Please note this is an archived topic, so it is locked and unable to be replied to. You may, however, start a new topic and refer to this topic with a link: http://www.banjohangout.org/archive/398295
Bart Veerman - Posted - 07/09/2024: 16:19:28
While listening to the radio and TV, it seems there's a new way for the young's to pronounce some two-syllabel words:
- battling: bat-tuh-ling
- setling: set-tuh-ling
- wrestling: wres-suh-ling
- cycling: cy-kuh-ling
- simplest: sim-puh-lust
- for Golden Horseshoe people only: Hurontario: Her-Ontario
Sounds weird to me, what say you?
Owen - Posted - 07/09/2024: 16:48:48
Weird?? I dunno.... we have friends/relatives/acquaintances whose name(s) [for decades+] was Bur-uhl. Then came a hurricane!! Now what to do??? Easy, peasy ... ask the all-knowing Google! ... apparently none of 'em knew they really were named Bear-ill [or should that be Bare-ill?]
mobile >> mo-bile or mo-bull? / futile >> few-tile or fu-tull? / tomato >> toe-may-toe or toe-mah-toe? 
Edited by - Owen on 07/09/2024 16:53:44
donc - Posted - 07/09/2024: 17:54:36
I think we are evolving to a world of 1 language. Today I called the cable company to adapt my remote control device to my new TV. As usual I got the 7-11 routine. That means Its a crap shoot whether the person on the other end can understand or speak English. This particular lady was in Manilla. As a kid Vancouver was full of English people speaking with an English accent. Today its a Chinese, Hindi, or Farsi accent.
Texasbanjo - Posted - 07/10/2024: 04:37:33
Different parts of the country have a different "style" of speaking. New Yorkers don't seem to understand "Y'all" and southerners don't seem to understand putting an "R" in words that don't have one. Different strokes. Both are okay with me.
I have good friend who comes from Mass. and even though she's been here over 20 years, occasionally her Yankee accent comes out and there are the extra "Rs". Doesn't bother me, but it seems to bother some.
Live and let live.
wrench13 - Posted - 07/10/2024: 05:53:28
Don, when I get one of those sales phone calls, and the speaker is obviously not named Ralph or Steve (more like Rashid or Sagwami) I let them spiel on and on and then ask them suddenly "So how is the weather in Mumbai?". 8 out of 10 times they fall for it.
steve davis - Posted - 07/10/2024: 06:02:05
I use 3 syllables for those words.
Battle has 2 syllables and adding "ing" adds another.
monstertone - Posted - 07/10/2024: 08:16:11
Southern, Midwest, New England, even less than proper English is tolerable, interesting even. However, I am only able to tolerate the "Queen's English" for so long, Al you min ium, being a prime example. AI also drives me up the wall. One would think they would be able to correct the misplaced accents by now.
Buddur - Posted - 07/10/2024: 09:27:27
I believe "yinz" is safe from change.
chuckv97 - Posted - 07/10/2024: 10:08:17
I'm originally a Golden Horse-shoe’r (how’s that for pro-nun-see-ayshun) and we often heard (“hoid” in Brooklyn) Lake Urine instead of Lake Yur-on
Edited by - chuckv97 on 07/10/2024 10:08:43
South Jersey Mike - Posted - 07/10/2024: 11:22:00
They’ve been pretty common for a while. I have never pronounced the “th” correctly although I am sure I can. It made it quite fun when I told my neighbor there were “three frogs in my pond”
“Tree frogs in your pond?”
“No, three frogs”
“Tree frogs?”
“No, three frogs.”
Owen - Posted - 07/10/2024: 13:03:20
Is that ^^ pond in the same pasture as the (twenty-six / twenty sick) sheep?
Buddur - Posted - 07/11/2024: 08:38:49
My Mom wurshes her kellers in cold wurder.
Always has.
Pomeroy - Posted - 07/11/2024: 12:37:10
quote:
Originally posted by Bart Veerman
While listening to the radio and TV, it seems there's a new way for the young's to pronounce some two-syllabel words:
- battling: bat-tuh-ling
- setling: set-tuh-ling
- wrestling: wres-suh-ling
- cycling: cy-kuh-ling
- simplest: sim-puh-lust
- for Golden Horseshoe people only: Hurontario: Her-Ontario
Sounds weird to me, what say you?
Well, I'll be burglarised. At least that's only the pronunciation, they're not making their own words up.
BTW it's 'youth' or 'youngsters' not 'young's'. innit.
Owen - Posted - 07/11/2024: 12:54:13
One I've noticed the last few/several years is a change (?) in "important." I grew up hearing/saying import-uhnt ... with kinda/almost a schwa on the first "t" and slurring a grunt (?) in there at the end. Now-a-days I hear impor-Tant ... or sometimes imporT-Tant.
...and if that ^^ isn't important, I dunno what would be!!
Fwiw, I I doubt many Mommas tell their "babies" not to play with guns, so with poetic license comin' out the ying-yang I instead sing, "When I was just a young'un, my Momma told me ... etc."
Pomeroy - Posted - 07/11/2024: 12:54:34
quote:
Originally posted by South Jersey Mike
They’ve been pretty common for a while. I have never pronounced the “th” correctly although I am sure I can. It made it quite fun when I told my neighbor there were “three frogs in my pond”
“Tree frogs in your pond?”
“No, three frogs”
“Tree frogs?”
“No, three frogs.”
When in England it's become traditional to find a hardware shop, saunter nonchalantly up to the counter and ask for 'Four candles'.
If it's extra syllables we're talking, if there happens to be an American tourist in the same store you could always concoct ways to get them to say 'Leicestershire'.
Not that I have a syllable to stand on really; in this areal we tag 'L' onto words that end in a vowel.
Edited by - Pomeroy on 07/11/2024 13:02:21
sobx - Posted - 07/11/2024: 14:49:23
Public school student: "What's a syllable?" :)
Owen - Posted - 07/11/2024: 15:23:30
^^ reminds me of up on the remote reserves.
One day a grade 1 (?) student asked me: "Teacher, what are you doing?"
So I rattled off: "Swimming the English Channel in my tuxedo, pulling the Prime Minister on a surfboard."
With impeccable timing and the cutest, quizzical look on his face, he looked me in the face and asked: "...What's a surfboard?"
Edited by - Owen on 07/11/2024 15:28:20
donc - Posted - 07/11/2024: 21:20:32
A young boy appears at a new school. The principal happens to be walking in at the same time. They boy says .. "pardon me sir can you tell me where the office is at ?" The principal replies.. "young man, in this school we never end a sentence with a preposition. Would you please rephrase your question" ? The boy replies .. " pardon me sir can you please tell me where the office is at...@$$#ole".
steve davis - Posted - 07/12/2024: 09:55:39
I pronounce words as they are spelled.
I love playing Scrabble which is all about spelling (and I won a few spelling bees in school).
Owen - Posted - 07/12/2024: 11:21:00
I've heard some pretty "interesting" phonetic pronunciations ... especially for place names. A couple that pop to mind are Musquodoboit, NS, and Tootinawoaziibeeng, a reserve a hour up the road from here. [Fwiw, I've heard some locals from Tootin-etc. and they leave out a bunch of the letters and slur the rest together ... I don't use it often enough to even spell it phonetically here, but it's quite a departure what would normally be expected.]
Edit: 'Way back I had summer employment with a sewer-water crew. One of our jobs was on Fuchs Street in Winnipeg. We'd moved on to another job when one of the guys was telling us something [or nothing?] about the previous job. He took 3 or 4 stabs at the street name and then made his point with, "... ah, that ****in' street over there."
Edited by - Owen on 07/12/2024 11:39:25
steve davis - Posted - 07/15/2024: 06:15:54
It's much easier to spell correctly when one pronounces words correctly.
Owen - Posted - 07/17/2024: 15:24:49
For 7+ decades I heard Sane River .... now it's the Sen River. But, but, but the school division in S.E. Winnipeg is spelled Seine R., but pronounced Sane R. Go figure?!?!? Do the fishermen/women/persons/?? using seine nets know they're actually sen fishing?
Capybara - Posted - 07/17/2024: 17:07:24
Finally, a non-banjo-related post I am qualified to answer (Linguistics BA, MA, and currently halfway through a PhD)!
What's going on: Your examples (minus Her-Ontario) are examples of the syllabic /l?/-- where the "l" sound is functioning as its own syllable without a vowel. English allows many consonants to become syllabic, such as l, m, and n. Your words all have two syllables prior to adding the -ing. Let's take wrestling as an example. In the International Phonetic Alphabet (I guess like tab for pronunciation lol), "wrestle" generally looks like this for most American/Canadian English speakers: /???s.l?/. There are two syllables, "wres" and "l," which we see separated by a "." in the IPA. Now, when we add the -ing, we have a choice*. We either take that "l" and preserve it as its own syllable, resulting in a three syllable "wrest.l.ing" /???s.l?.??/. Alternatively, we re-assign that "l" to be the onset, or beginning, of the proceeding syllable, which is now "ing," resulting in a two syllable word "wrest.ling" /???s.l??/.
Is it new/of the youth?: No. In fact, the two syllable realization is, on a large scale for Canadian and American Englishes, far more common and has been for longer than any of us have been speaking. It is not uncommon, it is not really tied to any age or time-related demographics, and it follows pretty neatly for what most Canadian/American English speakers do for other pronunciation-related phenomena (i.e., how such speakers handle syllables and syllabifcation, which really doesn't change much at all, let alone quickly). Indeed, I would be surprised to find a dictionary that only labels the two-syllable pronunciation, and most that I have seen browsing around list the three syllable first, and sometimes only the three syllable. It is interesting that you have noticed this, though! Perhaps you have surrounded yourself with many three-syllable type people, or perhaps I don't know something about Ontario (which I don't know much about!). I think it is likely that you, in normal everyday speech, keep the syllabic /l/. This can be very difficult to self-monitor, and we would need to record you and run it through a phonetic analysis software like Praat.
Long story short: Linguistically speaking, none of these words are "two syllable words." We may come to call them as such since we only see two vowels to make syllables, but syllables are actually not about vowels at all! This is called syllabic /l/ that gets preserved when adding -ing. It is not really a new or youth thing and is, and has been for a very long time, pretty widespread across most Englishes and particularly in North America.
Let me know if any points need clarification or further questions, I love talking about linguistics (and banjos).
*I say "choice," but this is simultaneously not a choice and is a choice: 1. Not a choice, since typically pronunciation during speech is not very conscious unless it becomes salient, and it depends on our individual accents, experiences, etc. that all shape how we realize words, but also 2. Individual people can, and do, vary their pronunciations of the same word often depending on context and prosodic intentions that shape how they stress their words. Someone who wants to very carefully pronounce "wrestling," maybe because they aren't being understood on the phone, may use a three syllable version even when they might typically pronounce it with two syllables in normal conversation.
Edited by - Capybara on 07/17/2024 17:07:50
Capybara - Posted - 07/17/2024: 17:11:18
BHO really did not like IPA, so ignore all the ???s hahaha
Owen - Posted - 07/17/2024: 17:57:12
Oh, I'm sure at least a few of 'em like IPA:
Owen - Posted - 07/18/2024: 11:41:12
Julian: "... syllables are actually not about vowels at all! This is called syllabic [...]. Let me know if any points need clarification or further questions, I love talking about linguistics (and banjos)."
Okay, tongue-in-cheek (?) here are some syllabics that can some feel aren't getting enuff attention:
We taught on fly-in reserves for about a decade ... I learned a few words/phrases*, but diddly-squat of syllabics. Sadly (?), I was too lazy/disinterested to take of advantage of the opportunity to learn a fair bit more. 
* = But ... I can do an adequate version of the greeting: "Nice day, eh?"
steve davis - Posted - 07/20/2024: 13:34:29
This is the inevitability of removing phonics books from school shelves.
Elmo_Smiley - Posted - 07/22/2024: 05:55:43
I don't know how things are in Canada thee days, and I will blame it on the current politicians in office, but it seems there are many insane reasons to NOT teach proper English, Writing, Arithmetic, Civics and many academic subjects these days. And as the saying goes, that's about all I have to say about that today.
Owen - Posted - 07/22/2024: 06:06:38
As I've alluded to in other threads, everything is hunky-dory up here. Here's how it was "explained" to me: If/when problems arise, the powers that be toot-de-sweet fix them.
steve davis - Posted - 07/22/2024: 06:41:35
Back in the old days "The people" weren't allowed to learn to read music books and sang along with "Tra La La".
Paul R - Posted - 07/22/2024: 23:28:13
There's lots of breaking what ain't broke. How did someone make "competency" out of a perfectly satisfactory "competence", or "resiliency" out of a perfectly good "reslience". I heard someone on the radio use "courageousness" instead of "courage". Perhaps these are examples of people exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger Effect. "Normalcy" isn't even a word. It's "normality". The non-word was coined for Warren Harding's 1920 presidential campaign.
Owen - Posted - 07/23/2024: 06:01:21
Ha! I can speak to [cough, splutter, cough] that ^^. I figure most of the fixing what ain't broke is to impress [cough, hack, cough] the hello out of the poor schmucks on the receiving end. And see... it works ... it's foolproof >> I sound a whole lot smarter writing to an idea rather than writing about it. 
Lately I've been hearing instinctual ... now I know instinctual is a word *, but somehow instinctive generally sounds better .... to me .... I'm a man .....but I can change ... if I have to... I guess.
* = I Googled it.
Edited by - Owen on 07/23/2024 06:07:20
Buddur - Posted - 07/23/2024: 06:11:11
Ain't aint a word...
...'cause the teacher said it ain't.
Owen - Posted - 07/26/2024: 07:25:18
... and in regards to those 2.47105 acre* pieces of land, lately I'm hearing hek-ter cutting into what used to be hek-tair.
* several years back, in S.W. (?) Texas we noticed mucho real estate signs flogging "2.9 acre ranchitos." I dunno, so I guessed that it was 2.9 instead of 3 due to regulations [zoning, taxation, ???]. I guess old habits (?) die hard ... when we drive by a sign for an acreage or maybe a not-too-big of a piece of raw/undeveloped rural land I'll still occasionally ask: "Wanna buy a __?___ acre ranchito?"
Owen - Posted - 07/29/2024: 10:33:19
.... dunno if this one will catch on or not .... just heard CBC radio announce that a couple of Canadians had won a medal in mens "sirk-you-nized" diving.
Bart Veerman - Posted - 07/29/2024: 11:05:17
quote:
Originally posted by Owen
.... dunno if this one will catch on or not .... just heard CBC radio announce that a couple of Canadians had won a medal in mens "sirk-you-nized" diving.
currently right now it just might 
Owen - Posted - 07/29/2024: 11:24:27
.... Obviously!!
Owen - Posted - 07/29/2024: 12:25:25
.... Ooops! Just realized I musta been in the midst ^^ of a brain cramp. Somehow thought (?) it was Chuck that had made the post. A Canadian "Sorry." to all concerned.
Edited by - Owen on 07/29/2024 12:30:49
Paul R - Posted - 07/30/2024: 11:00:39
quote:
Originally posted by Owen
.... dunno if this one will catch on or not .... just heard CBC radio announce that a couple of Canadians had won a medal in mens "sirk-you-nized" diving.
As long as they didn't use any "new-kyu-ler" weapons!
Owen - Posted - 08/19/2024: 15:48:11
For a l-o-n-g time Maersk has been Mair-ssk ..... tonight on CTV it's Mair-sick.
Ah well... ya win some, ya lose some, and some etc., etc.
Paul, when Joe Clark was our man I think I heard him talk about nuke-you-lar stuff. I know I heard him talk about Nick-ah-rag-you-ah.
Edited by - Owen on 08/19/2024 15:54:28
Owen - Posted - 09/11/2024: 07:13:31
... is it Kam-a-la or Kom-a-la, or Komill-ah, or ????
This one, 
not this one.
steve davis - Posted - 09/13/2024: 14:57:29
Thank God for dialects.
How boring would it be if everybody talked the same?
That's what I love about Port Clyde in the summer.
People from everywhere with their own versions of speaking.So interesting and fun.
Owen,if you watch the footage of the DNC convention there are two lovely little girls that teach the audience how to pronounce Kamala"s name.
One girl said "Comma like in a sentence and the other child said "And La like in La La La"
Edited by - steve davis on 09/13/2024 15:04:33
