Pronunciation of water

[Machiavellian]

To me it's wor-ter. I keep hearing 'wor-eh'. Is this not lazy? Why is the t being excluded? Am I being snobbish for thinking it sounds so lazy and uneducated?

There is so much wrong with this perspective it's hard to know where to start.

Regional accents are not 'wrong'. They are part of our rich culture and those who want to eradicate them are cultural vandals.

I have to listen to it being pronounced wah-der.

Don't let your pre-schoolers watch nothing but Bluey. Full on Aussie before you know it.

you don’t say it correctly though, there is no ‘t’ in the middle of the word. It is ‘waw-ter’.

War - ah

Hertfordshire - drop the T's and H's in pretty much everything 🤣

So I'm from 'art-ford-sheer

Are you saying you would never hire an Irish person then?

there isn’t one correct way to speak English.

I don’t pronounce the T. I’m an East Londoner.

I’m not impressed when people tell me to talk properly or take the mick out of my accent.

it’s an accent. It’s how I speak and always will. I wouldn’t dream of taking the piss or commenting negatively on anyone’s accent.

it’s what makes us all different.

@ISeriouslyDoubtIt

no accent is superior to another outside of the heads of misguided and deluded snobs.

Estuary English. I’m a Londoner so I’m used to hearing this. The other characteristic is pronouncing an L as a W. So you get what sounds like “Eaw’s Caw” for Earls Court. I can’t stand it but it’s becoming more common, by which, I hasten to add, I mean frequent rather than vulgar (yes I know what vulgar originally meant, but..) The expression that still makes me both laugh and cringe was when I heard a very intelligent and informed young woman on a podcast pronounce “political strategy” as “poli’icaw stra’gy”

There is not a "r" in water, what are you waffling about?

Loving all the 'there's no 'r' in water' posts. Aye, there is. Watturrrrr.

Wort-a

I think people confuse accent and dialect.

Have you only just noticed? Many people have been saying 'wor-eh' for years. How old are you? Have you never seen 'East Enders' even in passing? I can hardly believe anyone is saying this. The Beatles have broken up, did you know?

In Australia too. It’s dreadful.

English is a funny language, isn’t it?

Water/later should sound similar, but they don’t. I wouldn’t say ‘way-ter’ or ‘law-ter’! Same as cough/rough/though/bough look as if they should rhyme, but don’t.

I’m trying to imagine how I would pronounce ‘water’ without the imaginary ‘r’ sound in the middle!

Only in your opinion. In my opinion people with very strong regional accents sound uneducated. It's perfectly possible to live in a region and only have a slight accent, many many people do that. Having a very strong regional accent can be restrictive in terms of employment and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.

You're deluded if you think that. Very strong regional accents aren't often heard in certain employment sectors. I'd rather be called a snob who can talk properly than be called a yob who can't.

This American thing where they seem to think all British/English says “bo uh o wa er” drives me mad.

no, we don’t say it like that. Some do, but I’d say it’s a minority.

i would say Bot-ul of War-ter.

There is no “r” in the middle of water. The irony of you creating a post in pedants’ corner about it’s pronunciation..,

It's a shame when people are unable to grasp how a non rhotic accent works.

Also, it should be "its pronunciation" not it's.

@ISeriouslyDoubtIt what a sad and culturally blind attitude to have. If you feel regional accents are a measure of education or yob-like tendencies you are discriminating against huge swathes of the country where the local populations speak with rich and varied accents.

Like it or not someone's accent says absolutely nothing about their education, intelligence, values or suitability for a particular job. Believing otherwise says a great deal about you, your values, prejudices and cultural awareness.

Of course many people have accent preferences, it is unrealistic to expect otherwise. Allowing such associations to judge unrelated traits like intelligence or competence means your cultural baggage has become discrimination.

What I can assure you is that whilst regional accents are welcomed in every self respecting workplace, discrimination is not. It is people like you that decent employers avoid, and HR departments fall over themselves to get rid of.

Same here, its not really pronounced like that anymore (old Yorkshire) but we sometimes still use it ironically.

OP it sounds like you've had a bit of an epiphany and going forwards will be able to put your narrow minded and prejudiced upbringing aside and be more accepting of people's differences.

As I said below ".....people have accent preferences, it is unrealistic to expect otherwise. Allowing such associations to judge unrelated traits like intelligence or competence means your cultural baggage has become discrimination."

So you are not unreasonable for having accent preferences and associations. But allowing your preferences to become fixed judgements WRT unrelated traits is unreasonable.

My second day in America (visiting friends so less of a tourist area) in my early 20s I had a rather comical encounter where I asked for War-ter in English as many above would have (also taught not to drop the t when younger) and he had no clue.

My friend d did eventually translate (after I kept repeating wondering whether it was bottle/glass that was the issue) until we got to wahdder...

It depends on the accent though. In many parts of England the following would sound the same:
waw
war

So that’s how come there are people saying war-ta - we wouldn’t pronounce any rs in the word water but would spell it phonetically like that.