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related, but has anyone noticed younger Americans pronouncing a few specific types of words differently as of late? I'm 29 and grew up in the Midwest, so in my
by adamrezich 6y ago
related, but has anyone noticed younger Americans pronouncing a few specific types of words differently as of late?
I'm 29 and grew up in the Midwest, so in my accent, when I say "button," the "tt" is nearly silent. however, at my last job doing remote web development, one guy who was a bit younger than me (and also American) would pronounce it "BUH 'in," with noticeable "stop" between the two syllables. I have since noticed this in other younger Americans as well, and for other words I cannot recall right now but with the same general pattern.
- TheLocehiliosan 6y agoI'm 46, also grew up in midwest, and I say "BUH 'in".
- skywhopper 6y agoI don’t think it is a new phenomenon in the language. I associate this with Northeast US accents and many British accents. It may be that regional accents which use a glottal stop for this pattern are leaking into younger people’s accents around you simply because YouTube and TikTok are making less common accents heard more widely.
- Aromasin 6y agoFunny enough, this has almost become the common British pronunciation of most "hard t" words. It's quite common for people to say "a bottle of water" like "a boh-ell of wah-er", or "butter" like "buh-ah. The sound comes from the back of the throat instead of the tip of the tongue.
- tabtab 6y agoI had the impression such is considered "lower class" talk, for lack of a PC way to describe it. Please hear me out before giving me negative points. If you are "educated", then you are "supposed to" pronounce the middle constantans, as skipping them is considered "lazy". I'm not making a value judgement, but reporting that this is what parents often tell their kids in private. All things being equal, parents want their children to sound wealthy and well educated. Similar for certain rural or "redneck" talk in the US. Example: "Murica" instead of "America". My mother used to lecture me against certain verbal shortcuts so that I didn't "sound ignorant". Her words, not mine.
- Veen 6y agoIt is (or was) considered "lower-class" to drop your Ts in the UK. But these days, it's not fashionable to talk like Boris Johnson, even if you went to Eton, so many upper-middle class people emulate aspects of "lower-class" speech, including the glottalization of "t" when it's followed by an unstressed syllable (like water). Even someone as indisputably posh as Prince Harry will T-glottalize on occasion.
- cleansingfire 6y agoNot being posh has been fashionable before. A fashion for dropping terminal g existed the upper classes in the 1920's UK. Dorothy L. Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey did this, and it was fascinating to hear this affectation in the 1970's BBC adaptations with Ian Carmichael. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/no-g-men-frank-mcnally-on-the-politics-of-english-accents-1.4483443 https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/no-g-men-frank-mcnally-on... Also, there is a backlash against Received Pronunciation as inauthentic. Now I enjoy BBC announcers with regional accents, unlike the voices I heard on BBC in the seventies and eighties.
- brigandish 6y ago> Now I enjoy BBC announcers with regional accents, unlike the voices I heard on BBC in the seventies and eighties. I agree. The downside of the loosening of the old standard is heard in the number of actors who mumble through their lines. I wouldn't want to go back to a time when RADA enforced a kind of RP but I would like them to focus just as hard on diction.
- Veen 6y agoFamously in "huntin', shootin', and fishin'." But I'm not sure it's the upper classes emulating the lower. It seems to be parallel evolution from different forms of Old English [0]. Which makes sense; it's unlikely an upper-class English person of the 1920s would be motivated to copy lower-class speech patterns. Bertie Wooster wouldn't want to sound like his scullery maid. [0]: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YMS3AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT26&lpg=PT26&dq=What+are+the+different+British+accents+huntin%27&source=bl&ots=HqNOJbVJBM&sig=ACfU3U3kCv3MXGtofH1QYLJtmf98z6rZSQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKnYGi6__vAhU6_7sIHSHGCYoQ6AEwHnoECCMQAw#v=onepage&q=What%20are%20the%20different%20British%20accents%20huntin'&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YMS3AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT26&lpg...
- kiliantics 6y agoit's called a glottal stop, it's also pretty common in Irish accents to substitute this for a T
- dkuder 6y agoGlotalization of T https://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/deddingt/t-glottalization.pdf https://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/deddingt/t-glottalizatio... My anecdata says we covered this dialect in intro linguistics back in the 80s. I have been hearing it from New Jersey natives for a long time.
- asveikau 6y agoI tend to associate this with Brits. I have definitely noticed a rise in young Americans doing this in the last year or two though. The typical American "nearly silent" one you are describing tends to be more of a flapped /ɾ/, by the way. <d> is often the same.
- adamrezich 6y ago> The typical American "nearly silent" one you are describing tends to be more of a flapped /ɾ/, by the way. <d> is often the same. yes, exactly! also out here in South Dakota we specifically pronounce the "t" in "Dakota" as a "d," I've noticed.
- fuzzer37 6y agoIs that the same thing as "D-Troit" verses "Duh-Troit" for Detroit? That's one of my favorites.
- danans 6y agoThe pronunciation "dee-troit" is just local slang meant to sound folksy. It's used by sports announcers and singers, and for comedic value. Most of the time people in the area pronounce it the same way as the rest of the country pronounces it.
- marzell 6y agoI think you're right there. But also going back, there was a more 'neutral' pronunciation of "deh-troit". I believe from there, we started getting "duh-troit" as a type of Schwa[1]. Again, I agree that there's a newer "DEE-troit" which is kind of like if you drew a line from "duh-troit" through "deh-troit" and kept going, then you'd get "DEE-troit". [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa
- desert_boi 6y agoVoiceless phonemes(?) tend to become voiced when they're between two vowels. Boise natives hypercorrect to say Boy-see, when most folks from outside the area say Boy-zee. Historic shifts like that are loafes -> loaves.
- QuesnayJr 6y agoI think I've always said with a stop. I'm from the East Coast, though.
- azepoi 6y agoI notice s being pronounced sh. It shtrikes me as more frequent now.
- adamrezich 6y agowhile we're on the topic, my younger-than-me girlfriend from Idaho says "warsh" for "wash," which until now I fully associated with only people the age of my late grandmother. truly, the wide gamut of American accents is something to behold!
- Bayart 6y agoThat sounds like the glottal stop you hear quite a bit in England. Bu'hu for "butter", wa'hu for "water" and so on. I've been in heated discussions with Englishmen arguing my pronouncing the Ts in the middle of words is incorrect. I personally hold to the notion that at the very least if you go to the length of putting the letter T *twice* in the same spot, it really wants to be pronounced.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoThat is the rule for RP. Lots of English are afraid of sounding posh and avoid it. Estuary English is what the elite kids speak these days so they can blend in with working class.
- tclancy 6y agoLexicon Valley covers these sorts of things regularly. And I think he takes ideas from listeners too!
- ascorbic 6y agoI've noticed this recently among some of my American colleagues, and it's so obvious to me that at first I thought they were imitating an English accent. To my English ears, standard American pronounces the "t"s in butter and water as "d", and hadn't realised that some accents do have the glottal "t". I think it is mostly in people from the East coast.
- adamrezich 6y agospot-on in your analysis & as is mentioned elsewhere in the replies, I think it might be a definite east-coast influence on the rest of the US population as a result of video-based social media. at least, that's my running theory!