Heaven: 2021 Proof Americans and Brits speak a different language

14445474950131

Comments

  • Lamb ChoppedLamb Chopped Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    They show up around Christmas time so the whole extended family can take goofy pictures in them for cards.
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Talking of pyjamas and pronunciations, I remember becoming very aware of how pond differences can impact on rhyme when I saw the Joseph musical in Canada. The lines:

    All these things you saw in your pyjamas
    Are a long-range forecast for your farmers


    rhyme perfectly with an RP accent, but simply did not rhyme at all with Canadians singing them. And I've observed Andrew Lloyd Webber's subsequent musicals have avoided that sort of rhyme.
  • TheOrganistTheOrganist Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    Firenze wrote: »
    <snip>
    I haven't though discovered the nightwear I encountered in The States in the '60s - the all in one with feet. Do they still exist?

    Yes. As novelty wear and they go by the name of "Onesies" :grimace:

    Otherwise for infants only, "Babygro" :grin:

  • The heavy full length women's nightdresses - Lady Macbeth style - are sold at the market near here run by the Mennonites. They are suitable for all weathers and are probably bullet-proof too.
  • Yes. As novelty wear and they go by the name of "Onesies" :grimace:

    Otherwise for infants only, "Babygro" :grin:

    They're also known as "Dr. Denton's."
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    What about "wort". As in figwort, liverwort, ragwort, milkwort, and other plants my botanical mother taught me about? And the liquid from which beer is made? I grew up using the same sound as in word, work, world, worm, worse, worth, etc, but now people will talk about St John's Wort as if it were a relative of a verruca, with the sound found in war, which I gather is American. Same sound as worn, which is the only wor word which I can think of with that sound.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    What about "wort". As in figwort, liverwort, ragwort, milkwort, and other plants my botanical mother taught me about? And the liquid from which beer is made? I grew up using the same sound as in word, work, world, worm, worse, worth, etc, but now people will talk about St John's Wort as if it were a relative of a verruca, with the sound found in war, which I gather is American. Same sound as worn, which is the only wor word which I can think of with that sound.

    Spelling pronunciation.
  • Does "wort' have the same sound as "warn" in your accent? Farm is different as is arm, barn, darn, which are the same.

    Some local Saskatchewan usages, which we are told derive from 100 year ago Scottish terms, possibly true or false: a slough (said sloo/slew as in killed someone, Cain slew Abel) is a pond with marshy edges and reeds. It will be called a pothole if it is mostly round, as some of them are. There is another word slough, which is said "sluff" and spelling as sluff seems to be taking over with a short U, usually in the context of to "sluff off", which means "dog it" or not do the work, sluffing it off to someone else or to another day.

    Rhyming with sluff, is bluff. Which means a bluff of trees in an otherwise treeless field. It does not usually mean a hill here, though that would be understood.

    "Porch climber" means moonshine. I wondered if it was a misheard term and simply said as porch climber. Hootch is another word for it.

  • Does "wort' have the same sound as "warn" in your accent? Farm is different as is arm, barn, darn, which are the same.

    In England, I think "wort" rhymes with "yurt" and "Bert".
  • Where I live, “wort” and “wart” are pretty much homophones, both having the same vowel sound as “war,” “warn” and “worn.”
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Leorning Cniht's rhyming with yurt and Bert is what I grew up with, and it is the sound most of the words in "wor" have. Note word.
    I used to tease children that the word work could be spelled with any vowel and come out sounding correct. "wark" as is Southwark or Newark, "werk", "wirk", "work and "wurk".
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    I'm English and I'd pronounce "wort" to rhyme with "ought". But that might just be me.
  • "ought" would rhyme with "taught", "snot" and "not" locally here. The word "ought" is rare usage now here.

    I was struck in eastern Canada, that Mary and marry were said differently. The second like the planet Mars.
  • I've just been dipping into this thread and it is a wonderful tribute to the richness of internationally diverse English.

    For anyone interesting in our shared language, I would highly recommend Melvyn Bragg's book The Aventure of English, A Biography of a Language. It's brilliant - as is the accompanying TV series if you can find it.

    For me the great joy was in understanding the story of English from being German with the arrival of the Angles and the Saxons to what we have today. There was a big Latin influence in the first millennium from missionary monks before the Vikings arrived bringing Danish words into English. The later Latin influence via French with the Norman conquest was more significant. What fascinates me most is how these geopolitical events still affect the language today. To cut a very long story short, the Saxons and the Danes basically fought to a high-scoring draw and England was divided diagonally. So in the North East Danish terms entered English. That is still seen today with words found in the North East dialect of modern speakers that derive from Danish. These words you'd never hear spoken in my part of the country. Similarly, when the conquering Normans arrived, they spoke French whilst the peasants continued speaking English. This is seen in modern English where there is a class difference in equivalent terms - the posher one will have a French root and the more common one Germanic.

    In later chapters Bragg turns to how the Empire took English to the world but it evolved and diversified as a consequence. This is seen in the differences of expression here described. My favourite example is in South Africa whereby a traffic light (stop sign in USA) is called a robot... Always made me smile that one.

    I think that to some extent what underlies this is a subconscious sense of ownership of the language - especially among Brits and Americans. I don't mean to be critical, I think this is a very natural way to feel about one's own language regardless of its origins (i.e. I suspect Austrians consider they own German). There is a friendly argument to be had here; us Brits tend to think of it as ours because 'we' invented it and we have Shakespear etc. Whilst in the 20th century there is no doubt that the dominance of the USA both economically and militarily as well as culturally is what took English to non-native speakers in a big way.

    One of my favourite little quirks of English is the spelling of the suffice -ise / -ize. Such as Organise or Finalise. Most Brits would use the 'ise' form and consider 'ize' to be both wrong and an Americanism.* Strangely the Americans are more correct. The 'ize' spellings go back to at least the 15th century and went to America with the first settlers - it's the Brits that have changed. The OED tends to favour the 'ise' form because there are some words that are only spelt correctly with an 's' and hence use the 'ise' for consistency. I find the 'z' to be much more phonetic and will often use it when typing quickly (before patriotic pride makes me go back and change it...)

    Anyway, it's a brilliant book about how we got here....

    AFZ

    *The irony being that Americanism is arugably itself an Americanism as the 'ism-isation' of words is from American English...
  • "ought" would rhyme with "taught", "snot" and "not" locally here. The word "ought" is rare usage now here.
    Here, “ought” and “taught” rhyme with each other, but not with “snot” and “not.”

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    'Ought' as an auxiliary verb rhymes with 'taught'. It's very widely used here and is part of normal speech. Although he's from somewhere very distant from here, I'm with @Nick Tamen that they don't rhyme with 'snot' and 'not', though they do rhyme with each other.

    What's more of a question is which vowel sound 'ought' is when it means the opposite of 'nought'. Unlike 'nought' which usually these days means a zero, it's slightly archaic or dialectic. In that sense it tends to rhyme with however you pronounce 'nought', i.e. RP to rhyme with 'aught' (also slightly archaic), Yorkshire 'owt' and 'nowt', the area in between RP and Yorkshire, 'ote' and 'note' to rhyme with 'note'.

    'Mary' and 'marry' are most definitely not homophones in most, if not all, of England. 'Marry' rhymes with 'carry' and 'Mary' rhymes with 'fairy'.

    'Slough', here, as a grubby pond or the conurbation west of London rhymes with 'bough' and 'sow'. 'Slough' as what a snake does with its skin rhymes with 'bluff'. A 'bluff' is usually a small hill with one steep side and other gradual sides. It may, or may not, have trees on it. There are quite a lot of different words that might be used for different varieties of small groups of trees, e.g. 'clump', 'copse, or even 'grove'.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    'Slough', here, as a grubby pond or the conurbation west of London rhymes with 'bough' and 'sow'.

    "Sow" the verb, as when you sow seed, or "Sow" the noun, meaning a female pig?

  • Enoch wrote: »

    'Mary' and 'marry' are most definitely not homophones in most, if not all, of England. 'Marry' rhymes with 'carry' and 'Mary' rhymes with 'fairy'.

    Okay, all of those are homophones here. Marry, merry, Mary, fairy, also and most local people to this province, bury. People from others will not have bury and berry with the same vowel sound. They are identical to me.

    Coupon and Tuesday are interesting. I'd say older people say Q or cue in coupon, and younger would say coo. Tuesday's vowel sound is either as in cue/Q or coo/too/2. People make fun of it sometimes and say Chews-day. The split in pronunciation is even within my family.

    Spellings here tend to be centre for the noun, center if it is a verb. Other er/re words similar. One that is interesting is that some people seem to make decisions and others take them. I am probably inconsistent, depending who I am talking to, and the context. I have thought the influence was from French, Québec.

    From ST, do you call the traffic light yellow or amber? The one between the red and the green? And what is the street crossing for pedestrians called? Here it is a crosswalk. All street corners, marked or not are actually legal crosswalks. Inconsistently enforced, but failure to stop for a pedestrian already in the roadway is $776. Which is about £500. I'm off topic but using a cell phone while driving unless the vehicle is in park costs the same, doubles with a second offence in the same year, and they suspend your driver's licence for 7 days, and also impound the vehicle for 7 days regardless of who owns it. The total cost with demerits and fees is apparently about $3000-4000 for a second distracted driving offence depending how far they tow the car.

    But this leads to, is it a driver's license or a driving license? or something else where you are? Here is is officially a driver's licence.
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    "Driver's license", here.

    Re Mary:

    On some British TV, I've heard "Marie" pronounced something like the US version of "Mary". It's been a while, but that may have been mostly which syllable was stressed.

    Here, "Marie" is muh-RIE. What UK pronunciation I heard probably stressed the second syllable, or possibly both equally.

    The one place I'm sure I heard it was on the Britcom "Keeping Up Appearances", when Hyacinth mentioned Marie Antoinette. But I think I've heard it elsewhere, too.
  • I do wish we still had the spot on each post where we could indicate where exactly we were located in the world (or elsewhere). Everybody keeps saying "here, we say it..." and I can never remember precisely where "here" is for everybody.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Where I live, “wort” and “wart” are pretty much homophones, both having the same vowel sound as “war,” “warn” and “worn.”

    Keep it up, Chief. When a chap's right, he's correct.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    "ought" would rhyme with "taught", "snot" and "not" locally here. The word "ought" is rare usage now here.
    Here, “ought” and “taught” rhyme with each other, but not with “snot” and “not.”

    Here all four are the same.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    'Mary' and 'marry' are most definitely not homophones in most, if not all, of England. 'Marry' rhymes with 'carry' and 'Mary' rhymes with 'fairy'.

    All four rhyme here.
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    Ditto here in California about MT's last two posts.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    And in Oz also - or at least my part of it.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    Enoch wrote: »
    'Slough', here, as a grubby pond or the conurbation west of London rhymes with 'bough' and 'sow'.

    "Sow" the verb, as when you sow seed, or "Sow" the noun, meaning a female pig?
    Sorry. The noun. Same vowel as 'cow'.

    On the others, since, 'coupon' = 'coopon'. 'Tuesday' = 'Tyoosday' unless you live in East Anglia, where it's 'toosday'. 'Bury' and 'berry' are homophones. Both rhyme with 'merry' but neither rhymes with 'Mary' or 'marry', which, as I said, aren't homophones here (England) either.

    Although one is the French version of the other, 'Marie' here is quite a different pronunciation from 'Mary'. The stress goes on the second syllable, 'Mǝree'. 'Maria' usually these days the same with an extra schwa at the end but in the past was more usually Mǝ-rye-ǝ, as it still is when it's a police van.

    'Sophia' varies between Sǝ-phye-ǝ and Sǝ-phee-ǝ, and you have to remember which one the person calls themselves. If uncertain, it's probably safest to go for Sǝ-phye-ǝ.

    Middle light of traffic light sequence, probably usually, and certainly officially, 'amber'. A marked crossing for pedestrians is that i.e. a 'pedestrian crossing'. Here, it's 'driving licence' not 'driver's licence'.

    Oh, and 'mobile phone' or 'mobile' here, not 'cell phone'.

  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    edited March 2020
    Gee D wrote: »
    And in Oz also - or at least my part of it.

    What? I've never heard anyone rhyme all those in Australia. Do you seriously rhyme "taught" with "not"? Or "carry" and "fairy"?
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    And in Oz also - or at least my part of it.

    What? I've never heard anyone rhyme all those in Australia. Do you seriously rhyme "taught" with "not"? Or "carry" and "fairy"?

    My error - I was intending to agree with Enoch.
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    I do wish we still had the spot on each post where we could indicate where exactly we were located in the world (or elsewhere). Everybody keeps saying "here, we say it..." and I can never remember precisely where "here" is for everybody.

    Exactly. Not that any of us played silly games with that of course....
  • DooneDoone Shipmate
    @alienfromzog that book sounds really interesting, thank you, I’ll look out for it!
  • Doone wrote: »
    @alienfromzog that book sounds really interesting, thank you, I’ll look out for it!

    :smiley:
  • I'm not sure if it's only in North America any longer, but omitting the first 'r' from February is quite annoying (to me). I try to help by explaining to people that it's the only month with a brewery in it.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    I'm not sure if it's only in North America any longer, but omitting the first 'r' from February is quite annoying (to me). I try to help by explaining to people that it's the only month with a brewery in it.

    "Feboorey" or "Febry" is the normal pronunciation around here. Fe-brewery would sound a bit affected.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    A common British pronunciation would be Febyooary.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    edited March 2020
    KarlLB wrote: »
    ... Fe-brewery would sound a bit affected.
    Oh dear - you'll have to put me down as "affected" then. My late father even pronounced it "Fe-brew-ar-y", with a short but definite "ah" sound on the "a".

    But I'm Scottish - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. :mrgreen:

    Regarding Mary/marry - no. Mary rhymes with fairy, and marry with carry.

    Naught/not - not quite a perfect rhyme to me: the vowel sound in "naught" is a little longer than that in "not".

    I'll also add my voice to the chorus for Lord Bragg's book - it's excellent. If you want another in a similar vein, but a little lighter-going, I'd heartily recommend Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    I'm not sure if it's only in North America any longer, but omitting the first 'r' from February is quite annoying (to me). I try to help by explaining to people that it's the only month with a brewery in it.

    "Feboorey" or "Febry" is the normal pronunciation around here. Fe-brewery would sound a bit affected.

    I usually find that your accent matches mine, and 'febry' sounds right. A double /r/ as in 'febrewery', very rare. Scottish accents will be different, of course, with stronger vowels (?).
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    The thing about a non-rhotic accent is you pronounce both rs in February and nobody can tell.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    Dafyd wrote: »
    The thing about a non-rhotic accent is you pronounce both rs in February and nobody can tell.

    Non-rhotic accents only drop the 'r' in digraphs like ar, ir, or. The ar in February doesn't represent this digraph, and anyway the 'r' reappears before a vowel, even over word boundaries.

    But you knew that.
  • I suppose the conservative accent has 4 syllables in February, rather than 2. My old English teachers pronounced miniature with 4.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    edited March 2020
    Mary rhymes with airy (mix of London and RP). (Hopkins has The Blessed Virgin Compared with the Air we Breathe which I think give or take the w must be deliberate.)
    Marry is a short a, as by rhyme Harry, or by assonance mad.

    Wort is I think the vowel in word or bird or dirt give or take voiced or unvoiced (or aspirated if that's the term) consonants.
  • Coupon and Tuesday are interesting. I'd say older people say Q or cue in coupon, and younger would say coo.

    Oh, thank goodness! I thought for a minute you were going to say coupon and Tuesday were homophones.
    From ST, do you call the traffic light yellow or amber? The one between the red and the green? And what is the street crossing for pedestrians called?

    In the UK, it's amber. In the US, it's yellow. (And of course the sequence is different. UK is red - red + amber - green - amber - red. US is red - green - yellow - red.)

    UK crossings are zebra crossings (black + white stripes across the road, often marked by Belisha beacons), pelican crossings (a pedestrian crossing with a traffic light) or toucan crossings (like a pelican crossing, but where a bike path also crosses the roadway).
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    I think I actually pronounce February Febrǝry, with a tiny schwa between the two 'r's. If speaking really fast or the stress is on something else, I suspect they sometimes do merge as 'Febry'. I don't think I pronounce the 'u' properly unless I'm trying to enunciate really carefully.
  • I suppose the conservative accent has 4 syllables in February, rather than 2. My old English teachers pronounced miniature with 4.

    "February" and "miniature" each has four syllables -- and "February" has two Rs.
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Enoch wrote: »
    I think I actually pronounce February Febrǝry, with a tiny schwa between the two 'r's.

    Same here, though sometimes it's more like the 'oo' in book, but it's very quick, not stressed. Though if reciting the months, rhythmically, like you do as a kid, then I say an exaggerated 'Jan-yoo-erry, Feb-roo-erry, ...'

  • February is pretty consistently pronounced FEB-yoo-wary here (American South).

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    How do those shipmates who give 'Miniature' four syllables fit them in? It's usually three, as minichǝ here with the stress on the first syllable. Although it uses the phonetic alphabet, the dictionary on my computer says the same.
  • RussRuss Deckhand, Styx
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    "February" and "miniature" each has four syllables
    And the thirteenth element has 5.
    (Al-you-MIN-ee-um)

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Enoch wrote: »
    How do those shipmates who give 'Miniature' four syllables fit them in? It's usually three, as minichǝ here with the stress on the first syllable. Although it uses the phonetic alphabet, the dictionary on my computer says the same.

    I'd imagine that you'd have to be very arch and proper, holding out your curled little finger at the same time. It is possible, but who would? Your pronunciation is that used here.

  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Something I notice with my wife who grew up in New Jersey is that she will often use Yiddish expressions. On the other hand, I grew up in Idaho in a German community and often use German or Spanish expressions.
  • Russ wrote: »
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    "February" and "miniature" each has four syllables
    And the thirteenth element has 5.
    (Al-you-MIN-ee-um)

    If spelled aluminium, a grotesque innovation rammed through the international community by people who have no respect for the scientists who first name elements.
Sign In or Register to comment.