For Aussies it is most definitely ZEB-ra.

Which accents do you enjoy hearing? I love to hear a German speak English and also find Dutch, Scandinavian and Jamaican accents attractive. I have a friend who always found any man with a foreign accent extremely attractive. She married a Hungarian and learned the language but then decided he was terrible person and divorced him. So much for sexy accents! :-)

I have been frequently (and luckily) told that Texan people enjoy hearing my accent when I talk at presentations etc... I have quite a BBC accent mostly, so many people ascribe intelligence and brilliance to this. :-) haha. If only they knew....

One word that I find hard to distinguish with the peeps around here is "pen" and "pin", and even with context, it's not always easy to work out which one sometimes.

And people say "squirl" here for "squirrel" which always makes me grin...

Kath, thanks for the Aussie pronunciation of zebra. Do you know if earlier generations of Australians pronounced it differently? I got the idea from my UK acquaintances that older people there don't say it the same way as the 'Yoof'.

Here's a tale on me that you might appreciate: On a coach trip from New South Wales to Queensland, our driver told each passenger as she climbed into the vehicle: 'Wich y' hid.' I heard him say it several times, but it didn't register with silly me. I paid for it with embarrassment and a contusion! The driver was from NZ.

An even worse embarrassment was when an Australian friend was describing her 'dorg who is now did'. I said something completely inane, such as: Oh, I hope I get to see him. (We were en route to her house.)

But I promise that I'm getting better in my understanding of the antipodean accents!

Mudlady, I haven't encountered an accent that I didn't find interesting -- even fascinating -- in some respect.

Frieda, as in Australia we say ZEB-ra and we pronounce the letter Z as zed and, as far as I know we have always done so.
As for elisions over in East Anglia, especially Norfolk, many of their towns-names are said leaving out most of the middle of the word. So places like Hunstanton is known as Huns'tun and Wymondham becomes Wymdum. In fact, country-wide, many endings to town/village names which might end in a 'ham' 'ton' 'don' etc all sound like 'um' or 'un'. And the US pronunciation of borough/burgh as burROW (ie a rabbit hole) we say as brer (think how you might say Edinburgh)
I have great difficulty understanding the meaning of rhotic/non-rhotic. As with the vast majority of my fellow country-men I have never studied phonetics and never could make out those little squiggles in the dictionary that are meant to make word-pronunciation easier.
To add to your Australian story. You all probably know the tale that the writer Monica Dickens used to tell against herself. At a book signing in Melbourne a woman stood at her desk and waited. Miss Dickens asked "What would you like me to write in here?" The woman stared and said "Emma Chissit" So MD wrote "To Emma Chissit with best wishes from Monica Dickens." The woman, not best pleased, said "No, I want to know what the book cost."

Lemonhead/Liz. Oh! The BBC accent. If we didn't speak what is now know as RP (Received Pronunciation) at home and school we would have been for it. These days sloppy speech has taken over even on TV and radio. ;-) But nice to think some people might think us intelligent . . .

Vee, thanks for the examples of English place names with elided and morphed syllables. I'm assuming that the 'H' in Hunstanton is aspirated unless you tell me otherwise. As for the aitch/haitch controversy, do you think it's likely that aspiration of the letter name of 'H' is a hypercorrection of those who were drilled into mistakenly thinking that dropping the 'H'-sound is always wrong in English itself and in anglicized foreign words? If I remember correctly, part of the stigma of the unpronounced 'H' has to do with the Cockney habit of dropping it. Is that right?

There's a similar fear in some American-English speakers. I've heard Americans say 'Hay-cho' as in Hecho en Mexico. Some Americans always aspirate their 'aitches', and others don't or use it selectively, the last two groups being those whose pronunciations are influenced by French and Spanish and possibly other languages.

As for distinguishing rhotic and non-rhotic accents, Vee, about all I can say: Find you a good dictionary that gives audio pronunciations of both British and North American pronunciations. A few clues that might be helpful: East Anglia, several of the London dialects, and much of the south of England have non-rhotic accents, as do New England, parts of the American south, Australia, South Africa, and Hong Kong. Listen to the rhotic and non-rhotic, back and forth, and you should be able to discern the differences after a while. But don't worry too much about the phonetic alphabet, even the creators and linguists who have studied it intently don't always agree. I think it is mostly a failure, especially for the layperson. I know it has been frustrating to those of us here at RP who have tried with printed descriptions to get others 'to hear' what we hear. Audio is the way to go.

Frieda, as to the sounding of the 'H' in place names and English word in general I think it is just laziness that causes them to be left out, although I was watching a gardening programme on TV last night in which an old Head Gardener from Cornwall was walking around ". . . this 'ere Happle Horchard"
Just to bore you even further re rhotic/non rhotic. I know that American/English sound different and I have a good 'ear' for accents/dialect. It is just that the word rhotic conveys nothing to me, so it is difficult to know what to listening out for. I even tried a search on Youtube but all the so-called eg's are useless. Even the DH, usually well-up on this sort of stuff had never heard of the word. ;-)

Me bored? Nev-uh! I am fascinated, Vee. If others are bored, they can jump in and reroute the conversation to something more to their liking. :-)

Well, admittedly, rhotic and non-rhotic are specialized terms in the field of linguistics, but a good dictionary (above a certain level) will provide definitions for them. The OED does, and it is one of many. The OED online site also gives audio pronunciations, both British and American.

Of course you know that American English and British English sound different. I didn't mean to imply that you don't know. However, sometimes it is hard to pinpoint the phenomena that are making them sound unalike. Only by comparison of the accents, preferably side by side (thus the back and forth that I recommend), can a listener figure out the distinguishing features.

One feature is rhoticity, which basically means that a speaker with a rhotic accent will do her dead-level best to pronounce any 'r' that appears in the spelling of a word. (There are exceptions, but ignore those for the present.)

Non-rhoticity, the contrasting feature, is much more complex, but it basically means that the speaker will NOT necessarily pronounce every 'r' in a word's spelling. The initial R (as in a person's surname) will be pronounced, but generally words ending in an 'r' will not be pronounced by the non-rhotic speaker. That's why I wrote 'nev-uh' above which of course we both know by its spelling never. To confuse things even further, non-rhotic speakers do pronounce the ending 'r' in some words if the next word they will be saying starts with a vowel (more below).

Also words that are spelled with any internal 'r', such as park, Harvard, will be pronounced without the 'r' sound. However, people with non-rhotic accents will insert an 'r' sound when there is no intervening consonant between vowels. English speakers like an orderly sound progression of consonant-vowel-consonant with vowel-consonant-vowel, with no adjacent vowels to be pronounced, and they will do their best to achieve this pattern. This 'r' sound is called the linking R. It is famously heard by rhotic-speakers as the name Laura Norder

Now, by far the most interesting aspect (to me) of non-rhoticity is the intrusive R, which we've discussed many times before. To greatly oversimplify, it is the appearance of an 'r' sound in a place where there is no 'r' in the spelling. Kath has best explained this phenomenon with the non-rhotic Australian accents, including her own; so since she and you, Vee, speak the same language, I'll leave the fine tuning to her. :-) However, I grasp the concept best by describing certain words as homophones in non-rhotic accents: law-lore, paw-poor-pore, flaw-floor, etc. These words are NOT homophones to speakers with rhotic accents. Kath, correct me if I have the wrong impression.

That's about all I can do without introducing a lot more incomprehensible jargon, Vee. Does any of it make sense...

Veer and Friedag--

I caught on to the rhotic explanation when one site I went to linked the word rhotic to the Greek letter for R--rho. Friedag, can you put a name to the pronunciation of Billy Ray Cyrus when he sings, "You can tell my eyes" but it sounds like "You can tell my OZ?" I say Apa-LAYchin and he says Apa-Latchin. I don't care how hw says it--I will always love the man for recording "Achy Breaky Heart." I can't hear that song without singing along in harmony with a foolish grin on my face ;-)

Mudlady, Achy Breaky Heart makes me grin, too, because one of my nieces was six or seven when it first came out, and she sang it with gusto.

I like Laura Norder. I had an English prof once who told us about a napple and a norange.

Mudlady, if you are referring to the actual way Billy Ray is pronouncing 'eyes' that makes it sound like 'oz', on the basis of just this one example, I would suspect it's part of the Southern vowel shift. The 'long I' sound has changed to ah. Comparisons I've heard are the pronunciation of 'sighed' has changed to that of 'sod' (sahd), 'time' has changed to 'tom' (tahm).

My daugther-in-law, who is from eastern Kentucky, tells me that she and everyone in her part of the hills say Ap-uh-LATCH-uhn. I think I've always said Ap-uh-LAY-chun, but I don't know where I picked it up. I'm willing to change my pronunciation to hers. :-)

Mudlady, when I first read your post I thought you could be talking about mondegreens, the mishearing or misinterpretation of song lyrics and lines of poetry. A writer back in the 1950s coined the word to describe her experience of listening to her mother read "The Bonny Earl O'Moray." Apparently she misinterpreted the fourth line: Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl O' Moray
And Lady Mondegreen.
The line in italics above is actually: And laid him on the green.

So Lady Mondegreen's thought-to-be demise has given us a term for such mishearings. I've gone years without knowing what some song lyrics actually are. Not my mondegreen, but one that always made me laugh, is One-Ton-Tomato, wha-wha-wha, One-Ton-Tomato. If it needs translation, it is someone's notion of "Guantanamera."

Carolyn, as you probably know, 'a napple' and 'a norange' are examples of metanalysis, but I didn't know until recently that 'napron' was the original word and 'apron' was the misinterpretation. As I've said before, I LOVE pronunciations!

Frieda, sorry not to have answered earlier, but I have been away for the weekend.
Zebra to the best of my knowledge, has always been pronounced 'ZEB-ra' in Australia.
And your examples of the homophones are correct - no difference in any of those words when I say them.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, last time we had this kind of discussion I made a video for youtube mentioning all the words we were trying to discuss. You can see it at the link below:

Carolyn, I like Laura Norder too, and that's about how I say it *g*

Frieda, with regard to "An even worse embarrassment was when an Australian friend was describing her 'dorg who is now did'. I said something completely inane, such as: Oh, I hope I get to see him. (We were en route to her house.)"

I find this very interesting, as to me 'dorg' is an American pronunciation (not in every area, of course) and 'did' sounds nothing like 'dead'. In the same way, I wonder when Americans say 'good dye' as an Aussie greeting - 'day' doesn't sound a bit like 'dye' when I say it *g* I seem to remember 'dog' is one of the words I say on this video (also 'dorg' and 'dawg' which are the same to me).

Here is a link that might be useful: Kath talks Aussie

Kath, oh, thank you for the reprise of your video! I kept it for a long time, but somehow lost it. I enjoyed watching it again just as much as I did before.

About 'dorg' and 'did', those are my approximations of the way I heard my friend say those words. They are from memory because, truthfully, I was so embarrassed that I committed such a blunder that I wasn't sure what she said. Let's just say she was startled, but she graciously accepted my apology. She has a lovely accent, but I suppose it could belong uniquely to her -- part of an idiolect.

Kath, does your accent differ appreciably from that of a Queenslander, as my friend is? As I listened to your video, I easily understood your pronunciation of dog. I have never heard an American say 'dorg' -- 'dawg', yes, but 'dawg' and 'dorg' would not be pronounced alike by most Americans, anyway not in the regions of which I am most familiar. Re 'did' for 'dead', it sounded like a rhyme of our NZ coach driver's 'hid' for 'head' and that one I feel is a good approximation. New Zealanders and at least one Aussie who does television commercials here in Hawai'i also say 'bist' for 'best', at least to my ears and to friends who like to playfully tease him.

As for 'good dye', I have no idea why Americans would say it that way. The Aussie 'day' doesn't sound like 'dye' to me.

Frieda, you have the NZ accent down pat. We hear them say 'fush and chups' for seafood and fries, 'sux' for the number after five, and 'did' for dead sounds right too. There is a singer from NZ who was part of a band who did well in this part of the world. We think he is Tim Finn, but the locals call him Tum Funn.

My accent is a bit different from a Queenslander. They have (generally) a bit more of a drawl (I bet I say that in a different way to you!) and South Australians are thought to have a slightly more British accent that those in the eastern States. For instance, we use a long sound in graph (more like grarf, but obviously without the intrusive 'r') whereas they say graff.

I understand how you would hear a difference in 'dorg' and 'dawg', but given those words with no idea of what they meant, I would pronounce them the same (as I expect Vee would).

BTW, I mentioned you this weekend - I went to Pt Pirie to visit Auntie Phyl and mentioned that you had made her Anzac biscuits :-)

Thank you for the video, Kath! Those vowels! I don't even know where I stand on the accent scale. I suppose I am lucky to be able to talk at all. Understanding others, now that's the trick -

Kath, thanks for re-doing your youtube clip. Pigou Productions Proudly Presents "Talking Aussie - the Movie" I enjoyed it just as much the second time round. I have no problem understanding anything you say and your pronunciation is exactly as mine would be.
Frieda, thanks for going to all the trouble over the rhotic-non-rhotic stuff. How about you doing a youtube thing as well to help us non-Americans with a range of US dialects/speech patterns?
Sorry not to have replied earlier but we have been at a rainy village carol service around the fourteenth century 'preaching cross' that is a feature (one of the few) of our area. Luckily it was removed from the centre of our very busy road after WWI when motor transport got going so we were crowded on the pavement; safe but damp.

Frieda, I say Appa-lay-shun, too. That is what everyone said from my childhood, but I don't think anyone from my area actually knew people from the mountains. Way back when we also said I-o-way and Ill-eh-nois, but fortunately an early-grade teacher knew better. Surely my mother didn't use those pronunciations, but maybe I just never heard her refer to those places.

Accents and pronunciations are very interesting to me, too. I hope television and radio don't completely wipe the variations out. Guess not, as long as Paula Deen is with us.

When I returned to Australia after a 12 year absence, I found it hard to understand the younger generation in my family and also young shopping assistants until my ears attuned to the rather squeaky sounds. Also they spoke quickly and ran words together, "d'yuwannabagwithit?" which had me baffled at the supermarket till. "Sorry?" The girl nodded towards the plastic bags."Oh, yes, thank you!" and she put the groceries into one!

Vee, no problem. I enjoyed writing it all out again. It probably helps me more than it does you, though. It aides my memory and keeps things straight in my head.

I've actually thought about making a video like Kath's, but you know how technologically challenged I am. I've lost all my geeks who used to help me with such things. Besides that, though, any attempt of mine to impart a true sound of an American accent would probably just confuse you. Unlike Kath's -- and what I imagine yours to be -- my accent is not pure. Mine is muckledy-dun, a hotchpotch of sounds that I've borrowed from just about every place I've ever been and from all the people I've listened to (and eavesdropped on) with my big ears.

Still, I would love for you to find an American who could pronounce for you the American 'aw' sound, as we say it in law, raw, paw, flaw. Other American sounds too, but that one in particular because it seems to be the hardest one for people, who are not accustomed to hearing it, to grasp. It doesn't do us any good to say it rhymes with, say, draw because you probably see that word and think 'dror', or straw as 'stror', caw as 'core', etc.

I've racked my brain for another way, besides the rhyme scheme or with phonetic "squiggles", to describe the American 'aw' in written form for you. Someone probably can because I know the 'aw' sound also exists in British dialects, notably in Scottish English, Irish English, in the West Country, and in the north of England. Sir Walter Ralegh is known through internal evidence of his poetry and other writings -- particularly in his spelling of certain words, including his own name -- to have pronounced the 'aw' sound as Americans came to do. He often signed his name as Rawley, as well as Ralegh. The one way he never spelled his own name is Raleigh, the one we most identify with him. Neither did he pronounce his name RAH-lee, RORE-lee, or Rolly; instead it was most likely RAW-lee -- but if you don't know what Walter's or Americans' RAW sounds like, it doesn't do you much good.

Actually, Vee, I'm quite amazed that you haven't picked up on this quirk of the American accent, with all the knowledge you have American television shows. Your knowledge is far greater than mine! :-)

Here's one I'd like help with - Adirondack. I imagine the phonics to be simple, but where is the emphasis? Adi-ron-dack is the easiest way for me to say it.

Frieda, modern life is certainly not easy when there are too few techno-geeks about the house. :-)
We have been writing much about dialects/accents especially in everyday speech but, I thought an eg of very upper-class English, almost never heard these days, might be interesting.
The Youtube piece below 'features' the eminent art critic Brian Sewell. It is said of him that "he makes the Queen sound common"
His recent book might be of interest to some Outsider. Always Almost: Never Quite. Don't bother with it if long passages of gay sex aren't your 'thing'.

Here is a link that might be useful: How to Talk Very Posh

Kath, wonderful video, I so enjoyed it.

Paula

Kath, I enjoyed your video, as well. I thought my ear picked up a bit of similarity to Cockney, in a few words. (Mind you, a few, not all).

Heh! Brian Sewell. Vee, his is what I call a chewing-glass accent. I try not to make value judgments of people's accents, but occasionally I slip up. :-(

I think RP (Received Pronunciation) is overrated. I've heard people in the UK say their accent is RP, but as they continue to speak they disprove their assertion. I've read, or been told, that about 3% of British-English speakers nowadays actually speak RP consistently. Of course RP has influenced other accents, but it's no longer the top dog (as I'm sure you already know, Vee, but often comes as a surprise to Americans).

Well, since no one has jumped in yet, Kath, I'll take a stab at Adirondack. I don't have much experience in Upstate New York, but after listening to several audio online dictionary pronunciations, the speakers seem to break the word into four syllables with the stress (emphasis) on the third syllable: ad-i-RON-dack. The second syllable, the 'i', seems to vary a bit so it must not be of particular importance, except to the pedant of course. Kath, your approximation seems good to me.

Frieda, that is the way I would say ad-i-RON-dack. And I would also say Appa-LAY-shun and Carri-BE-an.

Rosefolly

Rosefolly, thanks for the validation of my pronunciation of Adirondack. I'm seeing a pattern here with Appalachian and Caribbean -- the penultimate syllable gets the stress, usually.

Vee, I ran across a hilarious bit with Hugh Laurie and Ellen DeGeneres playing a "slang game." I have tried to link it below, but if it doesn't work you can find it at youtube under 'Hugh Laurie: the British accent vs the American'.

If you watch and listen to it, play close attention to the last word that Hugh and Ellen discuss: shawty. She says the 'aw' sound the way most Americans do. Actually, there are two ways Americans pronounce 'aw' depending on whether the speaker is caught up in the 'cot/caught merger' and hears those words as homophones, or whether a speaker hears and pronounces 'cot/caught' with distinctly different vowel sounds...neither pair of pronunciations having homophony with court. But you probably don't need to know that bit of tedious info unless you want to dispute that 'all Americans sound alike'. If Ellen's 'shawty' were pronounced in the English fashion, it would be homophonous with 'shorty' as in the nickname of a person of compact height.

I was tickled with Ellen's hearing of Hugh's /ch/ as /sh/ in chin wag and chuffed to bits.

Vee, I don't know why I care so much about this, but I do! It's my own frustration in not being able to communicate something in writing, but writing really is inadequate in describing sounds!

Here is a link that might be useful: Laurie vs DeGeneres

Frieda, just listened to the Hugh/Ellen piece and noticed his slight mispronunciation of chin so it sounded like 'shin'; not a good start by him.
Now is 'shawty' a proper word? It almost sounded how I would say 'shoddy' (meaning badly made) and how I would expect an American to say 'shorty'. Complicated or what!
Interesting that you said if you were to make a tape of yourself speaking it would contain a hotch-potch of accents. This is something unlikely to happen over here as most people seem keep the accent they grew up with.

Below is a site that might be of interest. Taken from a radio series. Each programme dealt with a different aspect of speech/accent/dialect. You may need to hunt around a bit.

Here is a link that might be useful: Routes of English

Really there is no more one American accent than there is one accent for the British Isles. I remember listening to a recorded book once with the narrator speaking the dialog of an American character. She sounded Philadelphia mainline, but she didn't sound anything like anyone I had ever met.

On the map below, I grew up with parents who spoke Eastern New England while I and my siblings spoke a mild version of Pittsburgh. Now I live in California where all accents come to die, since people of all accents and languages are blending together.

Rosefolly

Here is a link that might be useful: Map of American regional accents

Vee, 'shawty' is slang, a hip hop expression that originated in Atlanta, Georgia. It derives from 'shorty' but has expanded to mean an expression of endearment toward a young woman whom the speaker finds particularly attractive.

Whether 'shawty' is slang or proper has little relevancy. It is a real word and it can be pronounced. Actually, a made-up word or nonce word -- or just an isolated syllable -- can apply just as well to illustrate pronunciation, which afterall is the distinction of phonemes so that they can be heard, interpreted, and reproduced. Think of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" which is nonsensical but still pronounceable.

It's interesting that you find Ellen's 'shawty' to sound very similar to 'shoddy'. Apparently, Hugh Laurie did too, because he asked, "Shoddy?" and Ellen had to repeat her pronunciation.

Anyway, 'shawty' is just one word that uses the 'aw' sound that is thought to be typically American but really isn't, as it exists in British dialects too. I brought that one to your attention because I thought the exchange between Hugh and Ellen was entertaining. I'm still combing sites for American speakers who say more common words such as saw and raw, caught, bought, brought and thought (cawt, bawt, brawt and thawt, without the cot/caught merger).

Another thing that often stymies listeners of unfamiliar accents is interference to the listener's hearing. An unfamiliar pronunciation is heard, but the hearer's brain will automatically translate the sounds into something that makes more sense to that person. It's not what the speaker said but it's what the listener heard. Example: An American can say 'law' American-style, but the English listener will still hear 'lore'. An English speaker can say 'jaws' and think of the big killer fish in the film of that title, but an American will hear the Brit say it as 'jars' and think of glass receptacles. (The last example actually happened to me.)

Rosefolly, Hawai'i has the same situation as California regarding the differing accents and languages heard on a daily basis.

Vee, I don't have several accents, but I have incorporated many sounds from disparate places and people into my own, perhaps idiosyncratic, American accent. It happens when a person moves around a lot.

Rosefolly, the maps are interesting. I'm quite surprised that the south is comprised of such a large area. There is a great deal of difference in the accent in Louisville (northern border of KY) and the southern part of the state, and there certainly is wide variance between us and the deep South. A man I once worked with was transferred to New York City. I asked him if his new coworkers were teasing him about his southern accent, and he replied, "We don't talk southern. We talk hick talk." That's about the truth. I find the Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama accents lovely. Some of coastal Carolina is, again, quite different. Florida is another hodge podge from all the "incomers."

Yes, I was surprised about that, too.

Friedag, your posts are very interesting to me. You have made points that should have occurred to me before but did not.

I thought about how much some back formations irritate me (e.g. orientate), but I accept other back formations without questioning them (e.g. babysit from babysitter, emote from emotion, salivate from salivation...). I now think it must be just the new or new-to-me formations that bother me. Maybe I will grow accustomed to them.

I recognize how interference could influence the way a person hears a pronunciation. It is also interesting that speakers often cannot hear their own pronunciations accurately. My SIL cannot distinguish ch and sh - she can say both but she often switches them. My brother and I perceive the switches as mispronunciations, but another sister in law says there is so little difference between ch and sh that it should not matter which the first SIL says. I expect that we never agree!

By the way, I have given my Canadian born BIL your post about the Great Lakes vowel shifts. He would like to discuss but would prefer e-mail.

I've lived in various Southern states and traveled widely in others. There is certainly a multitude of differing southern accents, not just one. Some folk in Piedmont areas of NC have a musical, sing-song quality when they speak. As one raised in GA, I still carry a slight "twang", although I have lived up North and overseas, and modified my original accent. To my ear, those in Mississippi speak with a certain "flat" quality. On the other hand, I find the accent in Tidewater VA quite musical, with the "hoose" for "house" and "oot" for "out", etc.

Frida, like you, my accent is composite, as I have moved around quite a lot in my long life. I completely agree with your description of the "floor" for "flaw", "Jars" for "jaws", etc.

vee, how would you pronounce the word "slaughter"?

Mary, I would pronounce slaughter to rhyme with daughter so they would sound like slorter and dorter. Floor and flaw sound the same to me.

Carolyn I like your 'Hick talk' eg. Over here country people are known as wurzels after the variety of cattle fodder mangelwurzel a corruption of the German word 'mangoldwurzel'; I don't know what the US name is.
Their 'speech patterns' are generally referred to by the BBC as 'Mumble' or 'Bumble'+ setshire' and refer to anyone from the South/Southwest of England.

Listen, if you can bear it, to the thing below.
Have you heard the 'pop' group The Wurzels? You might not be able to understand anything they sing about but they are local to Somerset and Gloucestershire.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Wurzels

Hmm. Veer, what does it mean if I understand The Wurzels more easily than I do the panelists in the show Nevermind the Buzzcocks whose videos immediately followed the one with The Wurzels? :)

Oh dear, I may never drink cider again...

What is the meaning of the bandana on a stick? Or is there a meaning to the bandana on a stick?

Vee, I had very little problems with understanding the accent of the Wurzel singers.

I didn't have any trouble understanding them either. All hicks together here?

Count me among the hicks! The Wurzels' accent is crystalline. They pronounce their Rs in all the right places. :-)

Actually there's a good reason why Americans don't have much trouble with this region's accent -- we inherited a lot of our own accent from them. This is where good old Sir Walter Ralegh's influence on American speech is most obvious.

Thanks for the link, Vee. It's lots of fun.

With me slaughter and daughter are identical to slotter and dotter.

Rosefolly

Rosefolly, your pronunciations of slaughter and daughter are in the 'cot/caught merger'. Do you also pronounce don and dawn as homophones? If so, you are probably fully in the merger of the 'o' (as in cot, don) and 'au' and 'aw' sounds. Some speakers are fully in the merger, some part way, and some not at all. Those who pronounce cot and caught, don and dawn differently hold to the older pattern, but those who use the merger are quickly increasing, perhaps because it has been carried all the way to the west coast.

This thread is so interesting that I stayed up late last night to read all of it. I haven't listened to all the speech examples yet but I will. As Swedish students of English we had to acquaint ourselves briefly with many varieties of English, RP, Australian, Scots, Anglo-Indian and American, even Black English. This was in the 70ies so it is interesting to note changes in speech patterns that have ocurred in later years.

British English is taught in Swedish schools but I wonder for how long? Many young people now speak with an American accent. Or try to.

I visited Norfolk in April and can add the name of Happisburgh to the list of elided Norfolk place names. It's pronounced Hazebruh, not very transparent to a foreigner. I heard Wymondham pronounced as Windum. The spelling of Wisbech was confusing, too. To a Swede the bech ending looks very similar to our word for brook or stream "beck" but the word is pronounced Wizbeach. Counterintuitive indeed, in two ways for me.

rosefolly, did you grow up in NY state?

I have heard a few Americans pronounce "dog" as "dorg", but it was a long time ago, so cannot recall where this was.

This thread is bringing back memories. I had a college friend years ago from the North, who pronounced "coffee" as "quofee."

To those of you who pronounce Don like Dawn, how do you know about whom someone is speaking? Do you have to use last names? I recall a New England doctor who came to our Auburn NY (near Syracuse) nurses' station and asked, "Did Dawn come in and do a consult?" We were all confused about whom he asked. We didn't have a female doctor named Dawn. It wasn't until he added the doctor's last name that we realized he was talking about a male doctor named Don.

Freinda, I do pronounce Don and Dawn the same way. Until I started reading this forum, I had no idea there was another choice.

Woodnymph, I grew up in western Pennsylvania, the 'Pittsburgh' accent area on the map. My Pittsburgh accent is actually quite mild, no doubt due to the fact that I grew up hearing a Boston accent at home.

I tend to speak very clearly most of the time unless I am excited or nervous -- all my r's enunciated, crisp 'ing' endings, sharp t's that do not sound like d's, my sts plural endings with all three sounds pronounced. I did telephone support for online database searching for a number of years. Telephones do not carry sound very accurately, so it helps communication if you have accurate pronunciation. (Cell phones are even worse.) I tend that way in any case, but I probably increased the tendency because of my work.

Rosefolly

Interesting, rosefolly. I lived some years in NW PA (Meadville) and noted some interesting accents extending a bit into Ohio and down to Pgh. e.g. "warsh" for "wash". "Get dinner" rather than "make dinner" or "fix dinner." My stepdaughter still lives in NW PA and has a distinct accent.

I wish someone would talk about the Scandinavian influence on the accents of folk who live in Minnesota and Wisconsin.I don't know much about the region, but it does have a quite distinct manner of speech and was widely settled by Scandinavians, many of whom have a quite musical tone to their speech.

Rosefolly, both Norwegian and Swedish have two accents that gives this singsong quality. A word like "anden" can mean either the spirit or the duck, depending on the stress. This is similar to Chinese I think and Chinese speakers in Sweden have no trouble learning this facet of Swedish.

Rosefolly, I partially use the merger. I spent my first nineteen years in northern Iowa. Before I left there in 1969, most of the people I knew didn't say cot/caught as soundalikes, but when I returned to Iowa a decade later it was more frequent. Twenty years after that, it seemed as if most Iowans I heard were using it. I attended a university lecture discussing the merger and, at that time (mid 1990s), the origin of the merger was thought to be in western Pennsylvania, so your growing up in Pittsburgh would make it a logical choice for you. Interestingly, to me, Iowans didn't seem to have acquired it from the eastern direction. It was probably brought back to Iowa from the west after Iowans had gone out to live for a while in California and Oregon. I can go either way with cot/caught -- merged or not merged.

However, I maintain the distinction between 'don' and 'dawn', probably for the very reason Mudlady points out: it is too easy to confuse the two, particularly when they are names. I knew a young woman named Dawn who ignored anyone who called her 'Don'. But she would relent after a while and ask, "Are you talking to me? My name is Dawwwn."

I have heard 'warsh' for wash, and also 'rinch', same as wrench, for rinse. The person I most associate with these pronunciations was from eastern Ohio, just a hop over the line from Pennsylvania.

Woodnymph, dialect word choices are always fascinating! I probably enjoy them second only to pronunciations.

Since I grew up not far from the Minnesota line, I listened to the Minnesota accent enough that it was normal, although I think the stronger Scandinavian accent was farther north of us. Also, my great-grandmother was Norwegian so I heard "Uff da!" plenty.

On another note: I moved to Washington State a year ago from the metro NY/NJ area. People kept referring to the hocks, and I didn't have a clue. They were talking about an athletic team: the Hawks, which I pronounce as hawwk.

As an aside, the way leel pronounces "hawwk" is the same sound I have been trying to describe in terms of how most of us in the US say "slaughter", "straw", "flaw", "draw", et al.

About the musicality of some Scandinavian speech, I used to watch a lot of Ingmar Bergman films in my youth, and loved the "sing-song tonality of the Swedish language. Norwegian, equally. Finnish, not so, as it comes from different roots, linguistically, closer to some Central European.