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Old 01-16-2011, 05:38 PM
 
Location: A Nation Possessed
25,225 posts, read 18,388,490 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by UtahRoots View Post
For example, how you pronounce "cord" and "card" or "born" and "barn" word pairs may determine the dialect boundary. I remember that my mother used to say that the the pronunciation of roof, creek, horse, corner, and drawer would tell you if someone was from rural Utah. She said "ruf, crick, harse, carner, and draw-er" I say ruf, creek, hoarse (kind of drawn out but not two syllables), corner, and drow-er. Let's get Katzpur (my sister) to tell us how she pronounces those. Anybody else? I'm loving this thread.

We could chat for days on "fer ignernt" or "oh my heck"...
This all brought a smile to my face. My grandparents (on my father's side) had all of those pronunciations. Another one is "go hop in the 'fard' (ford) and we'll go to town." Then there is "Spanish Fark." Also, they would refer to Eureka as "Urika" and gums (the ones in your mouth) as "gooms." Some of my aunts and uncles (they are getting to be quite elderly now) still use many of these. There was also "ya" for yes (or yeah). I'm assuming that was a direct copy of my great grandmother's speech--she was from Norway and it really is "ya" in Norwegian. Oh, and your quote ""fer ignernt"--my aunt says that all the time!

Aren't dialects and accents interesting?
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Old 01-17-2011, 10:00 AM
 
Location: Saint George, Utah
148 posts, read 455,278 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisC View Post
This all brought a smile to my face. My grandparents (on my father's side) had all of those pronunciations. Another one is "go hop in the 'fard' (ford) and we'll go to town." Then there is "Spanish Fark." Also, they would refer to Eureka as "Urika" and gums (the ones in your mouth) as "gooms." Some of my aunts and uncles (they are getting to be quite elderly now) still use many of these. There was also "ya" for yes (or yeah). I'm assuming that was a direct copy of my great grandmother's speech--she was from Norway and it really is "ya" in Norwegian. Oh, and your quote ""fer ignernt"--my aunt says that all the time!

Aren't dialects and accents interesting?
There was a PBS television program on this subject 10+ years ago. I still have it on videotape. The presenters visited different US locations; it was fascinating!
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Old 01-17-2011, 10:06 AM
 
Location: Macao
16,284 posts, read 42,959,106 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jfitt View Post
Yes, you do. We are from back East and now live in Mesquite. When we go to St George we can definitely hear an accent. One holiday example is back east we say, MERRY Christmas. Out here it sounds like MARY Christmas.

Another quick example, back east we have AUNTS. Out here you have ANTS.
I'm from Michigan, and I say MERRY Christmas like MARY Christmas, and I say AUNTS like ANTS!!

I really can't imagine any other way to say them...but I've always perceived that 'back east' meaning the Northeast is the one with the accent

I've noticed more similarites with MI all the way to CA including UT...than the drastic change I hear when on the East Coast or down South.

That being said, every region does have a little bit of an accent, and while I can't hear it, I have been told that Michigan has its own accent as well.
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Old 01-18-2011, 12:41 AM
 
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I live in central southern Utah...here's a few things I have noticed in my own speech as well as just the general dialect in my area. For starters:

one that drives me crazy is "woof" instead of "wolf"

I seen something..instead of "I saw something."

How yuh doon..instead of "How you doing"

"uh" cat..instead of "a cat"

dub you...instead of "double-you" (letter name W) we drop the "L" sound completely on this word

seeng-ging, or seeng-un...instead of "singing"

App-uh-lay-shunz..instead of "Appalachians"

come-pew-tur..instead of "computer"

tuh..instead of "to"

ure..instead of "your"

fer..instead of "for"

suh-thurn..instead of "southern"

AND anything that ends with "ing" is pronounced "un" Example: She is "go-un" tuh ure hows...instead of "She is going to your house." OR He's wahk-un down the street. "He's walking down the street."

We also say "up north" when referring to Salt Lake City, or Provo/Orem areas. And instead of saying north or south when giving directions, we say up or down, as in: Go down the street and turn left..instead of "Go south, and turn left."

Also any state east of the Colorado border is called "back east", and California (pronounced Cal-uh-forn-yuh) is "out west."

I've been told that my accent sounds like a light southern accent, similar in ways, but with more "uh" and "un" sounds in the words.
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Old 01-18-2011, 07:19 AM
 
18,837 posts, read 37,201,329 times
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The funny thing is that I live in hurricane country now..and recently was reading an article about hurricanes, and pronounced it "Hurric-u-ne"...like the city...you know what I mean...hard to write it out...
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Old 01-18-2011, 09:19 PM
 
5,595 posts, read 18,990,086 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jasper12 View Post
The funny thing is that I live in hurricane country now..and recently was reading an article about hurricanes, and pronounced it "Hurric-u-ne"...like the city...you know what I mean...hard to write it out...
I don't know. But this confused me at first when I was new to the area ...a lady I knew kept referring to "Herken." At one point, I wanted to drive out to see where this town was as I knew it was in the St. George area. So I'm looking on the map and never did find Herken.

Quite a bit of time passes before I started noticing that quite a few people would talk about this place so I finally had to pin somebody down as to exactly where this place was. It finally dawned on them that "oh, you're new here! ...we're talking about Hurricane!"

I now hear that after the big profileration of so many new people moving to the area several years ago that the traditional pronunciation is now being accepted. I suppose the old-timers are just getting tired of correcting everybody so half are pronouncing it Herken and the other half, Hurricane ...evidently.
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Old 01-19-2011, 10:50 AM
 
224 posts, read 637,092 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by scirocco22 View Post
I
I now hear that after the big profileration of so many new people moving to the area several years ago that the traditional pronunciation is now being accepted. I suppose the old-timers are just getting tired of correcting everybody so half are pronouncing it Herken and the other half, Hurricane ...evidently.
NOOOOO, don't tell me that. It will always be her'ken to me.
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Old 01-19-2011, 03:55 PM
 
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Mee Too! Her'ken!!! Southern Utah, Born and Bred...so much is different about St. George now, I don't even recognize it. It is like Vegas now. Not like it was 40 years ago, that is for sure. We could all remember the "old days"...going to Larsens for a cone, shopping at Snows...could not ask for a better childhood than growing up in St. George. Accent and all...
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Old 03-18-2011, 06:51 PM
 
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If we look at the history of Southern Utah, we have to realize that the area was settled by southerners to grow cotton (DIXIE remember), and the original settlers brought that accent with them when they came to Dixie.

Today with the vast majority of people in Southern Utah from somewhere else, that accent is dieing out.

There is a lot of difference between the North East and the west as far as the way they talk.

When my daughter was in the 3rd grade we moved to the Northern Suburbs of Detroit in 1961 from my native California when I was in the corporate world. They put her in a speech class as she talked different than they did there. Within 6 months she was talking like she was a north of Detroit native. They said she just did not know how to properly pronounce words. We went back home in 16 months, and they put her in speech class to get rid of her crazy accent and way of pronouncing words and her way of talking.
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Old 03-18-2011, 08:26 PM
 
Location: Salt Lake City
27,870 posts, read 29,674,389 times
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I love topics like this. I don't know why I didn't notice this one sooner. I'm going to comment on each of these, partly because a few of them really confused me.

Quote:
one that drives me crazy is "woof" instead of "wolf"
That one drives me crazy, too, but I actually haven't heard this one in Utah.

Quote:
I seen something..instead of "I saw something."
That one's a grammatical error, and it drives me up a wall. It's worse than fingernails on a blackboard.

Quote:
How yuh doon..instead of "How you doing"
Yeah, kind of redneck talk.

Quote:
"uh" cat..instead of "a cat"
This is one I didn't get your point on. The letter word "a" is correctly pronounced "uh," isn't it?


Quote:
dub you...instead of "double-you" (letter name W) we drop the "L" sound completely on this word
Agreed, but again, I don't hear this all that often here in Utah.

Quote:
seeng-ging, or seeng-un...instead of "singing"
I hadn't thought about this one before, but yes, it bugs me, too.

Quote:
App-uh-lay-shunz..instead of "Appalachians"
Are you referring to the final syllable? Are you saying it should be "chuns" instead of "shunz"? I might be guilty of this mistake if it is, indeed, one.


Quote:
come-pew-tur..instead of "computer"
Ouch!

Quote:
tuh..instead of "to"
I think all of us Americans do that to some extent in everyday language. "I'm going tuh the store." One way you can spot someone whose first language is not English is that they are much more precise in their pronunciation.

Quote:
ure..instead of "your"
A man I worked with used to say, "thurs" instead of "theirs." I had to bite my tongue every time he did.

Quote:
fer..instead of "for"
Again, kind of sloppy, even more so than "tuh" instead of "to."

Quote:
suh-thurn..instead of "southern"
That's how I say it. How should it be be pronounced?


Quote:
AND anything that ends with "ing" is pronounced "un" Example: She is "go-un" tuh ure hows...instead of "She is going to your house." OR He's wahk-un down the street. "He's walking down the street."
Sloppy but common among all Americans, I think.

Quote:
We also say "up north" when referring to Salt Lake City, or Provo/Orem areas. And instead of saying north or south when giving directions, we say up or down, as in: Go down the street and turn left..instead of "Go south, and turn left."

Also any state east of the Colorado border is called "back east", and California (pronounced Cal-uh-forn-yuh) is "out west."
I see no problem with this usage. I think it's common everywhere, as is "up north" and "down south."

One thing an out-of-towner called to my attention that kind of struck me funny is that when we're talking about someplace relatively close, we say, "It's over there." When we're talking about someplace farther away, we say, "It's way over there." She'd never heard "way" used to exaggerate distance before.
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