3 ms·

Why have Americans always been unable to pronounce the intervocalic T? Bread and budder? WTF? I'm an author; I love horseback writing? I'm tired of wading fo

by eth0up 3y ago

Why have Americans always been unable to pronounce the intervocalic T? Bread and budder? WTF? I'm an author; I love horseback writing? I'm tired of wading for the flood? I want to ride my modercycle? It's so pervasive that we really ought to update our dictionaries to replace these, now phantom, "t"s with proper "d"s. Think of it as antipsychotics for a batshit crazy language. I'm American. But this has always been annoying, along with most of the eN language. To cast a cynical eye on the bright side; it seems both the "t" and "d" will soon be obsolete as the entire eN language is refined to tonal variations of our most common word/punctuation/expression/noise, "like". I may be mistaken, but I believe there's evidence that new humans are forming a "like-gland". The sound will become as natural and necessary as that of frogs bleating* after rain. *Yes, bleating, not bleeding.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Reminds me of going into a shop while visiting the U.S. and trying to buy some batteries. The employee struggled with my english accent, so I had to try to explain what batteries where. He eventually understood and exclaimed "oh, badderies!".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  I've got a friend with a story from his high school job at a retail store, about his having to translate for the other workers so they could figure out WTF this British guy was asking for. "Batcheries" [EDIT] That's not me trying to, like, contradict or counter your story—occurred to me it might come off that way. I just think it's funny that that specific word has so many cross-accent issues.
tgv 3y ago
The t can also disappear. I've heard people say "twenny" instead of "twenty". Perhaps because "twendy" sounds more like Elmer Fudd giving Bugs Bunny decoration advice.
qbrass 3y ago
It's from Scandinavian immigrants influencing the accent. It's why Minnesota is pronounced with a "d" sound.
danans 3y ago
> Why have Americans always been unable to pronounce the intervocalic T? > Bread and budder? WTF? In this and most cases there isn't really another word that would fit in context. Also plenty of other dialects (i.e. Australian English) do exactly the same thing. > I'm an author; I love horseback writing? I'm this case, "riding" and "writing" have a marked difference in the length of the initial diphthong sound "ai". I general American English is nowhere near the most ambiguous in this way. Many languages rely more heavily on context because they use ambiguous phonological and grammatical marking in common speech (i.e. spoken Japanese).

by eth0up 3y ago

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

Reminds me of going into a shop while visiting the U.S. and trying to buy some batteries. The employee struggled with my english accent, so I had to try to explain what batteries where. He eventually understood and exclaimed "oh, badderies!".

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yamtaddle 3y ago
I've got a friend with a story from his high school job at a retail store, about his having to translate for the other workers so they could figure out WTF this British guy was asking for. "Batcheries" [EDIT] That's not me trying to, like, contradict or counter your story—occurred to me it might come off that way. I just think it's funny that that specific word has so many cross-accent issues.

tgv 3y ago

The t can also disappear. I've heard people say "twenny" instead of "twenty". Perhaps because "twendy" sounds more like Elmer Fudd giving Bugs Bunny decoration advice.

qbrass 3y ago

It's from Scandinavian immigrants influencing the accent. It's why Minnesota is pronounced with a "d" sound.

danans 3y ago

> Why have Americans always been unable to pronounce the intervocalic T? > Bread and budder? WTF? In this and most cases there isn't really another word that would fit in context. Also plenty of other dialects (i.e. Australian English) do exactly the same thing. > I'm an author; I love horseback writing? I'm this case, "riding" and "writing" have a marked difference in the length of the initial diphthong sound "ai". I general American English is nowhere near the most ambiguous in this way. Many languages rely more heavily on context because they use ambiguous phonological and grammatical marking in common speech (i.e. spoken Japanese).