to think that Americans don't pronounce "Warrior" or "Aluminium" properly?

[giddypig]

"Woryer" and "Aloominum"

Just wrong!

(still continuing my rant)

Many of the examples posters on this thread are proffering as "the way Americans pronounce" words are, in fact, working class pronunciations that are very region specific (so the entire working class population of America does not even pronounce the words this way across America). I am guessing these posters heard Americans saying words this way on TV shows depicting Americans of a specific socioeconomic/regional group, and then assumed all Americans speak this way.

Many of the examples posters are providing are the way the words would be pronounced by working class Americans in the Midwest, I think. I say "I think" because NOBODY pronounces them these ways in my region of the US.

Amen, Peppermint!!

Regions within regions, indeed! My friend from Texas sounds completely different from my friend from Georgia who sounds very different from my friend from No Carolina. And my BiL from Illinois sounds very different from our cousin from Iowa.

And my Georgia friend can tell where someone is from in Georgia by their accent. North Georgia, Coastal Georgia, Fla/Ga line, they all sound different to her.

Being from California I, of course, have no accent at all!

I think we need to remember that it's not understanding the way we pronounce words in a common language that's important, it's the way we try to understand each other. It's a lesson we here in the US are learning the importance of these days.

I don't say Eye-rack. It is so true that there are many variations of accents even within regions of the US. Linguists have identified seven different accents just in my Southern state.

Loving the folk linguistic battles.

For those in light hearted moods, I love the fact that Americans don't get the joke in the title of "Shaun the Sheep"

If you said "Woryer" to me in my state in America, I would assume you were a bricklayer, plumber, or similar, and that you weren't from my region of America at all.

If you said that all Americans, or even most, said "woryer", I would simply assume you were unsophisticated, not well traveled, insensitive/rude, and probably not very bright.

I had a friend from Dallas Texas, who would definitely say 'pah sta' and 'mee - er (cant even write that)

Oh, woryer as in two syllables? Okay, that is weird.

It's hard to discuss phonetics online when the words are so ambiguously written down.

So, would I be unreasonable to "think that Brits don't pronounce 'scone'" properly?

No, I wouldn't be unreasonable. I would simply be crass, insensitive, and rather stupid.

oh the great scone debate - how do you say it in your neck of the woods then Pepper?

I'm not annoyed Antigone my point was that even within such a small country as the UK there are huge variations about how we pronounce things.

I hate the terrible American stereotyping and antipathy that you see on MN. Most of it is ill-informed nonsense.

Errol In the US the element Al is spelled aluminum, naturally it is pronounced that way in the US.

Totally agree Plunkette, its so ,,,closed minded and provincial isn't it?
I mean, I don't get a job teaching or proofreading English because of the UK do I? No, it has become the world language because of America.
I remember teaching English and how a certain type of person wouild get REDFACED when people said Aluminum,
Ever since then I just say Aluminum for fun.
WE are all Americans now aren't we? In terms of movies, music and culture.
If one of us Brits went to America it would be like a RE visit.

Antigone, I pronounce it to rhyme with "cone."

Then I moved overseas and initially spent a lot of time in Northern England. People there pronounced it to rhyme with "on." (But I still realized this was a regional thing, and didn't conclude that all British people everywhere said it this way). Even before I left America, I knew that different accents existed within the UK. I truly cannot understand how it is possible for British people to believe that so many stereotypes about Americans are not only true, but applicable to all/most Americans.

If I walked around the UK spouting some of the things I've heard British people assert about America/Americans, only I substituted any other nationality for "Americans" or "America", people would denounce me as racist and boorish.

youwhat In Spanish a is pronounced as in Argentina, so that would be the sound in jalapeño. Not ha as in cat.

I say scone to rhyme with gone. But that's because I have lived in Scotland. I am on a so-far unsuccessful one woman mission to get my compatriots to pronounce it correctly.

And there are Americans who would get the Shaun the Sheep joke. Some American accents are non-rhotic.

Yes Seneca, it has to rhyme with 'gone' or you can;t have the 'what's the fastest cake on earth?' joke.

They pronounce jaguar weirdly too: "jag-wire".

Say the following loudly enough for me to hear you:
Chicago
Michigan
Taco
Salsa
Chorizo
Jalapeno
Pasta

And I will chortle.

(Hispanic words have as American a pedigree as English words do in the US.)

80sMum I was also faced with lists of rhyming words that the DCs brought home with the task of finding the word that doesn't rhyme. There were quite a few parents who sent assignments like that back with a big ? written on it - Irish, Polish, Russian, Indian, and Nigerian, all baffled. Plus more than a few Americans who hailed from different parts of the US.

DD2 managed to learn the vowel sounds of the local incarnation of American English so well from elementary school teachers that she went off to university on the east coast speaking with an accent that left her (mainly east coast and mid Atlantic) fellow students astonished. The friends she made told her they only understood a small portion of what she was saying when they first met her. I am grateful that she only picked up the vowels and not the consonants.
The local vowels:
Hot = hat
Pop = pap
Bat = beh-at (there are two vowel sounds here)
Cat = Keh-at
Sauce = sossss
Sausage = sossssige

DS wrote the word 'truck' just as he pronounced it - 'chruck' - as a 5 yo, which was only natural thanks to the company he kept back then. I kept him in for a few years so he lost that.

SenecaFalls I say puh-kahn, emphasis on second syllable. I hadn't encountered the word or the nut until I met my MO born and bred exMIL. My mother (in Dublin) has heard me say puh-kahn a good deal, but sticks to phonetic pee-can.

I once took care of a small boy who used to sing along with the song 'I got a woman' by Ray Charles - "I got a llama, way over town/that's good to me"

DestinysDaughter - it's POO-tyin in Russian, with a very slight Y in there, never Pew-tin. In English POO-tin is fine.

(If you want a really great accent for teaching phonics, hire an English-speaking teacher from Ireland.)

AIBU to think that the way Indian people pronounce certain words in English is just wrong? When I hear my DD imitating them, I correct her because that pronunciation is just so irritating and grotesque.

What's even worse, though, is the way Chinese people pronounce words with 'r' in them. It just makes me grit my teeth.

Hahahaha! I heard an Irish person pronouncing a word in a way that isn't how I do it! It sounded so wrong! Irish people just butcher the English language: let's start a thread in which we list examples of English words we've heard Irish people pronounce differently than we do, and then we can all make disparaging remarks. That will be super fun and appropriate!

So, Super Beagle, who is the "they" who say "jag-WIRE"?

Since, as an American, I know that not all Americans do this (and that America is vast, and features many, many different accents), I'm wondering who you are talking about?

Peppermint, don't let it get to you, honestly xx

Ugh, these threads are irritating! As Peppermint pointed out, just look at the regional differences within the UK - my grandfather is from Bolton and says 'book' with a proper ooooh in the middle, whereas I would say more like 'buk' (not quite that pronounced, but you know what I mean).

It's just a different dialect, people! Funnily enough, first time I returned to the UK as an adult and was talking to a friend about jalapeños, I pronounced it hal-a-pen-yo as I assumed that was how it was pronounced (as a Spanish speaker) and she just laughed and said, 'no, it's jal-a-pee-no'!

Why can we not just accept it's a different way of talking? By the way, I am a Brit and even I find it annoying! It's not like I pronounce Rs at the end of sentences either....

I say zeebra :) and apparatus with a short A. And most of the things that people have written here. Can't help it. British national but lived abroad most of my life.

Paninotogo

I guess it depends on the dialect. I'm a native Spanish speaker and my "a" is a short, like in cat. In some dialects I guess it's more of an Ar like you described, but actually to me it sounds more like hullapenyo than hahlapenyo because the ar sound, when it is used, is still quite short. In my SE English accent, "hah" and "ar" are veeery long, drawn out "ah" sounds, which they are not in Spanish.

Anyway, it's difficult to describe in text! Point being, some of us do say it as ha-la-pen-yo! This site has a good range of pronunciations from around the Spanish speaking world:

es.forvo.com/word/jalape%C3%B1o/

Putin is poo-tin in Australia (and this is correct, FYI)
Taco is tah-co
Pasta is pah-sta
Scone is scon, to rhyme with swan

Peppermint I'm talking about Americans obv. I've never heard them pronounce it any other way.