Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[AugustWest]

Wow, is it time for the Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Grammar Thread again?  It's like clockwork around here.

[misterqueue]

I don't know how to say that one. But I'm down with plebeian. [/asshole]

Damn you Cort... you win this time.

[pmcd9]

Vase is pronounced as if the s were a z.

Hell no.

Also, library (people leave out the first r), February (same thing) and then people who ADD an r where it doesn't belong, saying BORT instead of BAWT for bought.

Warsh as in warsh the car.

~Paul

[AlohaDawg]

Even the most educated people in my office say contrack instead of contract and retrack instead of retract.

[arkabee]

obviously, diversity will be the death of culture.

however, when persons mispronounce words, they don't do so out of ignorance,
they simply don't like you.

[CortJstr]

obviously, diversity will be the death of culture.

however, when persons mispronounce words, they don't do so out of ignorance,
they simply don't like you.

I shall say liberry at you. And nucular. Don't think I won't. And bringing me a shrubbery won't do you any good. You're in for it now!

[Golfhaus]

Also, people mispronounce "flaccid" all the time.  It's not FLAS-sid, but FLAK-sid.  You pronounce the first c as a hard k, as in succinct (although I hear people mispronounce this as suh-SINKT too).

I wouldn't know... people don't get much opportunity to use words like "flaccid" around me. They're too busy trying to remember their third grade menmonics re: "stalagmite" vs. "stalagtite."

[jough]

I still don't get how there are regional dialects anymore. I mean, weren't we all raised by the same television?

[V-Adore]

I wouldn't know... people don't get much opportunity to use words like "flaccid" around me. They're too busy trying to remember their third grade menmonics re: "stalagmite" vs. "stalagtite."

That's a classy, classy typo, dude. Also, a tiny can, although I highly doubt you need it.

[Golfhaus]

That's a classy, classy typo, dude. Also, a tiny can, although I highly doubt you need it.

The worst part is that I almost posted "thrid grade," and caught it. And I remember thinking, "Man, how stupid would THAT have made me look?" I felt a lot better for having caught it. Oops.

I guess ultimately I was too focused on my rock-like cock - just like all the ladies.

[theinevitable]

jough--
I'll never forget... I was in italy, on a school exchange thing, and the teacher was explaining dialects. And she says "does anyone here speak in dialect?" and one kid raises his hand, with the general manner of a person admitting they have genital herpes. the entire class stares at him while he tries to say something in this wierd north-eastern italian dialect (it basically sounded like someone speaking italian with mush in their mouth), only to blush and stop when everyone burst out laughing at him.

I wish dialects in the US would not go away. Making fun of my dad for not being able to pronounce "drawers" will never get old, and I want future generations to have this same ability.

I find that dialects seem to be more and more a matter of choice. there are some kids in my classes who sound very very southern, whose families are from the north. and then there are others of my friends, whose families have lived in the south for bagillions of years, who sound perfectly northern.

of course, my relatives all say I have a southern accent, so who knows. I guess I do have the distinction of having a Latin teacher whose given name, for most of his life, was Bubba. Also, getting to tell people that I was in a garage band that played in a barn.

I love regional wierdness. It's too bad that it's slowly going away. I think I might start saying "ya'll."

[V-Adore]

I've started saying "y'all," and I've spent maybe five months combined time in the South. It's just a good word.

I feel slightly strange about regional accents, because I always appear to have "not from around here" as my accent, wherever I am. When I grew up in Alaska, all was well, but when we moved and I started eighth grade in Nebraska, everyone insisted I had an "Alaskan accent." (No such beast, I insist to this day.) I go to college in Massachusetts, and suddenly everyone thinks I talk like a Midwesterner. Either I pick up accents easily or I just have a funny voice that people like to blame on wherever I've been lately.

[Lister]

It's really weird in my family.  Though we were all raised in Alabama, none of my siblings really have a pronounced accent, though as far as I know I'm the only one who consciously changed mine to erase the vestiges of it.  My oldest niece somehow picked up the St. Louis "a" pronunciation.  I'm told that I sound like I'm from Pittsburgh.

People here in Southern California always seem to be really shocked that I'm from Alabama.  I blame Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy for this.  I should not have to explain accent variations to people who live where the surfer culture began but do not talk like surfers.

[misterqueue]

Out of curiosity what is the St. Louis "a" pronunciation?  I'm from here and lived here for a majority and I don't even know that.

Unless you're talking about the South St. Louis people who say 44 as "Farty Far", but I was a North City kid so I didn't pick that up thankfully.

[acoxcae]

Yeah, as far as I know, St. Louis folk are often used as examples in television and such, because our speech is like the definition of "non-regional diction."

However, once you get a little further away from the city, people do adopt "Farty Far" type speech, as well as things like "warsh," which DRIVES ME COMPLETELY CRAZY AND MAKES ME WANT TO PUNCH PEOPLE IN THE FACE.  St. Louis proper, in contrast, has no accent that I'm aware of.