Words I Can’t Say
July 23rd, 2005No, of course I’m not talking about bad words!
I mean words like “asked.” I find that my pronunciation either rhymes with “mast” or “passed” (Isn’t there slight difference between those two?). An alternative pronunciation sounds like “axed”.
Maybe I should pronounce it using two syllables. ask-ed.
i *like* when people say ‘asked’ in such a way that it rhymes with ‘mast’… i love idiosyncracies in people’s speech..i *love* that bush can’t say the word ‘nuclear’…i have a friend who says ‘pitchers’ for ‘pictures’ and i just adore it…i try to think of questions to ask her that will warrant a response with that word in it….
but, if you did decide to change to the two syllable pronunciation, ask-ed, i could really dig that, too….it would remind me of shakespeare…”all are banish-ed!”
i say, start speaking in iambic pentameter all the time…compose little sonnets for *really* important things you want to say…that’d be cool.
I can’t say “bagel”. Apparently the long ‘a’ turns short when I say it. This happens whenever a long ‘a’ is followed by a ‘g’. It doesn’t happen with any other consonant. I am told it’s part of my Rochester accent.
I think I’m saying a long ‘a’, but Tara says it only sound right when I try to say bay-ee-gel.
by the way, i’ve always liked the way you say ‘wouldn’t’.
I have a friend who grew up near Boston. Need I say more? Once she announced that she needed a “quawtah” and a guy she was getting to know told her later that he thought she should know that there are two “r”’s in that word. She wasn’t too pleased at the time but I guess it worked out — she married the guy and now says “quarter”.
Mom, on the other hand, still says “warsh”.
I, on the same hand as Mom, wonder frequently if I didn’t lose that battle with the Brooklyn accent after all. You?
Hm, don’t you think part of our problem might be that both of us speak (too?) quickly?
Does it bother you that you leave off the “g’s” of -ing words?
Do you have any of these problems in Spanish?
Oh yeah, and I find myself wanting to read “tree” (and others) as written instead of “chree” when I’m reading to Daniel.
Oh — last one — are you pretty comfortable saying “Elizabeth”, when you give your full name? (whenever that happens — maybe your last court appearance)
Kiki your attitude it welcomes me
and I find that I’m glad you didn’t insist
on rhyming words along with metered feet
and maybe I should stop while I’m ahead
You are the first who never mock-ed Bush
who names my sister when he speaks of terror
and now it is too late to save much face!
Hi, Tara! Mom doesn’t really say “warsh” all the time. And we don’t have anything close to the real thing when it comes to Brooklyn accents.
I think leaving the “g” off of “ing” words would bother me if I did it all the time…don’t think I do…it’s sort of an attitude, I think.
Why would I be uncomfortable saying Elizabeth?
And of course we may speak a bit too quickly, but isn’t that because we have so many wonderful thoughts to share with the world?
Ok, so I’m sitting here saying “bay-ee-gel” over and over again…so fascinating how that prononciation sounds so correct. But I still don’t think any of these words are as hard as “asked.” A lot of these things are accents more than anything else. Do any of you pronounce asked correctly? How does it sound when it is pronounced correctly? Tara, do you pronounce it correctly? If you do that’s not fair!
I think I try to say “askt”. I’ll “ask” Jeremy if I’m successful.
Ask CJ to say “wolf”, BTW.
He says “wolf”!
In Spanish I sometimes have problems finishing one word correctly and smoothly transitioning to the next. My tongue just isn’t used to it.
Ah, CJ must have been practicing.
Upon further reflection, I fear much more than Brooklyn-ese that I will slip into backwoods Upstate New York (is that redundant) or Southern Tier NY or something. “That” becomes “theeait”, “problem” is “prahblem”, stuff like that. I fight it, I fight it but it’s ubiquitous, insidious…
PLEASE NOTE: PRONOUNCE….PRONUNCIATION
….What about the CORRECT spelling of the word pronunciation? Oh, I know you will say that was just a typographical error, but as your former English teacher…proof-reading is important too!
Re: pronunciation of the word passed and similiar
words denoting past tense… the solution is to clarify the d on the end such as you would do in singing. However practically speaking, because the ears of the general population have been trained to
accept the ending of passed as sounding like an “st”, you would probably receive more than a few strange looks if you indeed emphasized the d. Comprehension of word usuage seems to override pronunciation in these types of examples. I think some people would say, if the word sounds okay, and if what is being said is understood, then, what’s the big deal? Here is some food for thought that I think is really interesting. I think regional pronunciations can result in a subtle form of prejudice entering the picture. Take “warsh” for example. Maybe you didn’t know this, but I was originally corrected by a “Yankee” for that one. He actually sounded horrified that I could have pronounced the word “wash” that way….yet, I have heard New Yorkers say things like “idear” instead of idea. This is where tolerance is needed. It’s easy to make fun of people who speak differently than we. One might erroneously conclude that pronunciation is indicative of the degree of education one has received, but we know this is not the case…take George Bush and his “Texas talk”. Can you imagine giving the President a lesson in pronunciation????
I am truly impressed that you noticed that…I would have expected Jeremy to pick up on that!
I have now changed “prononciation” to “pronunciation”…thanks for pointing it out, Mom! It looks so much better now that it is spelled correctly.
Oh, Oh, confession time……I initially misspelled the word pronunciation also…but I had the wherewithal to look it up…what’s really funny is that the genius in the family also spelled it incorrectly….but then I saw some of his writings in
his younger days, so I should not have been surprised! He still asks me to proof read his proposals…ha!