Pronunciation of werewolf

[PotteringPondering]

When I was growing up everybody pronounced it WEER-WOLF.

Now everybody seems to pronounce it WHERE-WOLF. I'm assuming it's an American thing. But even films with British accents seem to say 'WHERE-WOLF, no doubt for the American market.

I find this odd, particularly given the pronunciation of mere, here, sphere, sincere, adhere, revere etc.

I guess there's also premiere and derriere, but they both come from French words where a grave accent helps the 'air' sound (première, derrière).

The best evidence for the defence is there and where. But I suspect shenanigans going on with the h in both cases, which creates the AIR sound.

If I see an American werewolf round here I'm going to give it a sincere kick in the derrière.

My parents are both from the SE though I was born and brought up in Dublin. I don't think yogurt was even a thing when they were children, but we had a good deal of it as children ourselves, always called yo-gurt. It would be interesting to see why yoggurt became a variant British English pronunciation.

Noooo to noo-gar!
It’s nou-gah, because it’s a French product and that’s the french pronunciation.
For some reason the English LOVE to add an “r” after an “a” sound so we end up with abominations like car-key for khaki and drawr-rer for drawer.

That's a function of the non-rhotic accent, @Maelil01
Plus the assumption that everyone else has a non-rhotic accent too.

@Maelil01 , I've not heard anyone say daw-rer, they usually say draw, but I've heard people say drawring.

Lancashire born and raised and now in SE; have always said and heard it being pronounced as where-wolf never weer 😂

No, not daw-rer, drawr- rer. The a gets followed by an r. No idea why!

People with rhotic accents usually say draw-er. No additional "r" needed or wanted.

Sorry, I meant they don't say drawr-er, they say draw,as in Chester draws.
I have never heard anyone say drawrer for drawer as in chest of drawers.

Drawring, but not drawrer.

I have heard Kharki, usually said instead of olive green, when the colour khaki is more of a dirty sand colour.

I'v also heard lager said as lar-ger, in rhotic accent, and seen it written as larger.

I'm 55, South London born and bread and it has always been "yoggut"

Bred (ffs)

Rather like the way those with a rhotic accent always assume everyone does on threads like this.

My mum pronounces it Weer-Wolf, literally the only person I know who does.
Yoghurt has always been yog-urt.

@SoupDragon , I don't think that's true. The phonetic spellings often given on here make no sense if you have a rhotic accent.

It's a lot easier to say something like half and harf sound the same if you assume non-rhotic pronunciation.

Lancashire, only ever WHEREwolf and scone is 'gone' not goan(makes perfect sense that way)

@mathanxiety - "FWIW, the YO-gurt pronunciation is closer to the original Turkish."

Thank you. This is good to know :)

@MouseSculptureMadeOfOldHairbrushFluff - seems we can stick with our yo-gurting after all!

This.

Never heard the other pronunciation.

Yoghurt used to be the usual spelling in the UK when I was younger (late 50s now) but yogurt seems to be more common now. I still spell it with an 'h'. In the fridge I currently have two fermented milk pots, one made by Fage called 'yoghurt' and one made by Tims Dairy called 'yogurt'.

Also London and always pronounced 'yogg-ut' (where u is an unstressed schwa).

As a user of a non-rhotic accent, the 'ar' spelling is what immediately suggests itself to represent the long vowel sound, as 'ka' and 'car' sound exactly the same to me. I try to use 'ah' when possible but it's much harder with other vowels, eg I'm not sure how to represent the 'er' sound in 'herd' without an 'r' and without using the phonetic alphabet which I would have to look up and I guess most other people won't be that familiar with either - 'eh' suggests a flat 'bed' sound and 'uh' suggests a vague schwa.

The problem is that using 'ar' to represent the long vowel sound seems to cause confusion every single time it's used on here.
I've a rhotic accent and have been here a while and now know what people are trying to convey using 'ar' etc, but I have to say I found it confusing too the first couple of times I came across it.
It's very hard to represent sounds accurately without IPA. You can't really, as accents vary so much, but I still like trying and enjoy these threads😊Also, I usually learn something - I didn't realise until this one that lots of people pronounce wear/where and wine/whine the same.

... lots of people pronounce wear/where and wine/whine the same.
I was aware of it LizzieAnt, but I just don't hear where/were/wear as the same sound or whine and wine.
The IPA for whine and wine is the same.

Same for me when I first joined MN and I have lived in the UK so should have been familiar with non-rhotic accents. Although, to be fair, it was Scotland where most accents are rhotic.

It also took me a while to figure out that "The Farmer's LLama" is supposed to be a near-perfect rhyme. In my accent it's not even close.

Wer wolf as in "we were doing something" - Scotland

Is it the standard UK pronunciation? I'm in the UK and say yo-gurt, so do most people I know.

I'd say were wolf as wur wulf

I had to look up the tunisian tennis player Ons Yabeuer (as I heard it on the news).

Yog-ut is the standard pronunciation in British English. But then the standard pronunciation is also non-rhotic. Yoh-gut sounds American to me - I don't know any British people who call it that. But I know a pretty small subsection of all British people, and most of them probably speak a bit like me.

I'm pretty sure it's always been 'ware-wolf' but my 1990 dictionary which I always drag out in these instances gives both 'weir' and 'ware' options.