I Say, You Say... (Accents and quirks)

[Quatermass]

Accents and pronounciations are a funny old thing, aren't they? You've got all these words that are pronounced differently between various English-speaking countries. This thread is about personal preferences rather than specific regional variations, though.

For example, I pronounce 'mayor' as 'may-yer', whereas my mother pronounces it as 'mare', and often corrects me, to which I almost always retort of late that a 'mare' (to put it far more delicately than I do in my retort) is what a stallion has amorous relations with.

I also pronounce 'lieutenant' as 'loo-tenant' rather than the general English pronunciation of 'lef-tenant'. I have to wonder who the chucklehead who thought up the latter pronunciation was?

[Conforumist]

Don't even get me started!!

I live in a province where people say "xspecially" and "xcape" and they think that's normal.

They say "come" in the past tense.

[jaznbonnie]

This actually touches on my pet peeve. It is the word "probably". Many people in my region pronounce it as "prolly". I'd like to know where they think both b's went?

[raptornx01]

Heh, I pronounce Probably as probly (and often spell it that if I need to use shorthand.)

The Lieutenant thing I'm the same way. To me it always sounds like they are saying Left-Tenant which makes me think there is a right-tenant. makes it worse when the phrase Right, Left-tenant pops up

I've always said wash as wahsh, despite that my mother has always said it as warsh. Though I do say creek the way she does, which is crick. and my brother insists on pronouncing ethernet as eh-thernet instead of ee-thernet as I do.

[Quatermass]

I generally pronounce 'probably' as 'probly', although that is probably a bit of Strine. And I say 'wosh'.

[Ghost]

roite yow lot bin talkin bout accents well tak a look at this clip

[Penfold]

Just thought I would include this.

[Catch-up]

I've seen that before, but it still made me laugh!

[ChristianBecker]

This actually touches on my pet peeve. It is the word "probably". Many people in my region pronounce it as "prolly". I'd like to know where they think both b's went?

Prolly gone missing a long time ago.
I usually say "probably", though.
As a non native speaker I should be able give you a long list of how I pronounce words, which could be quite amusing. On the other hand, as soon as I know how a word is supposed to be pronounced, I try to use that pronunciation. Of the other words, I don't know whether I'm pronouncing them right or not.
Ah, yes, I used to think it was "tshemistry" instead of "kemistry", a mistake that was soon after corrected by my cousins.
And I thought "privy" was pronounced like ivy.

[Tonyblack]

Not really a pronunciation thing - but I have noticed that the word 'absolutely' (actually - ab-so-lutey!) gets used a lot by people in conversation. Whatever happened to the word 'yes'?

[jaznbonnie]

Heh, I pronounce Probably as probly (and often spell it that if I need to use shorthand.)

The Lieutenant thing I'm the same way. To me it always sounds like they are saying Left-Tenant which makes me think there is a right-tenant. makes it worse when the phrase Right, Left-tenant pops up

I've always said wash as wahsh, despite that my mother has always said it as warsh. Though I do say creek the way she does, which is crick. and my brother insists on pronouncing ethernet as eh-thernet instead of ee-thernet as I do.

One of my roommates at school used to pronounce "wash" as "warsh". It took several months but I finally managed to train her to pronounce it without the "r" - "wa(ah)sh".

[Bouncy Castle]

Don't mind prolly, but people who pronounce chimney as chimbley do my head in.

[raptornx01]

One of my roommates at school used to pronounce "wash" as "warsh". It took several months but I finally managed to train her to pronounce it without the "r" - "wa(ah)sh".

Was your roommate from Pennsylvania too?

[Joolz]

Not family friendly..

[raisindot]

Everything everyone else has mentioned so pales in comparison to the gut-wrentching, chalkboard-scratching, brain frying awfulness of the Bahhhhhston accent.