haven't stayed anywhere long enough for it to become permanent.

I find the opposite happens with me - when I am away from home, my accent becomes MORE like home. So when I lived in Canberra, surrounded by people saying ca-sell and photograff, I said even more strongly car-s'l and photograrrf. And when I lived in the UK, I found myself saying G'day and 'beauty mate' when I say nothing of the kind at home LOL.

Frieda, I spent the first 6 years of my life in a house with parents, grandparents, and at least one aunt and uncle pair. And I was the first grandchild. Mom says everyone baby-talked to me, so I never learned correct pronunciation. When I started 1st grade I was unintelligible. Combine a lisp with an inability to pronounce those "Rs" which Kath sprinkles in so liberally, and "wascally wabbit" tuns into "wathcally wabbit" and you get the picture. This was 1957. Knoxville is home to the University of Tennessee so it isn't so strange for speech therapy to be available. Perhaps the early speech therapy was the foundation of my later interest in elocution. Or maybe it was because My Fair Lady came out in '64 when I was an impressonable 11.