American accent or a collective speech impediment?

[mysteryowl]

I hear it so many times that people don't enunciate "L", it becomes a "W" and sounds like a child speaking.

"Widdwe" vs Little for example.

Listen closely for it to include media reporters.

[GreenWave]

1. Be careful, lest the woofman will get you.

Woof= wolf S. Illinois and a lot of Missouri.

They also say starm instead of storm and my oh my the number after thirty nine is quite embarrassing.

[Atticus]

3. Southern Illinois----absolutely. Add "lye-berry", "chim-lee" and "sam-witch". nt

[Midnight Writer]

14. "Let's eat braakfest" and "How are yeew?" and "fawve" for five.

[Sanity Claws]

48. Woof instead of wolf -- also in Michigan

I knew someone from Michigan and he said woof. I had to ask whether he was referring to a dog, thinking the dog goes woof so maybe that is what he meant. Nope, he meant wolf. I had never heard that pronunciation before.

[GreenWave]

52. My brother who plays Jimi Hendrix songs lives in Flint, Michigan for 3 decades.

Perhaps he helped spread it.

[Sanity Claws]

53. Your brother, the language influencer!

[LakeArenal]

2. I hear a crazy way to say important

Em por Ent—no first t.

[paleotn]

4. I've noticed that too in the last 10 years of so.

Strange pronunciation but it seems widespread now.

[Aristus]

5. Or the Southern version:

‘Impordant’.

[LakeArenal]

7. Grammar has gone he way of cursive writing.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

28. I speak some Southern:

Second person singular: Y'all

Second person plural: All Y'all.

Easy.

The pronunciation I hate is "new-cu-lar" instead of "new-clee-ar". I think GWB might have popularized the dumb pronunciation.

[Aristus]

29. I'm sorry. I speak Southern fluently. 'Y'all' is never singular.

Singular is 'Yeeeeew'.

Plural is 'Y'all'.

When addressing a large group, it's 'All y'all'.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

46. Yall wudnt raised in 'ese hills n hollars, wuz ye.

Jeetchet?
Jowntoo?

[ariadne0614]

23. This one makes me cringe every time i hear it.

It seems to be a female thing, and comes across like a 21st century Valley Girls affectation.

[Hekate]

36. When it first became widespread, I thought, "When did American English get a glottal stop?"

[wnylib]

38. Jimmy Carter used to say it that way.

You could just barely hear the first t.

[Irish_Dem]

6. My daughter's English professor told the class American English evolves all the time.

The language their grandparents spoke will be different from the language their grandchildren will speak.

We can hear it all the time now, what we consider bad pronunciation and bad grammar.

It is the language evolving in front of us.

[LakeArenal]

8. More like devolving.

[targetpractice]

16. The thing about evolution...

... is whatever is standing or predominant at the end of the day, won.

[CTyankee]

24. "devolving" is not what a lot of people "think."

Please everyone, look it up!

[Irish_Dem]

27. The definition of devolving has devolved into something else.

[Tetrachloride]

9. The DARE - Dictionary of American Regional English

https://www.daredictionary.com/?language=en

I met the current Editor in Chief Prof Joan Hall way way way back.

[electric_blue68]

32. Oh, Interesting!

[ariadne0614]

25. My daughter has a linguistics degree from McGill, and told me the same thing.

Her gentle admonishment caused me to adopt a more enlightened attitude in general, but I reserve the right to harbor a small measure of momentary distain where certain deviances are too painful to bear.

[Irish_Dem]

26. Yep same here. I try to be more tolerant.

But yes it is difficult.

I really dislike hearing: She gave it to Susan and I.

[Pobeka]

10. In first or second grade I was learning to spell words, my mom was hanging up the "warsh" to dry.

I remember it quite clearly, I asked her where the "r" was in "wash". She said of course there is no "r".

From that day on I understood that people pronounce things in ways that are not consistent with the spelling.

[Aristus]

30. My late father-in-law, born and raised here in Washington State,

pronounced it 'Warshington'.

He also said 'Garsh!' instead of 'Gosh!'.

[Pobeka]

50. Was he or his parents originally from Indiana/Illinois/Wisconsin area?

My mom was from southern-ish Indiana, where they also had zuchini "squarsh". My sister lived in Wisconsin and Minnesota for about 5 years and came back with a notable accent. Garsh was definitely something she picked up in Wisconsin, you know, where they have "Osh Kosh by Gosh"

Funny thing -- I moved to Tacoma in the mid 1980's and the friends I made here commented how I didn't have any accent at all, which is a way of saying my accent matched the Washington accent...

[mysteryowl]

11. Here is an interesting take on "little"

[Scrivener7]

12. Also, I'm hearing "with he and I" or "with she and I" EVERYWHERE.

Fingernails on a blackboard.

[greatauntoftriplets]

13. Or "me and her" and "me and him".

[wnylib]

39. Drives me nuts to hear it, too.

Too many Americans do not know how to use pronouns or understand the difference between subject and object. Most annoying is when I use them correctly and someone tries to correct me with the incorrect version.


.

[yorkster]

15. I first noticed the "liddle" pronunciation about 10 yrs.ago

listening to Anderson Cooper - that and "inneresting".
from another source, can't remember where.
Now it's kind of omnipresent.
I know some of it is regional. I'm originally from the Boston area, so some things are more Brit sounding.
Aunt, for example. (Ahnt). And little would have the t's as
percussive.
Of course, Boston and New England have their own peculiarities speechwise...

[Ocelot II]

17. That's interesting, which I pronounce "intresting."

"Inneresting" sounds really wrong.

[Bev54]

19. That one really gets to me because so many anchors and pundits on tv

also say it that way. I mean inneresting

[yorkster]

20. I also pronounce it as "intresting".

I think inneresting is kind of a mush mouth thing. But it's out there. Just like "gennelman ", which I have "definallly, definally " heard. (Ok, the latter was Dustin Hoffman in Rainman.)
.

[electric_blue68]

33. Oh. Reading this - I think I sometimes do pronounce it "intresting". Huh!

Of which just got "corrected" to interesting - which I caught in time to have the "correct" mispronouncement.

[electric_blue68]

34. Oh. Reading this - I think I sometimes do pronounce it "intresting". Huh!

Of which just got "corrected" to interesting - which I caught in time to have the "correct" mispronouncement.

[intrepidity]

43. Whenever I fully enunciate "interesting"

I feel like Artie Johnson on "Laugh-In"...Verrrrrrry in-ter-es-ting.

Else, it's merely in-tres-ting.

[yorkster]

47. I very weirdly had the same thought last night.

Saying interesting "correctly" implies the "very"to those who remember Laugh In - or to many of us at least.

[Bev54]

18. I live in Canada and one of the small towns I lived in people would pronounce

chimney as chimley. I would ask them how they spelled it and they could properly spell but it seemed the whole town pronounced it wrong. It was us newcomers that apparently didn't know how to speak.

[Sanity Claws]

49. West Virginia folks also say chimley

At least a friend from West Virginia told me that years ago. When he moved to the West Coast, he dropped regionalisms to fit in.

[Bev54]

54. Well this small town was previously a coal mining town, I wonder if there is a relation to that.

[ariadne0614]

21. And then there's the ubiquitous r to y switcheroo in February. nt

[Wounded Bear]

22. Whatsamatter U? You no can talk good?

[Hekate]

37. Whatsamatta me? Whatsamatta you?!

(Middle section of a very old Hawai’i joke)

[wnylib]

40. Also heard among some Italian Americans.

[Wolf Frankula]

41. That was Bullwinkle's alma mater.

Wolf

[Aristus]

31. I once used the distributive property in mathematics to explain a problem of English

grammar to my stepson.

One time he was waiting for his girlfriend to come over because "her and I are going to the movies."

I told him "She and I."

He said: "That doesn't sound right."

I replied " 'Her and I are going to the movies.' That's a simple sentence. Turn it into a compound sentence: 'Her is going to the movies, and I am going with her.' You know that sounds wrong, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

"So change it. 'She is going to the movies, and I am going with her.' "

"Got it."

"Now turn it back into a simple sentence: 'She and I are going to the movies.' "

[intrepidity]

44. That's how I learned it too

You ask "who is going?"

[electric_blue68]

35. "Widdwe". Wait...what? Really?!!! In my not so humble opinion that sounds stupid...

Dodges brickbats!

I've never heard that!
And I do enjoy regional variations.


The one that got me idk 20+ yrs back was most people do not, or possibly can not pronounce these 3 words
and have them sound different!

Mary. Merry. Marry. Huh?!

So I'm making up a test sentence:

Mary was feeling merry today, because her friend was going to marry a childhood sweetheart.

[intrepidity]

45. That 2nd "r" in marry functions as a speedbump

Mar-y vs mar-ry. Takes longer to say marry than Mary.

[tblue37]

51. Some TV show once did a segment on North Carolinians pronouncing both "oil" and "all" as "aowl."

That was in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

[wnylib]

42. I grew up in Erie, PA and noticed

pronunciations among people who lived in nearby rural areas. They said crick for creek, dint for didn't, bobbed wire instead of barbed wire.

A little farther south of us toward Pittsburgh there was "y'uns" as the plural for you.

My cousins in South Buffalo said "care" for car and "hat" for hot.

I thought my pronunciations were pretty standard until I moved to Ohio and people there told me that I have a western PA accent because I say Dawn for the name Don, drawing out the vowel too much. I don't hear the difference.