Monday, February 27, 2006

Words People Mispronounce In These Parts

I'm from Jersey. You wanna fight about it? Since I've been living in the deep south (well as far south as metro DC), I've noticed folks don't speak with the same "accent" as me. For the record, anything south of the Jersey shore might as well be the deep south for me. Can I get a Point Pleasant shoutout? (Sorry, that was pathetic.) My Jersey accent isn't really that strong, but it does make an appearance in some words. Here is a list of words that people from these parts mispronounce, since it's clear that my speaking manner is surely (not) the right one.

You say orange (or-inj)...I say arnj

You say carmel (car-mel)...I say cayr-a-mel

You say pecan (pe-con)...I say pee-con (this might be closer to tomayto/tomahto and not location-based)

You say water (wa-ter)...I say wer-ter (I get the most grief for this one)

You say egg (eh-gg)...I say ay-gg



I've also had trouble distinguishing between Mary, merry, and marry. Perhaps I just have a speech impediment, or perhaps it's just an accent, or perhaps anyone not from my hometown thinks my accent is a speech impediment. Whatever the case, let it be known that I've never heard any Jerseyite call our state Joy-zee.

4 comments:

Sean Hennessey said...

i hear ya. i'm from new jersey too.
and yes! no one says Joy-zee..except for Long Guylanders.

Asian Mistress said...

Well I'm not from the dirty Jerz, but I definitely say ay-gg as well! I get made fun of all the time.

Anonymous said...

Love the Dumb & Dumber quote - I used to hang with a girl from Jersey who always claimed she was from 'The City' - but she lived far south in NJ. She had the full on accent, and we lived in Georgia. Haha.....Poor thing, that was worse than my Midwest accent down there.

Anonymous said...

I'm from England (where the history comes from) and have the resulting correct diction:

You say arnj ... I say orr-inj

You say cayr-a-mel ... I say kar-a-mell

You say pee-con ... I say pee-can (That's why it has an 'A' in it)


Also, for the record:

Herbs starts with an 'H', otherwise it would be 'erbs'. The H is stressed as in 'hello'.

Nuclear is 'new-clear'. It derives from nucleus NOT 'new-killus'.

Sublime is 'sub-lyme' not 'sub-leem', this was in a recent l'oreal advert over here and irritated me to no extent.

A 'British accent' can be anything. Britian includes the countries Ireland, Scotland ans Wales, each has its own accent. What Americans usually mean by this is an 'English accent'.