Say what?

The English talk funny. I know I already touched upon some British slang, and the accent itself is obviously different, but I’ve been surprised at how many things they pronounce significantly differently from Americans. I’ve also learned the origins of many American sayings that don’t make sense. For example, (and please excuse my pathetic pronunciation guides; I am no linguist) it is the English that pronounce tomato as toh-mah-toh, like in that saying, “You say tuh-may-toh, I say toh-mah-toh”. I used to always wonder who the heck actually pronounces tomato that way, since I had never heard someone say it like that and couldn’t imagine someone thinking that was the right way to say it. Now I know who says it. It does make sense a little bit if you try to say tomato with a British accent- saying it the weird way is actually easier and sounds more British. I think pecan (peh-con, rather than pee-can) and idear (you know, when people add an r sound to the end of idea) also originate from British English, for the same say-it-in-a-British-accent deal. Of course, I know Americans that say it this way. They, however, are wrong. According to me, at least.

These things did not throw me for any significant loops; I just found them interesting and a bit enlightening. Place names, on the other hand, throw me off all the time. I’ve come to think that the reason why Greenwich (not green-wich, but gren-ich) Village in New York is pronounced as it is and not phonetically like other American words is because it’s named after the British original, and thus keeps the British pronunciation. Maybe it’s just me, and my stubborn refusal to believe that dropping that w is a logical thing to do. Still, I am fairly confident that no non-accent-wielding, God-fearing English speaker would pronounce “Leicester” and “Gloucester” as les-ter and glous-ter, “Chiswick” and “Southwark” as chis-sik and suth-urk, or “Hertfordshire” as haht-ferd-shur. I know at least one of my roommates and I have been afraid to pronounce place names for fear of forgetting to drop half its letters. In addition, that station-announcer woman on the tube has baffled me a few times, requiring me to closely examine a map in order to figure out possible stops and do a multiple-choice of what she may have said. Anyway, now that I have offended everyone that has ever spoken to me, I’m going to go back to drinking my wudder (water).

30 second summary: See first sentence.

Here’s proof that I’m not lying about the slang from earlier: