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?

I can't make them sound any different to me! (Southern England)

They do. Most of us will have a regional accent, but if we want to be generally understood we don’t use local dialect.

I worked on a phone complaints line some years ago, in England. I have a Scottish accent. But I wouldn’t use the Scottish dialect I often heard growing up when I spoke to customers, as in ‘D’ye ken fit’s wrang we it?’ It would be ‘Do you know what’s wrong with it?’ It’s up to the person speaking to make sure they are understood.

You don't seem to realise that you have a very strong regional accent.

Does it hold you back? Do you sound uneducated?

Unless you're Scottish.

people with accents do “speak properly”

Everyone has an accent.

People seem to not have noticed they're in Pedants' Corner .
Pronouncing the 'r' comes down to accent/dialect. Not pronouncing the 't' is just wrong.

True pendants would never say that any accent is "just wrong".

I pronounce the T btw, but those who don't aren't wrong. I also produce both Rs in drawer, but those who say draw aren't wrong either. For some reason dropping Rs is proper and dropping Ts is wrong. 🤔

I’m guessing you’re not from London OP.

I think this thread might have headed in the intended direction if the OP had said something along the lines of 'I believe the 't' in 'water' should be clearly pronounced. It has been sidetracked by them spelling the word phonetically, complete with an 'r' in the middle which many us don't pronounce. It is 'wawter' where I live in NI. Or even 'watter' depending on strength of accent and region. But the 't' is generally pronounced. I'm not sure this post belongs in Pedants' Corner though. People aren't wrong for pronouncing a word in the dialect of the region where they learned to speak. It's how we write things down that matters surely?

You'd have hated where I grew up in Yorkshire OP, lots of people pronounced it 'watter' to rhyme with 'batter'.

This seems like a fairly appropriate thread to drop this video of a young Maggie Smith teaching Carol Burnet to speak cockney with glottal stops ]]

That's brilliant @Singleandproud.

(Not stalking you across the boards, I swear!)

Woh-tr no r in the middle but one at the end. Might skip the 't' if being lazy, yes!

@WickieRoy there are several very funny clips of them on YouTube, they see to have been very good friends. Carol Burnet and Julie Andrews also have lots of funny videos and worked together for years (I fell down a YouTube hole of the once)

There are accents, and there is diction.

Not to be confused.

Warture - is accent.

Wo-ah - is diction, actually shit diction and usually an affectation.

Go on, flame me, am I bovvud?

Ah here, I have work to do this week, might have to try forget this post!

War-ter. Not pronouncing the T is lazy and common

Do you pronounce the R in "war" or do you say "waw"? Is "waw" lazy and common?

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

Sigh. You have a non-rhotic accent so have been taught to extend the vowel sound when it's followed by the letter 'r' and not pronounce the 'r'. Either you live in SE England, where the dropped 'r' originated, or cultural imperialism has taught you that is the 'correct' way to speak, the non-rhotic accent has spread across almost all of England now.

The bulk of the English speaking world (Scotland, America, India, etc etc) have rhotic accents where the letter 'r' is always pronounced. So when you put 'ar' to indicate an extended vowel sound we see a random extra letter and we assume the 'r' is actually being pronounced, in the same way people with non-rhotic accents say 'draw-ring' when they mean drawing. Hence the confusion.

I do think it's amusing that the people who insist the letter 't' is pronounced in the middle of water are universally those who fail to pronounce the 'r' at the end of it. Broadly speaking the pronounciation is either 'waugh-tah' (non-rhotic, strong t, no r) or wa-err (rhotic with a soft 't' and rolled r at the end). Unless you are from Edinburgh and say 'waugh-terr' (t and r pronounced).

@ISeriouslyDoubtIt

What I can tell you is that someone with attitudes like yours wouldn't get a job in my sector. Or if you somehow managed to slip through recruitment screening you'd be on a retraining course / disciplinary pretty quickly.

Classism and racism aren't acceptable in my sector.

Not just Edinburgh. Both the “t” and the “r” are pronounced throughout Central Scotland by people speaking with good diction. Have a listen to Judy Murray for example.

Trying to convey phonetic sounds using standard English spelling is a nightmare though- for example I’d pronounce “Waugh-tah” as “Woch-ta”, the “ch” as in Scottish loch- I was at school with a girl whose surname was Waugh and that was how she said it. (I am aware that Evelyn did not!)

I too had this, in Boston. I still don't believe thst online a touristy place it was the first British accent he'd ever heard.

Lots of people in leafy and very expensive parts of Hertfordshire don’t pronounce the T. They’re far from common, I can assure you.

I can remember talking to a Scottish teacher in my twenties. It was an education listening to her pronounce words. She joked she spoke better English than the English!

Non-rhotic, like most English speakers. I love that accent.

Car -> ca

I sound similar to Nadine Coyle and we'd say Waw-ter (sometimes the t sounds like a d).