American accents - t sound in water and others

[mincepiepie]

I'm really intrigued by accents.

I'm from the north of England and have a generic northern accent.

I know there are a wide range of accents in the United States, and but also that typically the T is pronounced as D? for example, water I would say war- tah Americans would pronounce war-Der And duty, I would day dyou-tee and US accent doo-Dee.

Is this typical of an most American accents? I was listing to a true crime podcast and a witness was call Soptic. Fairly odd name in English but I'd pronounce it sop-tick but the presenters mad a big thing of calling her soap-dick. (It was the room 1046 Murder of you are interested she was a cleaner hence the hilarity )

Also the Boston accent drops the r in car, bar so on but I think I do this too, baa and caa. But don't most typical British accent say it this was, except rural West Country type accents ( i think the dropping the r is non -rhotic?).

Can any one enlighten me?

😁😁

You're just not hearing the distinction between the American D and T sounds.

What is vowel thing? It’s taken me years to block that Niles’s wife Is called Maris (not Meris) and Rachel’s fiancé is Barry (not Berry)

Mind blown! I always thought mid-Atlantic referred to the kind of half British half American accent you hear from Brits who have spent a lot of time in the US (a sort of Tony Blair type accent, or people I know who work in US universities)

I don't get it?

@BeanieTeen

The term Mid Atlantic refers to a neither North nor South accent which is therefore identified as neutral.

It has nothing to do with the ocean.

I know an Irish guy called Howard. I never noticed him having any problems with his name.

The Howard I know is not from NI or anywhere in Ulster.

@RaraRachael

Americans can pronounce mirror - it's 'meer'.

I remember as an Irish child who watched a fair amount of British children's TV, looking up a dictionary frequently to find out where some Rs had disappeared to and how they had been tacked on to the ends of words I was sure didn't have them. Turns out the two Blue Peter presenters from the SE of England were speaking in their normal accents, and also that I was right about spellings.

Ah thanks @mathanxiety it's a NI thing, I get it now.

I've listened to several of those clips with Americans saying water and it doesn't sound like a 'd' sound at all, it sounds like an 'r'..... Maybe because I'm not an English native speaker?

DH was on an an American Airlines flight from London to the States and asked the steward for a water.

The steward kept saying, ‘a what?’ and just couldn’t understand him. In the end, the American guy next to him had to translate, ‘I think he wants a waddah’.

So now the American way of pronouncing it has become a family joke.

Accents are so intriguing - I think our Kiwi way of pronouncing the letter ‘i’ like a ‘u’ (‘fush and chups’) derives from the many Scottish settlers who came here in the early days of colonisation, as I often hear that inflection in Scottish accents, as well.

I agree. I'm from the Southern US and have a mild coastal Southern accent. I distinguish t and d, as do most Southerners, but it's a subtle distinction. I definitely don't say "budder."

The letters 'd' and 't' often interchange in some accents. I'm a native of Yorkshire and I pronounce 'Bradford' as 'Bratfod', it happens in dutch too.

My kids have American accents and yes, t and d are subtly different. I can do it and the d has the tongue hit the roof of your mouth longer where the flapped t is just a brief tap, slightly further forward. We lived in Philadelphia for a couple of years and there it comes out like 'wooder' and they absolutely cannot understand the British pronunciation.

There's also the question of vowel mergers. In the Northeast, cot/caught are not the same, Mary/marry/merry are all different, but in most of the country they don't distinguish. So, Kerry/Carrie and Aaron/Erin are pairs of names that sound the same for most Americans. NYC has its own split where traditionally cat and cab aren't the same--the a sound is tense (becomes a diphthong) before certain consonants. in the Great Lakes area, that 'a' vowel is always tense.

My favorite American way to pronounce water is Philadelphia: wooder.

There is a summer treat, kind of like a hard slushy, called 'water ice,' but it comes out "wooder-eys," which is delightful.

The first time I was there visiting a friend and heard it pronounced, I had no idea what they were talking about.

Yep, this is the answer.

Never in my life heard an American anywhere say “wudder” or “waddah” unless they were joking. But I’m a dual citizen and have spent a great deal of time in both countries, so I think I can just hear the difference.

When I’m in the US my accent is most similar to the mid-Atlantic one linked earlier that they claim doesn’t exist anymore, probably because the “American” part of my family are WASPs and still speak that way. When I’m back in England it switches over immediately, but regardless of which country I’m in you can always hear a faint trace of the other.

@JaneJeffer Sorry, yes, Northern Irish.

In a NI accent Howard often sounds very like "Hard" / "Haaard"

I think in this instance the term that @BeanieTeen is referring to is the TransAtlantic accent, which is also termed the Mid Atlantic accent. This does indeed have something to do with the ocean. It is the old fashioned accent adopted by actors in old Hollywood movies in order to be understood by / appeal to people on both sides of the Atlantic.

@mathanxiety

Well this thread has sent me into a 4 am rabbit hole on accents! Fascinating.

I do get that to Americans it doesn't sound like they are saying "warder/wader" but to English ears it really does (see all the you tube clips.)

It's like the north/south things where everyone says "I AM saying Bath you're saying baaath/barth etc".

To many English people it sounds like there's no annunciation on the "t" sound as we tend to sound "t" differently. Hence all the stories about not being understood asking for "wa Ter" and having to change to an English sounding "wadder" to be understood!

Really interesting OP thankyou.

I've noticed often Americans don't pronounce the t when it's in the middle of a word. For example internet. When Americans say internet, they say inner-net.

It’s funny when people describe their own accents as ‘neutral’ and ‘generic’.
I love linguistics too. It’s fascinating to me.