Tech Dogg's Dox Tox
Apr
23
Posted in Life at 1:43:36 PM on 23 April 2007 | Comments: 2
I've always been fascinated by regional differences in American English dialectal pronunciations. For example, because I grew up in Massachusetts and have managed to retain a few dialectal pronunciations unique to that region, I pronounce these three words differently:
Somewhere around the border of New York state and western New England, native speakers begin to blur their pronunciation of these three words, singly pronouncing them as I pronounce the word Mary.I can almost now determine a native speaker's place of origin just by the way he or she pronounces these three little words. Well, almost any native speaker north of Virginia anyway.
A linguistic trend I've also been hearing much more of lately is the replacing of adverbs with adjectives, as in:
- Run it by me, slow and easy.
- He was hurt real bad.
- Hold tight if you're standing on the train.
- The sun is shining bright today!
