I knew my Ohio-born husband spoke funny, and now I have proof.
Joshua Katz, a Ph. D student in statistics at North Carolina State University, just published a group of awesome visualizations of a linguistic survey, and JB and I had quite a laugh quizzing each other on “correct” pronunciations. For example, he insists that Mary/merry/marry all sound the same, but being from NJ, I pronounce them all differently: Mairy, mehrry, and maaarry (like cat).
According the map above, however, I’m in the minority.
“Caramel” is another word that my husband (and two-thirds of the United States) mispronounces. He drops the middle “a” and just calls it “car-ml.” That sounds so absurd to me!
Are there any pronunciations that you and your spouse disagree on?
P.S. – As you can see here, they call is “pop” in Omaha, but I refuse to call a carbonated beverage anything but “soda!”
via Business Insider
I love you even when you’re wrong.
Which is hardly ever, I know 😉
i LOVED those maps. My grandma and I went through them yesterday together — she grew up in northern Illinois, and I grew up in East Texas. I lived with her growing up, so it was really funny to see where she influenced how I pronounce things, and where I picked up pronunciations from my hometown. She says caramel with 2 syllables, and I use 3. But she says pajamas the East Texas way (as in father), and I say it the Illinois way (as in jam)! We’re both weird when it comes to soda — we very rarely use a generic term because everyone in TX says coke, but my grandpa worked for Dr Pepper, so we always say exactly which brand we want.
And I really don’t get how Mary/merry/marry are pronounced differently. I still can’t hear it in my head even with you spelling it out. You’ll have to tell me in NYC!
Oh, the three are VERY different. I will definitely have to sound them out for you in New York!
car-ml; soda; all 3 the same!
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
I love these maps! After I moved away from Iowa, I made a conscious effort to call it “soda” instead of “pop.” And I definitely say “car-ml.”
Now that you’re in Omaha, do you call it “pop” again?
Nope – still soda. 🙂
Even though I’m from California, I say marry (mah-ry) differently from Mary and merry (meh-ry), which I say the same way.
The Mary/merry/marry thing blew my mind. I didn’t have a clue that it was such a minority that pronounces those words CORRECTLY (as in differently).
We argue constantly about the pronunciation of “bag”. I swear when my hubs says bag it sounds like “beg”. Me, I think bag should have the same sound as bad! We laugh all the time about it! But, clearly, my pronunciation is more accurate. 😉