To refuse to engage with anyone who uses of instead of have?

[ExitPursuedByAKoalaBear]

That's it.

Does 'drawer' have two syllables for some people? I pronounce draw and drawer exactly the same and I'm sitting here saying both words out loud and trying to work out how some people pronounce them differently.

phaedra - well, I would teach them as homophones, because they are in my accent. The 'er' is silent for me.

I don't say 'draw-er'.

Sorry. I'd never thought it might be bad EFL teaching, and to be fair that's not my training. I speak more or less RP, and possibly this is a regionalism that's crept in, but I would find it odder to keep remembering to say the word in a way that wasn't natural to me.

Do other RP speakers put two syllables in drawer?

liking the lion/diet version, though.

One syllable here. I thought it was only Scots who used two.

For me (American with mild Southern accent) drawer has two syllables, emphasis on the first, and the r sound at the end is pronounced.

Similar to the second pronunciation on this link, but my Southern accent makes the two syllables slightly more pronounced.

www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/drawer

The British English in that link is how I would say it.

Is the second one (about cheques) how some of us say it?

When I first joined MN, it took me a while to figure out that non-rhotic speakers were using an "r" to broaden/lengthen the "a" sound in phonetic renderings of words like "bath." I pronounce the r (as do most Americans, Scots, and Irish people) so it was confusing until I realized it was what I would render as "bahth."

yes, I think the second pronunciation re. the casher of a cheque is how some are (wrongly) claiming you pronounce 'drawer' as in chest of

But it's not 'wrong,' nancy, it's just how they say it.

scone - 'bahth' is one of those words that always keys me into a fake English accent by a US speaker. I can't put my finger on it, but they lengthen the vowel differently from us. I'm guessing that is because to us it sounds like 'r' and to you, 'h'. I think vowels are always really tricky, aren't they?

In my accent, the furniture part and the check writer are probably indistinguishable to most listeners because of my slight Southern drawl. It is not wrong in my accent.

yes, it's not wrong, just a regional variation I suppose.

The American pronunciation of R tickles me. Remember how George W Bush used to say 'terrorist'

I had a teacher who pronounced the 'W' in Bush's name 'dubya,' exactly as he says it. It made me very happy.

But I like that version of US r too.

LRD I am no expert, but I think it has to do with where in the throat the sound is made. I think the native RP sound is farther back in the throat and difficult for some Americans to make.

No, drawer is sort of one and a half syllables when the r is pronounced. It's like you pause for a half second to pronounce the w. Not dror-er (or draw-wer), but more like (drop without the p) dro-ur.

I have a non-rhotic accent so ah and ar are exactly the same sound to me.

And the biggest fault that British actors make in doing American accents is over-emphasizing the r sounds.

I do teach EFL and I would teach draw and drawer the same because they are in my accent. You can't teach every variable of every word in every accent because it's endless and confusing. If it's a big and well known difference, tomayto tomato kind of difference, then I give them both and let them choose which they prefer.

One which a student did ask me about was "during". I add a /y/ sound to the beginning of that ur sound, so it comes out as dyooring, but he'd heard the word pronounced the American way before. They don't add the y sound so it is pronounced almost exactly as it is spelt, like durring.

YY, I was listening to Jamie Bamber in BSG, because someone said his Brit accent occasionally shows, and they said it was over-stressing the r.

BB - is that the same thing as a glottal stop then?

Cross post. BB that's really interesting.

I'm now making 'y' sounds meditatively.

Sorry, I realise this is going a bit off topic, but if you were reading a friend's new website and noticed mistakes, would you tell them?

This happens to me A LOT and I feel torn between not wanting to be rude, yet also not wanting them to look less professional by having mistakes on a public facing site.

I also see MN as a non-formal place where I expect to see typos (and sometimes they're hilarious so it's totally worth the judgements).

I would feel a bit more judgemental if I saw this sort of mistake on the BBC website however, and I have seen/heard many similar errors there surprisingly. Somebody once told me that as a journalist, it wasn't their job to write correctly, which I thought was a bit odd.

I think often people default to pointing out mistakes when they can't think of a better way to put someone down. Society in general has a definite tendency to judge intelligence based on things like this, which is unfortunate.

There are bigger issues here than simply people making mistakes and others pointing them out - issues of the quality of education, provision for those who learn differently, and how most of us judge each other based on things that are pretty ridiculous when you really think about it.

Column, anyone? Where I'm from, it's pronounced col-yum.

alba - I think there I would, if it were a new website, just in an very low key 'oh, your new site looks great, I'm sure it's the last thing on your mind right now, but btw you have a typo on the third page' kind of way.

But it also depends on the kind of friendship. Loads of my mate tell me typos and it's helpful, but I would never mention them to my severely dyslexic cousin, because he would be so hurt and because I know in his industry, people really don't care, so it would not matter.

janinum - no y for me.

"Column, anyone? Where I'm from, it's pronounced col-yum."

Where are you from? I've never hear column pronounced like that in my entire life and I'm extremely ancient.

I would tell the friend if they had a healthy self-esteem, ykwim. if they had a big ego and a fragile self-esteem then no I wouldn't.

Sorry - lots of cross posting going on!

I used to have 'speech and drama' lessons (a less posh name for elocution I think) and was constantly told off for the way I say 'i' sounds. Being born and bred in the West Country but with parents who spoke with RP, I had only one burr in my accent, and that was it. I tend to say 'oi' ever so slightly, and I cannot for the life of me say it any differently.